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BOS magazine - Company Profile from the Betting Show

MRG Systems are one of Europe’s biggest providers of display systems for bookmakers. Their equipment is installed in over 1,700 betting shops in the UK and Ireland, with Coral and Paddy Power being their biggest customers. On a wider scale, MRG are among Britain’s most experienced information display system developers, the BBC being among their long-standing clients. They develop a wide range of equipment for teletext generation, control and monitoring, systems that are used throughout Europe.

They provide digital signage information systems that can be seen in prestigious buildings such as Portcullis House opposite Big Ben, City Hall (GLA) and the Guildhall (Corp of London), together with more complex, but mainly teletext-based products for broadcasters.

The Stroud-based company was founded in 1983 by Mike R Grimwood (hence the initials) originally to provide high performance information display systems to the stockbroker market, using what was then unexploited teletext technology.Explains MRG’s technical director Bryan Corbin: “Mike had contacts in the City of London at the time and installed an information system based on teletext. That went very well for a number of years. “We then started to look at putting teletext into broadcast environments and also started developing information display systems. When televisions were allowed in betting shops we invented a display system that was eventually sold to William Hill, which they used in all their shops, and that is how we started in the betting industry.”

Among the items MRG were demonstrating at this year’s Betting Show were their touch screen form guides and customer information terminals. Touch screen technology is becoming ever more familiar amongst the public and this facility can easily be installed in betting shops. All they require is a broadband connection and power. It is effectively a web browser pointing to a particular website with connections currently to TurfTrax and PA Sport. The screen takes up very little space and can be placed on more or less any wall. “It’s a different way of presenting information and allowing the customers to look for the things they want to bet on,” says Bryan.

BIDS – Betting Information Display System – was also on display at the Show. The BIDS automated central system allows the bookmaker to receive data from multiple external feeds and control all of the shop displays throughout the estate. It is capable of operating on anything from a single PC to a network of 30 machines connected to a database server. High-tech though it may seem, BIDS is no new concept, as Bryan points out. “Paddy Power installed BIDS in 1994. We’ve been with Paddy Power since 1990 when they put in an early version of our box, which they subsequently upgraded. Coral finished rolling out BIDS to all of their shops at the beginning of this year.