Ladbrokes South Africa loses in-running facility betting during one-day cricket match, as maintenance work blocks traffic to its site
Ladbrokes SA, the online betting site serving the South African market, has been suffering from a few teething problems in its first year of operation, as it emerged this week that various in-play and in-running betting options were removed from the site due to a maintenance error.
The problems arose during the one-day cricket match between South Africa and Sri Lanka, a game that would normally draw a large amount of traffic to the site. A major part of the customer experience is the in-running betting that allows punters to place bets during a live game, but this service was not available to customers wanting to place bets on the cricket match.
Anli Kotze, marketing manager at Ladbrokes SA, confirmed that the cricket match had not been available in South Africa because technicians removed it to manage traffic on the site.
"They should have removed other matches that were less popular," she said. "We did lose some important business at the weekend as a result."
This will not be welcome news to Ladbrokes as it continues to establish itself as a strong online brand in a market that has plenty of competition. Other companies trying to break into the market include World Sports Betting and Voltbet. Whilst online casino gaming is still illegal in South Africa, there is plenty of revenue to be generated from online sports betting. It is widely anticipated that the South African government will revise online gambling regulations in 2012.
If online casino gambling does become legal Ladbrokes is hoping that its early entry into the South African market will pay huge dividends, despite minor teething problems on the site. The UK arm of Ladbrokes recorded a turnover of £977 million in 2010.
