Pinnacle Sports - Questions and Answers

As we promised we asked Pinnacle Sports Head of Online Acquisition Ryan Henderson. He answered all your questions.

Why Pinnacle Sports welcomes high-volume players as well as arbers? All bookmakers freeze account of surebet players because in long term they also loose money from this players. Why you let them play? Are other bookmakers wrong? How can you operate and be profitable with such low margins? How is possible that you have such big betting limits?

RH - Our business model is based on taking a small percentage from a large amount of action. The owners of the company identified a long time ago that rather than offering bigger and bigger bonuses, a high volume, low margin business model would provide us with a unique position in the betting marketplace.

Over the last 14 years we have refined this business model with greater and greater success. This, and the very smart people that work for us, is the reason why we are able to offer high limits and accept all types of bettors. From the smaller €10/bet customer seeking the best price on Sparta Prague, to the high roller or arbitrage bet, all are welcome. Are other bookmakers wrong? Not necessarily, they just take a different approach and I'm happy they do as it allows us to accept all the action they turn away!

What are your future plans for basketball market? Will you expand it? Do you plan to extend betting options, especially for live betting?

RH - We have a lot of plans to offer  - a bigger range of bets within each market and more markets to bet on. These plans are being worked on over the summer and they also include updating our live betting interface, which we accept needs to be made clearer and faster. We are hopeful of offering much more to our players before the end of the year.

Pinnacle, may I ask, why are you so secretive about who your owners are?

RH - Like many other private companies, we choose not to share some pieces of information with the public.

Pinnacle, I love you guys, but your site (particularly the "classic view") looks like it's 10+ years old. Perhaps you could survey your users as to suggestions for an overhaul? Also (and I'm interested to see what others think of this) perhaps in "asian view" the sections for the various leagues could be made collapsible? It can be hard to find the league I'm looking for in the list.

RH - It is 10+ years old! Our betting interface is a source of much debate, both inside and outside the company. Many people love it for its uncluttered design. Some also love it because it hasn't changed over the last few years. Others hate it for the same reasons. We know it could be improved and are working on a new interface. Having seen the designs, I am very excited about the direction we are taking. Some of the elements that people love are staying but we're also updating the look and feel and creating something truly unique, as we did back in 2002.

The Asian view league list can be quite daunting and I appreciate the feedback. I'll see what options are available to us there. In the meantime, I often CTRL+F and type in the league I'm looking for which helps me find it more quickly. Hope that helps.

Why is only one free skrill withdrawal per month? Elsewhere is no limited free withdrawals.

RH - Unfortunately, with just 1-2% margin on every market, we simply can't afford to absorb all the costs associated with deposits and withdrawals that other bookies do. Of course you're 'paying' for your 'free' withdrawals with much worse odds. It is always a case of choosing what is more important to you personally.

Do you have traders/bookmakers for odds adjustment if someone bet a lot or is odds change made automatically?

RH - We are still mostly a human operation, although on some of the smaller markets we're able to automate some of the odds changes.

Do you plan to sponsor any sports club or event?

RH - Not at this time. As a low margin operation, it would be hard to justify spending millions on sponsorship. We prefer to focus on the product and continue to offer better odds to the benefit of our players.

Is there any hypothetical possibility that sharp players can bankrupt you?

RH - Anything is possible when speaking hypothetically. Realistically? No.

In an interview a few years ago, the head-linesmaker said they don't have an automatic system which detects sharps, is this still the case?

RH - Yes

Is there a group of high-winning people on Pinnacle, winning seven digit figures yearly? What was the last game you lost big money on? How many linesmakers are in the company working on a daily basis?

RH - I am unable to go into specifics relating to private facts and figures I'm afraid.

When it comes to In-Play betting, Pinnacle's loadtimes sometimes hinder fast betting, are there going to be any changes?

RH - Absolutely, as I've said we are actively looking at developing our in-play product.

What do you think of the recent low-margin odds of MarathonBet?

RH - I think they'll struggle with liquidity, but I wish them the best of luck.