The Big Interview: Ed Nicholson, Unibet Horse Racing Supremo
If you are looking for an industry professional with a long history in the UK betting gambling space, look no further than Unibet’s Ed Nicholson. His hair may be long gone, but the Racing Communications and Sponsorship boss is only 53 and he has crammed plenty into his working life.
Nicholson, the son of a teacher that visited every racecourse in the UK, began his career as Ladbrokes’ studio manager and broadcaster in the early 1990s. He later progressed to the role of the company’s PR Manager and Spokesman.
Ed Nicholson, Unibet’s UK Head of Marketing, chats with leading racehorse owner JP McManus in Cheltenham’s winner’s enclosure. ©GettyImages
After seven years with the infamous Magic Sign – the nickname for Ladbrokes coined by the late John McCririck – Nicholson set up his own betting public relations company. Consequently, he worked with many leading companies in various roles: Spread betting firm City Index, bookmakers Betfair, Premierbet, the dedicated horseracing channel, At The Races, the British Greyhound Racing Board and even the Daily Star newspaper racing section employed his services.
Marketing With a Memo
The rolling stone may not have gathered any moss, but it did slow down. A permanent four-year stint as the Head of Marketing at 888sport began in 2008. In late 2022, Nicholson will complete his tenth full year at the Kindred Group, the owners of 32Red and Unibet.
On joining the company, his brief was simple: Launch Unibet into the UK market. As he points out, Unibet was a global online sportsbook that had already been operating for 12 years. It had 30 million customers. But remarkably few British or Irish punters knew of the operator.
BestBettingSites.com recently sat down with Nicholson to discuss Unibet’s now lofty position in the UK betting market, particularly within horse racing where the Unibet brand name has become commonplace.
Congratulations on making Unibet a household name – in racing households that is! It seems only a short time ago that Unibet was an upstart in the UK betting space, how long has it been?
“The incredible thing to remember is that when we launched in May 2013, we did not have a racing offering! Not by design, I hasten to add. It just took six months longer to get it up and running through Kambi, our sports betting provider partner.
Since then, we have launched our own multi-award-winning proprietary racing platform and invested in industry-leading marketing and sponsoring …in fact, we are the current recipient of the EGR Horse Racing Operator of the Year.
It is not by chance that we have invested in our horse racing product, marketing and sponsorship. We took a strategic decision to do so. The UK market remains an extremely competitive territory and since we launched many others have tried and failed in the market – and more will fall by the wayside in the next few years, I am sure.
Unibet UK has been successful through careful management of budgets and well-planned and executed strategies as well as constantly analyzing the business – where it’s come from, where it’s going and planning for regulatory and legislative reform.”
For a while it seemed like every major hurdle race in the UK and Ireland was sponsored by Unibet that surely didn’t happen by accident?
“In the early days, we wanted to ensure the UK market knew that Unibet, a global company of then 12 years standing with 30 million customers, had entered the UK market to make a splash. We wanted UK customers to know that we were a respected, trustworthy, and reputable brand.
We achieved this through a number of ways, but one was to get our brand, our identity, values, and messages across and in front of the target audience on a regular basis through key marketing channels, sponsorships and through mass and social media.
Racing was one way we did this, as we saw this as a very UK and Irish-centric sport. In a general sense – those who enjoyed a bet on this sport also enjoyed betting from a recreational perspective on other major sports events. They also enjoy playing on the online casino.
We wanted to create a narrative, a regular opportunity and reason to engage in our brand and one such way to resonate with the target UK audience was through sponsoring a series of particular races with a concluding, high octane, media-friendly, mainstream televised championship race.
The Road to Cheltenham was born with, to begin with, eight races – now six – races over five months from October to March all attracting the best two-mile hurdlers from both sides of the Irish Sea.”
Tell us about the ‘Road to Cheltenham’. Was that a phrase and initiative set up by yourself?
“I wish I could say I invited the phrase, ‘Road to Cheltenham’ but alas I cannot. The expression has been used by many. But in terms of sponsorship, it suited our purposes as all the races did, and still do, act as a road to the Unibet Champion Hurdle in March.
From the only handicap in November – the Grade-3 Unibet Greatwood Hurdle – to the final leg, which was called the Champion Hurdle Trial at Haydock. The race name has been changed to the Grade-2 The New One Unibet Hurdle, to celebrate the horse who won that very race on four consecutive occasions.
The races added together under the title Road to Cheltenham gave us a campaign – and allied with regular Nicky Henderson content and blogs – a narrative for those months from October to March.”
It would seem Unibet has not been associated with so many major chase races. Would that be a fair comment?
“To date, we have sponsored 39 chases, with probably the major ones being the Grade-1 Unibet Irish Gold Cup, when we helped to launch the Dublin Racing Festival. We have also sponsored the Grade-2 Desert Orchid Chase, the Grade-2 Unibet Silviniaco Conti Chase, the Unibet Veterans Chase Final at Sandown in early January and the Grade-3 Unibet Grand National Chase at Haydock.
Also, Kindred [Unibet’s parent company] sponsored the 32Red King George. So, we have been associated with a few! But you are right – there’s been no ‘Road to’ although at one stage I was in talks to add to our sponsorship of the King George, with the Cotswold Chase and the Cheltenham Gold Cup.”
You seem to be less active in flat racing. What major races and meetings do you sponsor?
