is that it’s more a case of getting people in the normal way and then cross-selling them onto mobile, so at the moment I think we’re still just scratching the surface in terms of getting people directly into mobile. In terms of cross-sell, it’s made possible by the quality of the products and their constant improvement. These aren’t just wrappers; these are native applications in multi-languages. We’re in 26 app stores worldwide where many others are maybe in one or two, and we’re in about 17 different languages compared to most companies only being in one or two for that as well – we’ve invested and built a platform for mobile growth, and it really simpli?es the product too which is a real bene?t to us. It’s an area we are improving all the time, and as of a few months ago you can now register directly onto mobile, but I do think the standard channels normally work and then once you’ve got people online you can move them onto mobile. We’re in a position now where we have 50 in-house developers on both sides of the Atlantic and we are pretty comfortable – we can do three to four major releases per application, that’s Android, Blackberry, iPhone and iPad. eGR: After the struggles and the delays getting exchange betting up and running in California, what is the outlook for Betfair in the United States? SM: We have got a pro?table business in the US with TVG and that’s outperformed the rest of the industry there – it is growing by 7% year on year and is now pro?table. The long-term goal is still to get the exchange licensed in the US and we’ve taken some steps to do that: we have got the primary legislation passed in California for exchange wagering as well as doing the deals with tracks that you need to do. The next two things we need to do are to agree a deal with the thoroughbred owners of California and the California horseracing board. We feel we will get there over time, we’ll continue to press and make that work. For the time being we can continue to grow TVG as the advance deposit wagering (ADW) business. We’ve done a lot of the building work for the exchange so investment levels will hopefully drop as we’ve done the big part of the build, but we are comfortable continuing to invest in the US as we think it’s a big opportunity. There’s a lot of talk around poker in the US and there has been for years. We’re in a strong position having TVG – it’s a US business, it’s been around for years, we’re licensed in 18 states and deal with regulators every single day. You can see in California and in Illinois when they’re looking at the terms of potential licensing, ADWs are among those companies that can get licences. We’re in a strong position, but I am very realistic about how challenging the US poker market would be, as well as the speed that anything would happen – it’s very much on the back burner but we want to make sure we are not excluded. eGR: How has the lack of exchange betting affected Betfair in regulated European markets? SM: We don’t have the exchange at the moment in Italy and we turned off games and poker. What happened in there is our revenue dropped 30% (£22m to £17m) due to the lack of marketing and turning off games, but underlying numbers are stronger than they look. We hope in both Italy and Spain that we’ll have an exchange product there by the end of our ?nancial year, but it’s out of our hands now – it is with the regulators and the politicians and we are working with them as best we can. With regards to poker in Spain, it’s a relatively small part of our business. We will turn it on at some stage but we are just working through it, and it’s a lower priority. Germany equated to about 5% of our EBITDA last year – from our perspective we have our Schleswig-Holstein licence
and will continue to operate under that. If we had to leave Germany it would obviously come at a cost of about £5m for us but we believ