Who Owns Nairabet?
Nairabet is arguably one of Nigeria’s largest and first online sports bookmaker, and more of it can’t be told without the story of Akin Alabi. Who first of all is taking the most popular Bet9ja, locking horn for horn, Bull for Bull.
A Leading in-play bookmaker, offering wide range of betting opportunities on all sports, whatever your sport. Also offer virtual racing and games. Akin Alabi, born March 31, 1977 is also a proven serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, politician, author, speaker, and a direct response marketing consultant. Nairabet is also the first legal sports betting company in Nigeria and the first to come up with a fully functional website in the Africa’s biggest economy and most populated country.
Recently in Nigeria and to be fair, worldwide too, including America and the rest of the western world, online sports betting has become a kind of a lucrative subset of the billion naira lotto industry and Akin Alabi plays a pioneer role in that in the Nigeria space with the introduction of Nairabet. Akin Alabi who also holds a Masters degree in Marketing from the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom is a published author with books like Small Business Big Money: How to Start, Grow, and Turn Your Small Business Into a Cash Generating Machine
He launched his -book Small Business, Big Money. A book that teaches how to start, grow and turn a small business into a “cash generating machine.”
Just like every other successful entrepreneurs like the MD APAMS, and others whose stories went from grass to grace; Alabi too did not have a very inspiring start, he was a boy who grew up with hopes of being rich.
In his words, he was a boy of “No particular ambition”,While his secondary school mates dreamt of becoming doctors, lawyers, and engineers, Akin simply wanted to be a ‘billionaire’ provided the source was legitimate.
“I just wanted to be as rich as legally possible, I couldn’t care less if I was going to be a rich doctor, rich salesman, or rich whatever. I just wanted be rich.” he once said.
Notable is the fact that Alabi holds a Masters degree in Marketing from the University of Liverpool, United Kingdom, even though this came long after he had failed 5 times to get into a University in Nigeria.
Schools Akin Alabi Attended: University of Liverpool, Polytechnic Ibadan, Federal Government College Enugu, and Harvard University
Brief Biography and Story of Akin Alabi
In 2009, he launched Nairabet, however it is noteworthy to state that before the launch,in order not to stay idle,he laid his hands on different things that didn’t yield.
’’From selling chickens on the streets of Ibadan, where I grew up, to exporting and importing of cash crops and other materials. But all those businesses failed.’’
According to him , he and a business partner had reared Chickens for the festive season with high hopes of cashing out big, only to realize it seemed like everyone else in Ibadan had also reared Chickens that season.
After his NYSC in 2002, he stumbled on information marketing on internet. accoding to him it looked like something anyone with ”half a brain” could do and it didn’t require too much capital to start.
Soon after, The Nairabet founder created his first information product a Canadian immigration package which he put up on the Internet for sale in 2003 without a website and a half page advert , and making lots of sales, he knew he had to repeat.
After a while, the renowned owner of Nairabet started publishing online articles on information marketing and noticed people were reaching out to him to teach them more, he made a lot of money from information marketing and seminars, which then afforded him the luxury of travelling abroad.
”So I went visiting my brother in the UK who introduced me to sports betting. My first ever bet was placed in a coral betting shop. I put in £20 and won £35. Seeing how easy it was, I kept placing bets and learning more”.
Going with the information age
More so, Alabi added ” Soon enough, I saw another opportunity for an information product I could sell to Nigerians. I figured all the betting shops must have a website that allowed online betting”.
So he created an information product on how to place bets online from Nigeria, he said ’’I made about 100 sales (worth ₦450,000) from that first offline campaign. I don’t think the half page ad even cost me up to ₦180,000. That’s when I realised I had a hot product. When I decided to take the campaign online, sales skyrocketed”.
Nonetheless, as sales continued to rise for the mogul, he got back to Nigeria and started receiving calls from people who needed help transferring money to the betting websites, with some wanting to bet as much as $1000, there and then he knew he had a hot market.
” I thought to myself, Rather than transferring the money abroad, why can’t I receive the money here?”
That was when he decided he was going to build his own online sports betting platform and today, the rest is history.
Interestingly, Akin after setting the pace for others to follow; has since then been doing well for not just himself but his society as well.
Finally, He founded Akin Alabi foundation. This is a non profit organization aimed at improving the lives of average Nigerian. The foundation has successfully implemented projects like building and donating classrooms to primary schools, sinking of bore holes in areas where there is scarcity of water, financial empowerment of widows and a free business and career building event.
Leave a Reply