After hitting the market here in the UK a mere 2 years ago, MustardBet have gone the way of MintBet and BetBright and closed their doors for good. No official reason has been offered other than “a management decision” – which is about as vague as you can get.
The site was owned and operated by Mustard Systems Limited who are based in Hammersmith, London, and the brand was independent which must make this sting ten times worse than if it was a white label company.
The setup costs are much higher for independent companies who develop their own websites, so the losses here must be severe.
Note: I will do my utmost to avoid make jokes about the brand not cutting the mustard.
Any Idea What Happened?
We can only speculate really. There certainly was no drama such as intervention from the UKGC or anything like that, but the company are understandably keeping tight-lipped about what has been going on behind the scenes.
My guess is that they entered an extremely competitive market at quite a difficult time, and just couldn’t get the traction required to meet running costs. Running a bookie is a difficult business amid increasing regulations, tax increases, and advertising rules that can be difficult to navigate.
Their MO was also to become the industry’s new low margin bookmaker, an approach decided on by Andrew Garrood who was behind MustardBet’s launch and who no doubt thought customers would relish (sorry) this approach, but low margins do not make for big profits and this was also likely a contributing factor.
What About My Money?
No further bets will be taken, but the good news is that MustardBet are handling the situation like absolute gentlemen.
Any money in customer accounts will be automatically returned where possible, and the customer will be contacted if they run into difficulty.
What’s more, all unsettled bets will be settled as winners and the website will be kept live for 28 days so that customers can access live chat and iron out any issues before they switch out the lights on Nov 11th. This is classy behaviour and makes me sad for what MustardBet might have become if it could have secured more of a foothold in the industry.
Here is their full statement:
Kudos to them for their handling of this.
So long, farewell, auf weidersehen, goodbye…
So it’s farewell to MustardBet, who were sadly barely around long enough to warm the seat.
To begin with they were keen as mustard (last one, promise) to change the face of betting in this country, but the gap in the market that they were trying to fill just wasn’t large enough to make a profit.
All the best to the guys at MustardBet though, seriously, they were trying to do something positive and even though it didn’t work out they deserve credit for trying.