Chapter 1 – Introduction
operators are part of a community consisting of numerous third party players, from betting specialists
to credit card companies. The ecosystem of service providers must be highly connected if it is to
provide the best customer experiences in an increasingly crowded and competitive market.
Consolidation in the industry has been a theme of the last few years, with high profile mergers and
acquisitions taking places at all levels of the gaming industry supply chain (see Chapter 7 of this report).
1.4.1 Consumer-facing digital sportsbook operators
Marketing and delivering the gaming experience directly to the player is what the B2C sector focuses
on. Operators that are consumer-facing typically have a strong marketing-led business model seeking
to attract customers to their website and to encourage loyalty from their active customers. These tend
to be brands that offer a mix of sportsbook, casino gaming, poker, skill games and bingo and often
have a well-known land-based brand such as Ladbrokes and William Hill.
Such operators vary from standalone digital sportsbook, casino and poker sites, some of which have
been around for nearly a decade or even longer and have grown to a substantial size.
The digital betting space has experienced excellent growth to date but operators report that the
cost per acquisition (CPA) of customers has gone up substantially.
How much revenue players generate for a digital sportsbook operator every time they bet is an
important variable in the revenue equation and is driven by several different factors including:
frequency of betting,
the variety of bets placed
the variety of sports bet upon and
the overall experience of bettors.
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“Only two things really matter in online gaming,” said one industry insider, ”CPA and lifetime expected
value of a customer. If you can move these away from each other then you are doing well.”
When this report was last written in August 2012, there were 558 digital sportsbooks and racebooks
listed by Online Casino City (a site that tracks gaming sites globally), comprising just over 20% of the
market for gaming sites in terms of numbers of sites.
16 Digital Sports Betting