Issue 40 of SBC Leaders magazine is published today and features interviews with Fanatics, bet365, Hard Rock, FanDuel, DraftKings, Betsson, Apuesta Total and Allwyn executives.
Creating a great product that sports fans can relate to is key to building a strong sportsbook brand, Fanatics Betting & Gaming’s Chief Marketing Officer Selena Kalvaria, tells the new edition of SBC Leaders magazine.
Kalvaria uses the cover interview to explain why she jumped from a successful career in the world of high fashion to the sports betting industry and what she found after making the switch.
Fanatics is a brand every US sports fan is familiar with, thanks to its vast replica sportswear and merchandise division, and that unrivalled profile was initially what made the role attractive to Kalvaria.
Since joining the company, she has learned that its brand name would count for little to bettors if the online gambling team had not followed the clothing division’s example and taken a fan-first approach to product development.
Its Fair Play injury refund feature proved so popular with customers that it has been replicated by rival sportsbooks, while FanCash recreates the engagement of retail loyalty schemes for the betting audience.
“You have to build an incredible product and proposition that people care about and the team that pre-existed me here was exceptional in the pursuit of having the best product in the market,” Kalvaria says.
“With the integration of FanCash and what’s become core to our positioning in Fair Play and the connected ecosystem and loyalty program, we relentlessly enhance the customer and fan experience. That’s what Fanatics exists to do.”
In the same cover feature, Fanatics Chief Trading Officer Mark Hughes explains that in a competitive market with well-established rivals, having the right product can help to “give customers zero reason to leave”. While he acknowledges that those rivals have “some really good stuff”, Hughes is confident his team have got their product right.
“We’re at a phase where the product is very high quality, the loyalty scheme runs throughout all channels, we have tenured customers who are really sticky,” says Hughes.
“It’s all come together. We get a lot of feedback from customers now saying, ‘I joined because of FanCash but your product is as good as FanDuel or DraftKings’.”
No-one’s predicting the apocalypse for sportsbooks
Part of Hughes’s job is to create “reasons for customers to switch and to stay” and, as a US operator, that means doing something to attract prediction market players.
However, while the company has launched its own Fanatics Markets offering, Hughes does not expect to see the likes of Kalshi and Polymarket being able to compete with licensed sportsbooks in the long term.
“The product breadth will be hard to match. If it plays out in a way where there’s a parlay product and margins and generosity can be high, maybe it will compete,” he says.
“But without that, I don’t really see them as the same product, even if they look and feel very similar to a customer. I struggle to see it cannibalising too significantly in states where sports betting is allowed.”
That view is echoed elsewhere in the magazine by James Cooper, Senior Vice President of FanDuel’s Flywheel & New Ventures division, which is focused on identifying and launching new high-growth products.
One of those products is FanDuel Predicts, which has had the benefit of expanding the operator’s total addressable market into states such as California and Texas, where legal sports betting is not widely available.
Despite being directly involved in the launch of one, Cooper does not expect prediction markets to do significant damage to the legal sports betting industry.
“We don’t see the sportsbook ecosystem as outdated at all, and it continues to be our north star,” he says.
“Sports betting remains the most direct and established way for fans to engage with sports outcomes, particularly in regulated markets with strong consumer protections and meaningful benefits to states.”
The magazine also sees IMGL President Marc Dunbar evaluate the dispute around the legal status of prediction markets.
bet365 eyeing US top spot
While prediction markets have dominated the headlines, the growth of bet365 in the US over the past 12 months has been under-reported.
The UK-based operator initially took a cautious approach to the US but, unlike many of its European counterparts who spent heavily during the post-PASPA gold rush phase of the market, it is now beginning to thrive.
It has established itself as a top five operator in many of the 17 states it is live in, something that its Head of Business Development for North America, Trip Stoddard, attributes to its investment in localisation and technology.
Stoddard is happy with the progress made in recent months, but no-one should expect the company to be content with its current status in the pack chasing FanDuel and DraftKings.
“If you look at bet365’s history, you look at everything we’ve done globally, we don’t go to markets where we’re happy with the top five. We don’t go to markets where we’re happy with the top three,” he says
Stoddard adds: “We’re here to be number one,.There’s clearly a top two. We’re watching them, but we’re tailoring our product and our marketing to (a point) where we don’t just think we can compete with them. I’m comfortable saying we think we can beat them.”
A trip around the betting world
SBC Leaders issue 40 also includes interviews with Steph Sherman, Chief Marketing Officer at DraftKings, about customer acquisition at the World Cup and Betsson’s Chief Information Security Officer Donald Tabone about the dangers posed to operators by cybercriminals.
Meanwhile, Hard Rock Digital Chairman Rafi Ashkenazi recalls his career in gambling, Allwyn’s Group CFO Kenneth Morton shares the inside track on the OPAP merger, and Apuesta Total CEO Gonzalo Perez discusses the Peruvian market.
Additionally, there is a deep dive into Latin America’s emerging market opportunities and an examination of why industry lobbying efforts continue to fall flat.
You can pick up a copy of issue 40 of SBC Leaders magazine at SBC Summit Americas in Fort Lauderdale in June, or you can read the digital edition here.