25th September 2003

Event Report

Canbet Sports Bookmakers Ltd - Betting on Technology at Carnac Court, Cams Estate, Fareham

Russell Gercken IT Director of Canbet Sports Bookmakers explained the reasons for his company's move from Canberra to Fareham and how he has made use of technology to create an Internet based sports betting business.

Canbet is an Australian owned public company that was established 1998 and listed on Sydney Stock Exchange 2000. The Fareham operations started 15 April 2003. The business generates a turnover in excess of 400m per annum.

The prime reason for their move from Australia was the more favourable UK regulatory requirements and in particular the change of tax law in October 2002. Canbet were able to shift their gaming tax base from turnover to profit. The image of the UK as the world centre for Internet gaming increased the business value of the move. But within the UK the choice of Fareham and the Cams Estate in particular was driven by the low cost and high availability of Internet bandwidth, competitive property prices and the large employment resource pool in the vicinity.

Canbet have 25,000 customers, of whom 5000+ can be connected simultaneously, generating 3 million + bet transactions per year. Russell explained the company's hardware infrastructure and the software ingenuity that has achieved 99.94% uptime reliability on the basis of 24 / 7 / 365 system operability dealing with a peak of 750 bet transactions / minute, an Oracle transaction load of 300,000 / minute and an average of 27 million web page hits per month. The system copes with an average of 1500 hacking attempts per day

The impressive Canbet system has been developed & is maintained by 5 IT professionals.

To view a copy of Russell Gercken's presentation e-mail economic.development@fareham.gov.uk.