Business Asia: Asians take a punt on Centrebet

An on-line betting agency in the red centre is fast becoming a global entertainment force. JOHN SHAW reports that Asian gamblers are plugged into the business

Exporting can be a risky business -- which is exactly why an Alice Springs company is signing up 1000 new foreign customers every month.

Centrebet, Australia's largest on-line betting agency, is in the business of risks. It is turning over about A$120 million a year -- 65 per cent of it in wagers with gamblers in Europe, Asia and South Africa.

Centrebet is one of the new breed of "e-exporters" -- selling services off-shore by the electronic route of the Internet.

Its sales offices are interactive Websites, its sales personnel never have to leave home base -- Alice Springs -- payments are all up front, and deliveries are immediate.

Centrebet's business development manager, Mr Mike Miller, a New Zealander with an MBA and previous experience in a more conservative finance sector -- insurance -- says: "Our offshore business is growing at an incredible pace."

About 70 per cent of the bets are from overseas, mainly Asia.

And Mr Miller expects that "the 2000 Olympics will be huge for us -- especially the track and swimming events".

Centrebet is part of the Jupiters Casino group, an A$800 million listed company which bought out the Alice Springs operation last year for an unnamed sum from its founders, Mr Terry and Mrs Alison Lillis, who stayed on as managers.

They began Centrebet in 1992 as a phone betting agency wagering on Australian sports, but moved offshore and on-line as the Internet and cable-TV sports coverage made international sports gambling feasible.

The other technologies on which cyber-betting is based are electronic banking, credit card data-banks and cheap global telecoms.

All have key roles in Centrebet's global ability to transmit odds and information, receive bets, simultaneously monitor 350 or so events in 20 sports worldwide -- and pay winners.

In Alice Springs, a staff of 44 performs these tasks 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with banks of computers and phones and software designed by the Darwin company OCTA4.

Centrebet bets in Australian and US dollars -- and increasingly in Finnish marks and Swedish, Danish and Norwegian crowns.

The four Scandinavian countries are currently the biggest growth market.

They all meet the ideal criteria -- common Internet and cable-TV use, excellent telecoms, widespread use of English, and millions of sports fans.

Another crucial factor: in all four nations internal gambling is illegal -- except on national lotteries -- but external betting is permitted.

Centrebet has interactive Websites (www.centrebet.com.au) in the four Scandinavian languages for those who don't trust their English quite as far as they entrust their money.

But as Mr Miller says: "Language is not a problem because figures are universal and the big sports names from Manchester United to Steffi Graf to Tiger Woods need no translation."

Incidentally, nobody backed Steffi Graf with Centrebet when she surprisingly won the French Open Tennis final last month (June). Centrebet turned over A$200,000 on the Paris event -- but lost A$98,000 of it to one bold supporter of Andre Agassi with a bet of A$2800 at the first odds of 34/1.

Word about Centrebet has caught on in Asia.

From cricket-mad India and Pakistan, professional bookmakers often key-in or free-phone cricket bets to Centrebet to "lay off" bets taken from punters at home.

In the recent World Cricket Cup, Centrebet bet ball-by-ball, changing the odds with the speed that only electronics can offer.

The latest entry to export gambling is also an Alice Springs company -- Lasseters Online.

This is the Internet branch of the Lasseters Hotel Casino. Its website (www.lasseters.com.au) attracted A$1 million wagers from 3000 players in 76 countries and averaged more than 20,000 hits per day in its first six weeks on such electronic table games as poker, blackjack and roulette.