GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 1 - May 2007

FRED DONE knew he wanted to be involved in the gambling industry ever since he got started in the industry running bets for his father at eight years old. Gambling was unregulated and illegal at the time, but Done’s back-alley beginning played a key role in his early understanding of the business. “My Dad was a good bookmaker, but a bad businessman,” Done said in an interview with the Financial Times in 2005. Done learned about how to be a good bookmaker from his father, and he learned to be a good businessman by learning from his father’s mistakes. By the time he was 15, Done had saved £1,000. He opened his first betting shop with his brother Peter in Salford, Greater Manchester in 1967. He never opened a shop more than 20 miles from home until the 1990’s, when he acquired a chain in Newcastle. After building the business slowly for 30 years, Done’s business is expanding rapidly and he is now the world’s largest independent bookmaker with more than 600 shops and 5,000 employees. The operation was rebranded as Betfred in 2003, and a year later the company launched its online site allowing players to make sports bets on the Internet. “After 40 years, I’m still just as passionate about building my shop business as I was when I started,” Done told the GPWA in an e-mail interview. “But BUILDING A GAMBLING EMPIRE DONE that . Fotolia.com By Aaron Todd