BETFAIR OPENS NEW SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT CENTRE IN ROMANIA

6 July 2007

Developers working on a new sportsbook platform and improved online poker and gambling products

With a staff of 35 building towards an eventual complement of 50 by September, the UK online gambling group Betfair has opened a software development centre in the Romanian city of Cluj-Napoca, reports Silicon.com.

Betfair spokesmen revealed that the decision to open a Romanian centre was not just based on 30 percent lower staff costs, but on the area’s quality skills and resources. He said: "The quality of the people is really high. They have a fantastic university and they have a really great engineering programme. They are of the calibre of the guys in London."

Director of Betfair development in Romania, Eachan Fletcher, said they will use skills such as Microsoft .Net and SQL, Java and specialist areas like mobile driver development to work on a new sportsbook platform, together with improved new poker and gaming products, expanding the facility in line with product roadmap demand.

The Betfair exec said there is so much work on the company's product roadmap that decisions were having to be made on what couldn't be done.

He told silicon.com: "We just didn't have the capacity to deliver all of it. It makes no sense to stick another 200 developers in London. We have almost reached a critical mass. You have to attract them away from city banks and it is costly and takes a long time."

Betfair looked at various countries including China, India and the Ukraine but opted for Romania because of the high-quality skills available, its relatively untapped potential as an offshore location and its recent EU membership.

Fletcher said: "It's virgin territory we were looking for. It's not stupidly cheap but it is cost-effective. We compared lots of locations. Many were cheaper but didn't have the quality versus investment you put in."

He said: "One of the strengths of Betfair is culture and the way we work as a team and we already have a well-oiled machine for setting up offices overseas. It is important for us to maintain control over the technical output, culture and work environment."

Setting up in a relatively undeveloped offshore location such as Romania has its challenges, Fletcher revealed - particularly around employment law, accounting practices and setting up legal entities. "It's arcane knowledge locked in the heads of people. Having a senior person on the ground you trust is important, and getting contacts in the commerce ministry," he said.

The language barrier also wasn't an issue for Betfair, with many of the university courses taught in English. Fletcher said: "It's stilting my efforts to learn Romanian. We never had a communication barrier and this makes a difference."

Betfair said it will continue to expand the Romanian facility in blocks of 50 people in line with product roadmap demand.

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