News

Aug 2006 - Eliminating the dead screen time

Bookmakers looking to promote their range of bets should take a look at the opportunities they are currently missing out on.

BIDS - MRG Systems

Bookmakers are not taking full advantage of the marketing opportunities that their banks of screens provide, according to system supplier MRG. The company believes that too many betting shops are suffering from 'dead screen time' and thus depriving bookmakers the opportunity of fully promoting their range of betting opportunities. MRG has developed its Betting Information Display System (BIDS) to tackle this shortfall and allow bookmakers to get back control of their shop displays for a multitude of marketing opportunities.

Bryan Corbin, Technical Director at MRG, commented: “By inserting pages for novelty betting, local sporting events or any additional betting scenario you wish to generate, we are able to use the 'dead screen time' to build creative and imaginative campaigns. 'Dead screen time' occurs when pages remain on display for too long or carousel too infrequently. BIDS automatically detects these and inserts one of your chosen pages in its place. It's just one of the ways to increase activity at the tills.”

BIDS employs simple drag and drop techniques, enabling a single operator to schedule a full days racing on every screen across the whole estate, freeing the operator up to generate those new betting opportunities for scheduling later in the day.

MRG's Development Manager Stephen Cook explained: “The system is highly flexible and is able to take its data from a variety of sources. BIDS can use a data feed from virtually any XML data source to provide sports and racing data. This includes the SIS raw data feed to provide racing data, not only during the day but also the afternoon declarations for the next day. It can also import spreadsheets if that's the format your odds compilers use. This minimises the amount of re-keying of data required and frees the operators to manage the displays.”

With the current demand for in-running betting, BIDS can also incorporate the services thanks to its integrated sports betting database. Cook added: “This simplifies the handling of a comprehensive range of sports events, which can be added at any time.”

Among the other facilities on BIDS is a silk pattern editor, which is used to assign silks to a horse. Once set, the information is stored in the database and used automatically by the system the next time the horse is run. No re-keying of a silk is required. All existing silk patterns and colours are supported and there is also the facility to create special patterns where necessary.

Corbin revealed that the system also monitors several factors that could be missed by shop staff. He said: “A sophisticated mechanism provides the BIDS operator with automatic alerts when, for instance, non-runners are declared. Others may be manually entered to remind the operators of any action that is appropriate. The alert can be colour coded to indicate the degree of urgency.”