Amaya plans wider BetStars rollout ahead of Euro 2016
Operator sets its sights on Denmark, Italy, France and Portugal, with plans to ramp up marketing spend
Amaya plans to roll out its BetStars sportsbook in additional European markets ahead of UEFA Euro 2016 as it looks to grow its market share in the vertical.
The firm launched BetStars in the UK back in December last year, but has now set its sights on Denmark, Italy, France, and Portugal, pending regulatory approval in each market.
The news comes after Amaya reported its FY15 financial results yesterday, with revenues up 8% year-on-year to ?740m.
The numbers revealed growing contributions from casino and sportsbook, which accounted for 13% or ?96m of total revenues, offsetting a decline in poker.
However, Amaya CEO David Baazov said the firm’s foray into the sports betting vertical had been tougher than expected, particularly in terms of finessing its product.
“It’s a competitive market,” Baazov said on a conference call to investors.
“While certain development constraints resulted in rolling out the offering slower than originally anticipated, in Q4 2015 we had approximately 131,000 quarterly active uniques,” he added.
Amaya said BetStars was still in “investment mode” but planned to add more sports and ramp up marketing spend in the coming months in a bid to build brand equity among punters.
In the UK, Amaya has ploughed ?10m into its BetStars marketing push having appointed London-based creative agency Crispin Porter & Bogusky to lead the campaign.
“We’re making investments in marketing to get brand recognition, which is important in sportsbook,” he said.
“[This year] marketing is a lot about getting the brand awareness out there and we need to invest to gain recognition among bettors.
“[Brand recognition] won’t be as fast as casino as it [sports betting] is a competitive market everywhere and brand is very important,” Baazov added.
BetStars has made good progress on mobile, with around 40% of deposits coming through the channel, but remains way behind the likes of Sky Bet (80%) and Paddy Power Betfair (68%).
To help drive its share of the sportsbook market, Baazov refused to rule out further M&A but said growth would most likely be organic.