A new era for the sports betting sector?

Whisper it quietly, but there are some signs of real change in the sportsbook sector in 2017. While the core product is not about to undergo any form of radical reinvention, there is a lot of work being done around the margins by increasingly independent operators that could begin to define a new era for the vertical. 

The tail end of 2016 threw out a couple of small innovations from two of the most forward looking operators: Sky Betting & Gaming and Betfair. Sky launched a cash out boost product, with customers randomly awarded a bonus on top of their cash out amount, while Betfair enhanced its each-way offering allowing customers to alter the number of places paid out. 

In a vacuum neither of those two updates look like era-defining changes, but what they represent are operators with control of their own technology taking charge of how they want to present their product to the customer. For Betfair they are offering customisable value and for Sky Bet it’s more an element of gaming-style bonusing aimed squarely at a recreational punter. 

After a decade of commoditised sportsbook products and brands that mostly played the generalist card, it’s easy to get carried away at small tweaks representing a major change, but the wider picture is of a maturing brand-led vertical. The merger of Paddy Power and Betfair saw an immediate move to position both brands at different ends of the market – value and recreational – and there are already signs of something similar taking place at Ladbrokes Coral. 

A multi-brand future 

The UK is now a market of sufficient scale that it can accommodate brand variations and different demographic targeting while still retaining a business of significant scale. Operators are looking to build out more distinct brand identities and the natural next step is a move towards a more multi-brand led approach by the major groups. 

While it would be a stretch to assume the likes of Sky Bet would look to launch new brands from scratch, the M&A environment means operators can look to acquire complementary brands as opposed to opting for the organic route. A glance at Oddschecker is all you need to know that the UK is flooded with gambling brands of various scale and effectiveness, and the apparent success of Stan James under the control of Unibet seems to prove that there is still hidden potential in many of them. 

Alongside this we have the rise of the casino brands entering the sportsbook sector. 888 has led the way here, and proved the model to a large extent, but the impact of LeoVegas, Mr Green, 32Red and others will begin to be felt more fully during 2017. Can they be successful in pulling in a more softer gaming punter into the vertical? The intent here is very much a cheap acquisition route into casino for most, but its knock-on impact could accelerate the multi-brand strategy from some larger groups. 

The differences here are not just about branding, it’s also a technology play. Sky Bet has invested heavily in its own front-end technology and boosting its trading functionality while Betfair sits on its own technology stack. This flexibility is not just confined to these two operators, however, with William Hill, Paddy Power, Betsson and GVC just some of those with similar capabilities. 

Making it personal 

Again we can look to the emerging sportsbook brands from LeoVegas, 888 and Betway to attempt to innovate around the UX and particularly with regards to personalisation of the product. The use of data to provide deeper personalisation is a key CRM battleground over the coming year and it’s not just the major operators looking to invest here. 

BetBright announced a deal with Quibit earlier this month to provide more personalisation features with exactly this in mind. “It’s vital that BetBright retains control of our roadmap to ensure flexible and agile innovation and to move faster than our competition,” Brian Mahon, head of product at BetBright, said. And as products and user experiences become more customisable and personalised so the ability of sports betting to evolve becomes more apparent. 

It feels like we’re at an inflection point for the sports betting sector and there is something of a brave new world ahead for those operators ready to embrace it. It could, of course, all dissolve into the same-old innovate, copy and commoditise approach we’ve seen in the past but the more micro level of innovations and modifications we are starting to see may make that a less feasible strategy. 

Are we entering a new era of sportsbook? It’s too early to say, but the signs are there that we might just be.