Fraser Bricknell: From submarine gladiator to TipMan Tips

TipMan Tips founder Fraser Bricknell spent much of his early adulthood underwater. Having always aspired to become a military physical trainer, he visited the armed forces careers office at 16 and was told that joining the Royal Navy would be the fastest route into the role. In hindsight, he describes that advice as “a massive lie”, having later discovered the Navy was simply short of submariners. He ended up spending eight years on submarines before finally becoming a trainer, a job he loved to bits.

“I really enjoyed taking new recruits through their training, coaching them and teaching people. That was my favourite part of it. Those were my best years in the Navy,” Bricknell reflects. During his service, he was named physical trainer of the year and frequently won strength-training competitions, with a personal record of 26 “strict, wide-arm, fully locked-out” pull-ups.

Having now left the Navy full-time, Bricknell remains in the reserves and still plays football for the service. He fondly recalls his 12-year tenure as a growth period that instilled in him the stamina and discipline of military life, alongside a strong commitment to teamwork.

“The main thing I’ve taken from the military into what I do today is that good strategies and systems will always outperform motivation. That way, if something doesn’t get done, it stands out very quickly that something is amiss,” he says.

From submarines to subscriptions

Bricknell’s transition from the Royal Navy into iGaming affiliation might appear abrupt, yet betting was already part of his life long before TipMan Tips.

“I was always into football betting. I’ve always been a football bettor myself, and I was actually quite good at it,” he says. While still serving as a physical trainer, Bricknell began sharing his own football bets in a Facebook group, which quickly grew beyond casual exchanges between friends. Hundreds of people began copying his selections, following him on social media and repeatedly asking when his next tip would be released.

His first attempt to capitalise on the audience was YourFreeBet.com, a basic affiliate website featuring bookmaker offers, reviews and banners, created during his full-time Navy role. However, his audience made it clear that they were primarily interested in his tips.

While Bricknell initially resisted the idea of becoming a tipster, a title he associated with the stereotype of “shady con men”, the demand eventually won out. He launched a WhatsApp group before moving the community to Telegram after it exceeded the platform’s capacity, with a vision of creating a space that is “trusted, transparent and tracked, and for nobody to have a bad experience”. 

Meanwhile, BetVictor approached him with an affiliate deal, offering a £30 payment for each new customer referred. With the encouragement of his co-founder Ben Beard, who was also running a tipster group at the time, the pair set up a business together overnight, merging their respective communities.

Eight years later, TipMan Tips has around 150,000 monthly users, approximately 2,000 paying subscribers and partnerships with tier-one operators including bet365 and Flutter. Some users from the original WhatsApp group remain subscribers today. 

Building beyond the tipster model

Turning the early momentum into a credible affiliate, however, proved to be hard work. Bricknell says one of the biggest challenges was convincing operators to take TipMan seriously at a time when the brand still looked far removed from the polished operation it is today.

“If you rewind six years ago, our website was built on WordPress just by ourselves. It was like a drag-and-drop type build and it looked terrible,” he says. “It wasn’t the best user journey.”

Compliance took another learning curve. Joining the industry without an affiliate background, Bricknell compares the experience to “learning a new language”. The team was repeatedly rejected by tier-one operators before years of investment and relationship-building began to change perceptions.

Bricknell credits improvements to the website and technology, alongside time spent developing industry contacts and building visibility on LinkedIn, with helping TipMan establish credibility. Flutter, which had previously turned the business down, eventually approached TipMan itself about a partnership. Major operators now readily come to the team with opportunities.

Despite the growth, TipMan still operates with only around three full-time employees, with other commission-based staff managing social media, SEO, PR and web development. Since the very beginning, Bricknell says much of the business’s revenue has been put back into product improvement rather than taken out by the founders. The efforts are all worthwhile when it comes to audience retention. 

“Believe it or not, we still have lots of subscribers who joined the very first WhatsApp group and are still with us today. They’ve followed the whole journey,” he highlights. 

Adapting to the UK tax squeeze

The recent UK tax raise has been wreaking havoc in the local industry, so TipMan’s model has evolved in response. 

Bricknell says the business previously relied heavily on CPA and rev-share arrangements. Following the UK gambling tax increases, however, operators began tightening acquisition terms, lowering commissions and introducing additional fees. Even new companies with less established brands and weaker products are now demanding higher-value customers with unappetising terms. 

“A lot of them reduced how much they paid you,” he says. “Some reduced their revenue-share percentages because they were trying to pass the costs on to us. But I didn’t accept that.”

Instead, TipMan has been pushing for tenancy agreements. Under these deals, operators pay for increased visibility across the website, tips, betting tools and other products. Packages can include deep links, placement within the AI betting hub, better positions, banner placement and exclusive visibility on selected days. 

According to Bricknell, this approach has effectively replaced the revenue TipMan would otherwise have lost through weaker terms. Although the team hasn’t onboarded any new operator since the rule change, he rejects the idea that the UK affiliate market is in terminal decline. Gambling, he argues, remains “a massive part” of the UK culture and will continue to generate substantial demand regardless of governmental pressure. 

“Anybody who thinks the market is dead or that there’s no opportunity here anymore has probably misunderstood it or isn’t pursuing the right business model,” he says. “We focus far more on how we can send people back to operators every day than on how we can introduce new customers. 

“If you can prove that you can send a lot of people back to them every day, then they’re willing to pay. I prefer that business model to having to chase new customers and new sign-ups all the time.”

Going global 

TipMan’s long-term ambition goes beyond the UK. The site already attracts international traffic, but has so far struggled to monetise users outside its home market. On top of Bricknell’s bucket list is North America, where he believes the brand’s subscription model could potentially work even better. He’s closely following the US affiliate Dimers, which combines free betting content with a premium subscription product, and sees similarities with the direction TipMan is taking.

The expansion will be supported by further investment in products. Most recently, the team launched an AI betting hub that uses statistics to assist users in researching and building their own bets, with a free-to-play racing game also in development. The team is confident that the business will make a splash in the next 12 months. 

All those years in the industry have made Bricknell from an iGaming newbie to a seasoned affiliate. He’s just been invited to join NC09, a sports betting tech company, as a director. Many major media companies have already approached TipMan to discuss a potential acquisition. 

But for now, selling is out of the picture. With his Navy-grade stamina, Bricknell is dead set on further growing the business to achieve its full potential. 

“Long story short, I think we’re going to become a very competitive media brand,” he says. 

“I still think we can expand and grow. I think we can continue climbing the Google rankings, increasing our user base and improving our app, technology and AI.”