The American dream

Las Vegas reported that last year’s $132.5m wagered on Super Bowl 50 was a new record for any sporting event. That, however, was merely a drop in the ocean compared to the estimated $4.2bn wagered worldwide on the Denver Broncos win over the Carolina Panthers. That figure is eye-popping and anyone who is in any way connected to the gaming industry should be taking note.

The US market is experiencing huge growth thanks to daily fantasy sports such as DraftKings and FanDuel. The recently announced merger of the two biggest fantasy platforms showed cumulative entry fees of more than $40m per week for NFL and the growth shows no sign of stopping.

Anyone operating in the US market will be looking to get on board with the new DraftKings/FanDuel product as this is where the big money will be in America. For UK operators and sports betting affiliates, however, there are different avenues to explore.

Strike while the iron is hot
Last year a whopping 242,376 people attended the NFL International Series games in London. These were three matches played over a space of a month at Wembley and Twickenham. It was the second time that there have been three games and the full houses showed the appetite that the British public has for NFL.

This is only going to grow in the future and already there are four games scheduled for 2017. The talk of an NFL London franchise won’t go away and last year the former Chancellor George Osborne claimed that the government strongly supported the idea. “This is primarily a decision for the owners of the clubs and the NFL organisation, but I’ve said to the NFL that anything the government can do to make this happen we will do, because I think it would be a huge boost to London,” Osborne said.

Tottenham Hotspur chairman Daniel Levy, one of the shrewdest businessmen in sport, has even built the new Spurs stadium in collaboration with the NFL and claims that it will be ready not just to host matches in 2018 but also to provide a home for a London franchise. “We worked together because it needed to be viewed as a combined joint soccer and NFL stadium,” Levy said.

“In fact, the way we designed the whole experience is one side of the stadium is a dedicated soccer entrance and the other side is a dedicated NFL entrance. If it ever got to a stage where the NFL decided it wanted to have a permanent team in London, this stadium could literally be, whatever the team was, their stadium as opposed to an NFL team feeling they’re renting Tottenham’s stadium.”

It is now surely only a matter of time before the London franchise becomes a reality and when that happens the already burgeoning NFL betting market is going to explode. The Sky Sports deal signed in 2014, which provides UK viewers with five live NFL matches each week, plus RedZone coverage on Sundays, has brought the sport to the masses and with that came a real focus on betting. The casual punters who bet on football can now be sold NFL betting and it’s noticeable how quickly the big bookmakers have reacted.

Money back offers on football accumulators have become the norm for the major bookmakers and they are now creeping in to the NFL. At the time of writing William Hill, Betfair, Paddy Power, Betfred and Coral are all offering money back on losing accumulators. Bet365 offers bonuses on parlays.

The affiliate opportunity
This commitment to season-long offers from the major players gives huge scope to the affiliates who are looking to promote these brands. The offers sell themselves and the techniques used to promote them are no different to those already being used by affiliates in the football space. If you have an audience for football then you have an audience for NFL. It’s simply a case of testing the water and seeing how they react.

Most major affiliates are already promoting NFL odds on a Sunday evening as the sport perfectly fills the traditional “graveyard” slot for sports betting. The Sky coverage runs from 6pm until 3am and perfectly fills the void aſter the ‘Super Sunday’ football.

Take a look on Twitter at the Sky Bet #Requestabet hashtag on a Sunday afternoon and you’ll see social media affiliates promoting their own bespoke bet in the same way that they would have been for football earlier in the day. This seamless transition is great for marketers and, due to the fact that there are back-to-back games, the length of NFL matches, and in-play betting, there is plenty of time for punters to get on throughout the evening.

Twitter is actually going to be crucial for marketers of American Football across all industries, as the social media site has signed a revolutionary $10m deal with the NFL to live stream 10 matches this season. The deal was pushed through by Anthony Noto, the chief financial officer for Twitter who previously worked for the NFL, and it is unlikely that he will give up on the live streaming project after just one season. “Having that live programming every night when sports are playing — with no paywall, no logging in and directly from the source — that’s key to us,” said Noto.

The first NFL game to be broadcast on Twitter attracted 2.3 million viewers and that is a captive audience, the likes of which have rarely been seen on social media. An ad package for the duration of a game may be a restrictive $2m but running promoted tweets and simply tweeting your own offers during this period costs substantially less and should yield some instant results.

In for the long haul
This is a quick win but the most successful marketers are going to be those who can implement a long-term strategy as the NFL is not going to go away. In addition to the betting offers from the bookmakers there are now more markets available every week for punters. There are over 200 available for every match every week, and that’s before the player props.

Educating and informing British punters on these markets will be crucial and those who can do so are the ones who will gain the most market share. If you can offer educated, informative information to customers then you will gain trust and repeat visits to websites. That’s a given for any sport and it’s now just about translating that to NFL.

The growth levels of the sport in the UK could be exponential in the coming years and it’s now worth taking the gamble with spend on NFL specific web properties, social handles and, most importantly, content writers. A small spend now to position yourself at the front of the queue could pay dividends in the future and will be well worth it.

Even if the NFL London franchise never takes off, there will always be opportunities within American Football. The Super Bowl is the world’s biggest betting event and that won’t change any time soon, so the worst case scenario is that you put yourself in a better position to take a bigger share of the $4bn plus wagered on that alone each year.

Neil Roarty is the editor of Bettingpro.com, a multi-award winning sports betting affiliate. He has almost a decade of experience in the gaming industry and in addition to writing for Bettingpro.com has also featured in several other industry publications.