The 888 Group, most famous for its award-winning casino product (888.com), has joined forces with Blue Square, Rank's telephone and internet betting business to produce 888sport.com. This is essentially a white label version of Bluesq but with a pan-European element to it. In addition to English, the site is available in Spanish, German, Swedish and Danish.
This venture is mutually beneficial to the two companies involved. It enables 888 Holdings to add sportsbook to other offerings such as casino, poker, bingo and backgammon in order to have a more complete package. It also makes sense that a company such as 888 who have invested tens of millions in sports sponsorship to use their brand in such a manner.
For Blue Square, it provides the opportunity to launch into international markets for the first time, piggy-backing a brand of massive international strength in the process. They will also be able to peddle their wares to 888's enormous gaming customer base, tapping into a database of people who might never have placed a sports bet.
As you might expect, this is a clean crisp website which is as user-friendly as they come. There are noticeable differences with the Blue Square site; 888sport use a huge graphic on their homepage to promote upcoming major sports events, while the colour scheme is obviously different and fairly similar to Paddy Power.
While the left-hand menu of sports and the overall content is practically identical to the betting company that powers it, change your country settings and you'll see editorial and sports betting selections which are tailored and localized by country.
Our only gripe is that it's not immediately clear for customers how to go on and place a bet once they've made a selection from, say, a football coupon. It takes a while to work out you have to press the 'submit' button whereas other bookies just automatically add selections to a betting slip.
From a UK point-of-view, this is exactly the same as Blue Square. Therefore, the majority of their sports betting markets are competitive without being breathtaking. You'll rarely find stand-out odds on a big race or football match at 888sport but there are some imaginative specials and plenty of range when it comes to the pre-match markets. However, their In-Play offering doesn't really cut the mustard compared to some of the dynamic offerings you'll now find elsewhere.
Their European-facing websites demonstrate that 888 and Blue Square understand what customers from their target markets want. Each geo-targeted site has good local content and the sports have been carefully hand-picked to provide a real national flavour. Once again, the odds will need to become more competitive, especially in Scandinavia where customers are more price-orientated and less brand-influenced.
They may claim on their website that they're a gaming industry leader due to dedicated customer service, but they'll have to do better than only offering support between 900 and 2200 GMT.
Fobbing customers off with their FAQs would be better if this section was more extensive and, although their phone service is efficient and friendly, you could be waiting a couple of days for a response to an emailed query.
A £20 free bet is available if you sign-up to 888sport via links on world cup news.
This is a venture which has made the UK & European betting industry sit up and take notice. After all, you have one of the largest online gaming companies in the world going forth with a sportsbook offering, albeit a modest one at the time of writing. For UK customers, having an 888sport account would be exactly the same as registering with Blue Square, ie a good bookmaker to have amongst your portfolio, providing a solid range of odds and markets.
It's surely only a matter of time before the site diversifies from the Blue Square website and starts to develop a personality of its own. Especially on the In-Play side of things; the narrow offering is hardly in keeping with the brand's reputation for providing cuting-edge software and new developments.