SportPesa bosses bet on Hull City deal to penetrate global market
Mr Ronald Karauri, one of the principal owners of SportPesa. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
Owners of SportPesa are seeking to ride on its increased brand visibility to push the mobile phone-based sports betting platform to four different continents by next year alongside other African nations.
The Kenyan millionaires behind betting firm SportPesa say their recent move to sponsor English Premier League club Hull City is a strategy to penetrate the global market, which has 4.7 billion sports viewers.
They are seeking to ride on SportPesa’s increased brand visibility to push the mobile phone-based sports betting platform to four different continents by next year alongside other African nations.
The principal owners of the betting company include former chairman of the Kenya Airline Pilots Association (KAPA) Ronald Karauri, businessman Paul Wanderi Ndung’u and Asenath Wachera Maina – the entrepreneur behind the controversial “Shinda Smart” lottery.
“Following various speculations regarding the sponsorship of Hull City as the club’s official sponsor, we wish toclarify that the sponsorship deal is in a bid to take the brand international,” said a statement from Mr Karauri, who doubles as the company’s chief executive.
“In the next few weeks SportPesa sport betting will be available in Europe and other African countries,” he added.
The betting firm last week signed a £10 million (Sh1.321 billion) sponsorship deal with Hull City. This made it Kenya’s first company to sponsor a football team in the UK’s lucrative topflight premier league.
The three-year deal will see SportPesa’s name and logo on Hull City’s shirts when the next season begins in August.
The company has also sealed a betting deal with Southampton FC — the club Harambee Stars captain Victor Wanyama played for until his transfer to Tottenham Hotspurs last month.
SportPesa’s other shareholders are three Bulgarians — Guerassim Nikolov of the ill-fated Toto 6/49 lottery, Valentina Nikolaeva Mineva and Ivan Kalpakchiev — as well as American businessman Gene Grand.
The company’s sponsorship deal with Hull adds to a string of funding it has doled out to other sports entities at home including Kenya Rugby Union (Sh607 million), Kenyan Premier League (Sh450 million), Gor Mahia (Sh325 million) and AFC Leopards (Sh225 million).
Kenya’s mobile phone-based sports betting industry has experienced phenomenal growth in the past couple of years, aided by the ease of placing bets online or through SMS and paying via mobile money platforms such as M-Pesa and Airtel Money.
“Just like we have international brands offering sports betting and other services in Kenya, SportPesa is also taking the Kenyan brand international,” the company says.
There are now more than a dozen sports gambling platforms in Kenya, including Betway — the official sponsor of another English Premier League side, West Ham United — EliteBet, Betin, JustBet, Bet365, BetYetu, eazibet, Lucky2u, 256Bet, Royal Kenya Bets, and go-bet.
Kenya’s gambling, gaming and lotteries sector is regulated by the Betting Control and Licensing Board. Both Mr Karauri and Mr Nikolov refused to comment on this story and declined to disclose how much money their company, SportPesa, makes from its runaway success in sports gambling.
SportPesa grosses a daily average of one million users placing bets averaging Sh100, besides the 300,000 gamblers who play the jackpot daily, said a source who cannot be named because she is not authorised to speak for the company.
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