The latest UK brand to shut up shop is SportNation, who announced their decision yesterday.
The brand has been quite heavy on their marketing which can’t have been cheap, and offered a lot of quality but expensive features on their site such as streaming.
This obviously all costs money and requires a solid chunk of regular customers to bring in enough revenue to cover it.
In their own words though:
SportNation is closing for a variety of reasons including the economics of operating a small igaming business in the UK market.
Which obviously means that is the biggest reason.
Spending big but being hampered by difficult legislation post global lockdown can’t have been an easy blow to take.
On top of that, SportNation then stopped paying advertising partners which meant they obviously stopped advertising them, which dried up new customers joining the site and was something of an own goal.
The closure is all being handled professionally where customers are concerned though, so if you are a SportNation customer worrying about your funds, you don’t need to.
Here’s how things will work as the company winds down.
SportNation Customers: What You Need to Know
The site will stay open and operate as normal for the next few weeks. That means betting, casino games, withdrawals and deposits are all still available.
However, on the 30th November all betting and gaming services will cease, and any bets settling after this date will be voided and stakes returned to customers’ accounts.
Any bonuses or promotions linked to customers’ accounts must also be used by the 30th November.
Customers will still be able to log in and manage their account, contact customer services, and most importantly make withdrawals, but no other services will be available from this point.
After the 7th of December, SportNation will attempt to return any unclaimed money over £1 left in accounts, and customers who missed the December 7th window can contact support via email to request a withdrawal.
After 14th December though, they will:
continue to comply with requests for refunds of such balances to the extent required by law and in accordance with our terms and conditions.
To be fair, the site will have given customers plenty of time to get their money out by this point, so anyone who still has money in their account after this can’t really complain if they struggle to get it back.
SportNation are recommending customers sign up to a non-related brand, strangely, perhaps acting as an affiliate themselves to try and claw in some cash, although I would obviously recommend one of the bookies on this site instead.
SportNation: In the Background
Quite a lot has happened to poor old SportNation over the last few years.
They are owned and operated by Argyll Entertainment who are a UK and Ireland focused company (despite being based in Switzerland…), who also run RedZone Sports if you know them.
However back in 2019, Argyll were bought out and merged with Esports Entertainment Group (EEG), a much bigger esports and online betting company.
They are more focused on America and aren’t so well known over here, so the 2019 purchase was something of a low key move into the UK for EEG.
We all know what happened the year after though.
COVID hit the gambling industry just like it hit most others, and as a smaller online bookie SportNation really felt that pain.
They had a successful round of investment in 2021 and attempted another this year, but given that they are now closing down, I would assume their latest round of capital raising was not a success.
Argyll’s other brand, GivemeBet, was closed in June with customers encouraged to join SportNation instead, in an obvious move to consolidate their customer base and reduce costs, but again, it wasn’t enough.
Final Thoughts
Yet again, it’s a smaller yet popular betting brand that is closing its doors, partly due to difficulties over the last few years, but also because of increasingly difficult market conditions in the UK.
There is still plenty of choice out there for bettors of course, but a huge number of brands have either closed for business or exited the UK market over the last few years.
This means the remaining brands will get more business as bettors spend their money among a smaller pool of bookies, so hopefully this exodus will eventually peter out as those that remain feel the benefit of those who have left.
Once the legislation around gambling in this country is established and stops changing every five minutes, this will also give companies a better chance at planning ahead and forecasting more accurately.
At the end of the day, no one will be talking about SportNation’s absence a few years from now, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t sorry to see them go.