“Not so! In terms of pure numbers, Unibet has sponsored more flat races than jumps races. At the time of writing, we have sponsored 1,142 flat races, and no fewer than 42 Group-1, Group-2, Group-3 or Listed flat races. The major handicaps we have sponsored include the Unibet Stewards Cup and the Unibet Lincoln.
Super mare Enable winning the Unibet-sponsored September Stakes under Frankie Dettori. ©GettyImages
For the past three seasons Unibet has been the Official Betting Partner – and sponsor of between 10 and 12 races each year – at the Qatar Goodwood Festival. While in 2014 and 2015 we were the official betting partner of Windsor and one of the four partners of the All-Weather Championships for several years.
We have seen some amazing horses contest and win flat races sponsored by Unibet including Enable’s last ever race on British soil in the second year of sponsoring the Grade-3 Unibet September Stakes in 2020.”
In addition to sponsoring races, you also have an exclusive deal with trainers Nicky Henderson and Richard Hannon. What does this involve? Is it proving popular with your customers? What are the benefits?
“Now being able to look back, I consider associating Unibet with Nicky Henderson and Seven Barrows [Henderson’s stables] as I did back then, as the best sponsorship or partnership I have undertaken.
Originally, I had wanted to provide some narrative throughout the months of the Road to Cheltenham and, given that Nicky Henderson had won the Champion hurdle more times than anyone else, and at the time most Cheltenham Festival winners, he seemed a perfect fit. Within racing, Henderson was bigger than Unibet was, and we wanted to tap into his brand.
It has always been a brand and marketing play and we developed the association by extending the sponsorship deal to the Seven Barrows stable which enabled us to brand the premises, racing rugs, and, for those owners who agreed to do so, brand their silks. This allowed us to gain further visibility to the Unibet brand.
The major measurement of a partnership’s success is the media value the Unibet brand receives across traditional media – primarily ITV – and social media. It elevated the Unibet brand within our sector and certainly got in front of our target audience.
In association with our ambassador jockey Nico de Boinville, the Unibet brand is seen nearly every weekend and in most major jump racing festivals on some of the most talked about, photographed, Tweeted, watched horses of the era including Altior and now Shishkin.
Nico de Boinville – pictured aboard Shishkin – is also a Unibet brand ambassador. ©GettyImages
Again, this is just a small brand play, but when accumulated and over a period of time in front of a target audience, it resonates with those who place bets. Once again it gives us brand credibility.
The exclusive sponsorship also enables us to post blogs on Nicky’s thoughts on his weekend runners, he wears Unibet branding when at the stables and on many TV interviews and we also have access to the Unibet sponsored Seven Barrows stables for media visits around the big meetings and at the start of the season. We also actively use his image across our own and external marketing channels
Finally, when we sponsor and have guests, we can ask Nicky to come and mingle and this usually means talking through his runners on the day and to pose for the almost obligatory selfie. Obviously we replicate this arrangement for the flat racing season with Richard Hannon.”
On that theme, the ‘hear Nicky’s thoughts exclusively at Unibet’ line seems to have upset traditionalists. What are your thoughts on it?
“As explained, the relationship with Nicky Henderson is a brand one. Even the blogs are a brand play and many of the target audience we seek to get our brand in front of want to know what Nicky thinks of his runners on a particular day.
We provide this. It is an engagement exercise that hopefully ends with a reader becoming a regular recreational customer of ours in the future. This does not happen straight away. You typically need six opportunities to see the brand before that process even begins. And a Unibet Henderson blog may be the first or it may be the sixth.
Frankly, the Henderson comments – or exclusives – have only transferred from traditional media and now appear on social media platforms like the Unibet blog. I would even say the Henderson Unibet blog has enlightened, educated, and informed more people than these reports did when only available in certain media previously.
We have also directly passed on over 1,000 direct Twitter questions from those with a Twitter account – not even necessarily a Unibet Twitter follower – to Nicky himself, who has answered them.
It’s also important to acknowledge that although we write a Nicky column for our Unibet blog site, we do not run his Twitter account. This is run entirely by him and his stable team and between them, they are responsible for his tweets.
Unibet produce Henderson’s weekly column but his Twitter account is run entirely by the trainer and his team. ©GettyImages
The weekend previews also help Nicky. He constantly tells me – and I have also been present on many mornings in his office and on the gallops to see it – that media phone him, hound him, for hours each day on the same issues. By publishing his weekly weekend blog, he can just say to them, read my Unibet blog.”
So, have you any radical plans for future sponsorships?
“Organizations sponsor for all sorts of reasons. At present, the cost versus benefits, the audience we are communicating to, the message we are trying to convey, the engagement we are witnessing, the metrics and the measurements we review mean that racing remains an important sport for us to sponsor.
But it must be noted that things change. I love racing, but racing needs to know that there are many sports in which you can sponsor, and the digital landscape is such that value is there rather than in physical race sponsorship race titles.
Racing – tracks and companies – need to continue to work with its partners and sponsors to ensure they deliver what sponsors need as there continues to be plenty of pressure on marketing and sponsorship budgets.”
Finally, we presume you like a bet yourself. What are your fancies for the forthcoming Cheltenham Festival?
“I am biased, but I love the Unibet Champion Hurdle and I would love to see Honeysuckle win it again. I was one of the fortunate ones to be at Cheltenham last year and the sheer power surge of the mare up the Cheltenham hill blew me away. But she is no price. I backed Chantry House for the Gold Cup before he ran in the Marsh last season at 40/1. I still think he will run a big race, but maybe he is running for a place.”
Want to learn more about the Cheltenham Festival? Why not visit our Festival Guide.
