SVL bets on racing with tech spend of $600m, and counting
Published:Wednesday | January 30, 2019 | 12:00 AMHuntley Medley/ Senior Business Writer
Gaming company Supreme Ventures Limited (SVL) is a big operation with multiple business lines and revenues on track to hit $60 billion, on which it forks out more than $6 billion in taxes and fees on an annual basis.
However, it is its newest horse racing segment, operated under subsidiary Supreme Ventures Racing and Entertainment Limited (SVREL) that has been commanding the lion’s share of the company’s investment spend since 2018.
Last year’s $300 investment in SVREL was 60 per cent of the half-billion dollars invested chiefly in technological and infrastructure upgrade across the entire business in 2018.
SVL president and CEO Ann-Dawn Young Sang says another $300 million investment spend is earmarked for SVREL this year. Much of this continues to be ploughed into technology and infrastructure upgrade at Caymanas Park in St Catherine, the horse-racing track that SVL bought from the Jamaican Government in 2017.
Some of the deployed capital has been used to procure new, updated control rooms and broadcast equipment at the track. As the SVL board and management looks to the racing subsidiary for greater contribution to earnings and profits, earlier this month a new board was installed under the chairmanship of Solomon Sharpe, the CEO and co-owner of Main Event Entertainment Group. Army man Major Hugh Blake was tapped in September last year as the new CEO, replacing Brando Hayden, who resigned months earlier in May.
The big bucks being spent across the business is creating the technological backbone for several innovations in SVL’s racing and core gaming operations.
From the tech investment, the company spent $50 million piloting the roll-out of its mobile betting platform. That initially commenced with sports betting, was extended to horse racing, and is now said to be coming very soon for other segments, including the popular numbers games.
The JustBet, a sports betting mobile platform, allows punters to bet anywhere at any time once they have an active NCB Quisk account and Internet connection. The company also launched the web-based MBet, which allows bets from any mobile device for local horse racing or live simulcast racing from several overseas tracks, including Gulf Stream in Florida and Woodbine in Canada.
“The platform is one of Supreme Ventures’ gaming services to provide customers with added accessibility and user convenience,” said Young Sang in an interview with the Financial Gleaner.
“Expansion into mobile and online across all our products is a critical part of our growth strategy, so there will be a full launch of these new solutions very soon,” she said.