Sports Betting Focus 2018
Sports Betting Focus 2018
STATE OF
PLAY
Bernard Marantelli takes stock of where online sports betting is at and looks further ahead as we enter the second half of the year
Bernard Marantelli is founder and CEO of Colossus Bets, award-winning provider of the world’ s biggest sports jackpots and pioneer of Cash Out and‘ crowdfunded’ Syndicates. From a background in financial trading and professional gambling, Bernard saw an opportunity to revolutionise the sports betting space with lotterysize prizes and increased player engagement in the form of Cash Out offers. Today, Colossus sports pools are live with 50 + operators globally, including Betfair, Betclic and Nairabet.
How different is sports betting in 2018 compared to last year or the year before? At first sight, the industry seems to be ruled by the same heavyweights and it is all business as usual. Since the advent of the betting exchange, no new product has been heralded as a significant breakthrough. And even the betting exchange eventually had to settle for playing second fiddle to the accompanying sportsbook offering, never fully realising its previously assumed potential to disrupt the industry.
With the World Cup now nearing its conclusion, we have been well accustomed to mostly void talk of innovation and of course plenty of marketing bravado to compensate for the lack of major product news. At the same time, there is no dearth of existential threats for industry incumbents to face, with affiliate marketing, bonus terms and conditions and the handling of client data all under the spotlight. And all that while marketing budgets have continuously escalated and margins have been squeezed. But perhaps the biggest squeeze about to arrive will be the restriction of rates of play for online casinos. It is hard to argue that allowing players to bet thousands of pounds in a matter of seconds on an online casino, regardless of their income level, is responsible. So it must only be a matter of time until the government steps in to impose strict limits in the same manner that they did for FOBTs.
Look back before you look forward So how can operators find glory in the midst of this doom and gloom? Well, let’ s be clear, many of them won’ t. However, there is growth opportunity within reach for those who evolve quickly and find ways to turn the social and political backlash to their advantage. There is a history lesson to be learned from Richard Flint, who launched Sky Super 6 and watched it grow to a phenomenon being played by reported 1.5 million people every week. When Sky Bet decided to cancel its affiliate deals following a spate of negative publicity, the company had more than adequate back-up in its free-to-play game suite to compensate for the loss of this sizeable marketing channel. Betfair and William Hill are now among those who focus on free-to-play and play-for-fun entry points and there are several B2B players like SportCaller who provide slick versions.
Look closer and there are other clearly emerging trends, some of which have been at play for at least the last three to five years. On the one hand, you have the understandable and relentless ascent of mobile and the‘ second screen’. On the other hand, tapping into the power of social sharing and propagating flexibility for the player have become the new mantra. Bet365’ s Bet Builder, BetVictor’ s # PriceItUp and various‘ boost’ and‘ request a bet’ products are on trend here. Colossus Bets’ crowdfunded Syndicates encourages and drives organic social sharing as a remedy to the‘ hard selling’ of traditional affiliate models. And even though the jury is still out on whether these features will dominate the market, they are already delivering very low CPAs, which has rightly earned them‘ product of the moment’ status.
Young wild things Regardless of how much the product is changing, the one thing that is undeniably shifting is the audience. Operators are rightly obsessed with reaching out to younger players and appealing to their millennial sensitivities. On a product level, this has generally translated into two things. First, trying to match their expectations
42 iGamingBusiness | Issue 111 | July / August 2018