The Right Time to Open: Data-Driven Store Opening Hours Optimisation for a Large Betting Retail Chain

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The Challenges

The business faced a critical operational question: should certain stores open earlier or stay open later — particularly during the first and last 90 minutes of the day — to capture more demand and revenue?

Key issues included:

Uncertainty around the profitability of early and late trading hours (7–10 a.m. and 6–10 p.m.).
Opening hours reviewed only twice a year through complex, manual spreadsheets.
Missed revenue opportunities during major sporting events such as national racing festivals.
Difficulty demonstrating the commercial value of adjusting hours outside standard windows.
No scalable, data-driven method for assessing time-based profitability per store.

The Intelligence Behind the Shift

The large betting retail chain partnered with SolvedBy.Ai for a proof of concept across 151 stores.

The objective: Forecast store-level profitability for early and late trading hours, and provide monthly, data-driven recommendations that could be implemented quickly and confidently.

Here’s how it works:

Hourly revenue modelling for each store identifies profitable early or late operating windows.
Automated monthly recommendations replace manual six-monthly reviews, enabling more agile, informed decision-making.
Missed revenue opportunities during major sporting events such as national racing festivals.

The first wave of recommendations uncovered significant untapped potential — showing that many stores could profitably extend their hours to capture additional demand.

Winning Support Across the Business

The project was championed by the Head of Data Analytics, with senior backing from the COO and Head of Retail Operations.

Key decision drivers included:

Increasing profitability through more targeted opening hours.
Reducing time and complexity in the planning process.
Moving from biannual reviews to continuous, monthly optimisation.

The Results

Leadership believed longer hours could generate additional revenue but lacked the data to justify the change. The proof of concept validated this hypothesis, identifying £2.1 million in potential annual revenue gains from targeted changes to store opening hours.

The success of the initiative led to a full rollout, with SolvedBy.Ai now delivering optimised opening-hour recommendations for every store, every month, helping the business:

Capture more revenue during profitable early and late trading periods.
Eliminate manual modelling from the planning process.
React quickly to changes in the sporting calendar and customer demand.

About the Company

A large UK betting retail chain, founded in the 1930s, operates one of the country’s most extensive networks of high-street betting shops, alongside a thriving online platform for sports betting, casino, poker, and bingo. Headquartered in London, the company serves millions of customers across retail and digital channels, blending its long-standing heritage with a modern, data-driven approach to customer engagement.

“The insight from SolvedBy.Ai has fundamentally changed how we think about store opening hours. Their forecasting has streamlined our planning process, freed our teams from manual analysis, and given us the confidence to act on real opportunities. It’s faster, more accurate, and has delivered results we simply couldn’t have achieved before.”
— Director of Retail Analytics, Large Betting Retail Chain

Applicable Beyond Betting

While developed for a large betting retail chain, this model applies to any business where timing directly influences revenue — particularly those driven by live events, customer footfall patterns, or seasonal demand.

Wherever operating hours, staffing, and profitability intersect, SolvedBy.Ai delivers clarity, control, and commercial advantage.