Free Betting Games Make A Fortune For Cillian Barry
That was some score for Dubliner Cillian Barry, co-founder of SportCaller, who celebrated his 45th birthday at the start of February, by finalising the sale of the business to US gaming giant Bally’s Corporation. The Americans are paying €20m in cash and Bally’s shares worth c.$13m, and there’s a further €10m in Bally’s shares up for grabs in the earnout.
SportCaller has been on a roll in recent years, with current assets expanding by a factor of five to €1.7m in the three years from 2016 to 2019. Chalk it down to the smartphone betting mania, especially among young lads. The betting companies keep their punters engaged with freeto-enter competitions that have cash prizes, and many of the best ones are devised by Barry’s small team in D2 and some code toilers in Ukraine.
The initial idea was RaceCaller, set up in 2006 by Barry and his brotherin-law Eugene Cosgrove, centred on tips, chat and games around horse racing. Writing in the Irish Independent six years ago, Barry recalled: “One of the mistakes we made at the start was not understanding what we were selling. We began with an advertising model and we soon realised that we would need several hundred thousand users to make this support the business. So we revised our revenue model to take advantage of the value we were building around our fan tips and comments, and our tipping games. We then created an API which allowed us to license these out to third-party sites and apps.”
The company forged relationships with many of the UK’s large media and betting players, and RaceCaller became SportCaller in 2016 when the venture started running Paddy Power’s weekly Hotshot Jackpot game. The SportCaller suite now extends to over 100 games in 20 languages, and over 30 sports across 37 countries. The operating company booked a net profit of €930,000 in 2019 and rewarded shareholders with a dividend payout of €200,000. Net worth at year-end was €1.65m on the back of equity invested of €430,000.
Cillian Barry and his partner Maeve Barry spoke for 49.2% of the equity, with northern businessman Fintan Farrell on 16.6%. Cosgrove lightened his shareholding a few years ago and retained a 6.4% interest in the venture, while Highgate resident and early backer Rupert Egan owned 15.7% of the equity. Aviation veteran Colm Barrington (75), an early investor, disposed of his 3.8% stake to the Power bookie family two years ago.