
Ralph Topping: William Hill’s “neglected” retail division needs serious investment from eventual buyer
In the second of a two-part special, Hills’ former CEO questions if Betfred can handle the operator’s full portfolio of shops and insists there is still life left in retail


In part two of EGR’s exclusive interview with Ralph Topping, the former William Hill boss discusses setting the foundation for the US opportunity and cutthroat competition across the pond.
EGR Intel: Would Betfred make a suitable buyer for the UK business?
Ralph Topping (RT): Betfred has an OK online business but its proposition is a little weaker than most. Would Fred be able to take on 1,400-1,500 betting shops? I think he’ll find it difficult as it will be a real challenge for his management team. Fred has played a blinder up to now, but I think when he’s lying back in his bath he’s probably worrying if he’s got a strong enough management team to take it all on. I doubt it. Hills have already slashed costs and headcount in their retail division, so it’s a substantial operational challenge for any purchaser, and they recently made the daft decision to run retail out of Gibraltar.
Retail has been of minor importance to the last few chief executives, wrongly in my view. The board haven’t invested in retail and from what I see and hear, the retail division has been neglected. Anyone buying this asset is going to be faced with a business in serious need of investment and ideas. Betfred can provide that of course, so the only question for me is the depth of his management team as the body of experienced and able retail operators at Hills were largely exited in recent years. I would not be surprised if Fred says he will only take on X number of shops, leaving Boylesports, Paddy Power and others to pick up the rest.
EGR Intel: Do you consider UK retail to be a serious opportunity?
RT: If Fred’s the only game in town, then private equity might want to get involved in the running of a pure UK business using the William Hill brand. There’s money to be made in the UK and there’s been very little in the way of innovation in retail generally as the focus was on digital and the USA so there is opportunity there. Believe me, there’s a lot of clever people that have good ideas for the development of the retail model, so it could be interesting. Europe is another profitable business that somebody will want to want to embrace, maybe 888? If you scour Europe, there are well run, ambitious businesses, some of whom are owned by private equity. They might look at the Hills’ European business as offering a chance for a great leap forward, but who knows? One thing’s for sure, it’s going to all be fascinating to watch.

Ralph Topping
EGR Intel: Did you ever imagine the business you joined on the shop floor as a teenager would end up being owned by a US casino giant?
RT: We went out to America, not on speculation, but to plant the flag in the belief that sports betting would be legalised. It cost us $58m so without that canny investment there would be no Caesars acquisition today! We wanted to be there with a profitable business and we did that. We always had the belief that William Hill would put its mark on the US, and we were as a company performing extremely strongly at that time. We thought there was a great opportunity for Hills in America, and we had lots of discussions about developing the US. We were also looking at businesses outside of Nevada which were machine-based as much as anything.
I could not imagine William Hill being owned by another business when I started as that would have been ridiculous. However, there have been times when there was speculation that it might be bought by a large American business. If you look at what happened with deregulation under Tony Blair and US casinos vying to come into the UK, there was a fair bit of speculation that William Hill or Ladbrokes would be bought by incoming businesses.
EGR Intel: Will we see more consolidation of this sort over the next few years?
RT: I definitely feel you will see major consolidation in the US. If you add up the projections every company’s been making about market share, they add up to more than 100%, so it’s going to be a cutthroat market. It’s now about how deep your pockets are and to make them deeper. I think we’ll see a lot of mergers because companies will start to struggle to deliver on promises due to the highly competitive nature of the opportunity.
EGR Intel: A final word on William Hill?
RT: It’s been great fun with William Hill. I worked with and for exceptional people throughout my career there, but I’ve watched a lot going wrong in the business over the last five years. Maybe some highly placed people who’ve left the organisation became a tad complacent and did not serve the company as well as perhaps they could, or should have? Complacency is always the enemy of success.
Read part one of the interview here.