The current regulatory environment in Europe sees the promotion of online gambling restricted or even banned in certain cases. With the 22/23 Premier League season underway and the addition of an end-of-year World Cup creating even more opportunities for sportsbooks to drive engagement, Sportingtech Managing Director Bobby Longhurst discusses the ways in which sportsbook features have become increasingly important as a means to attract, and retain, bettors.
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One facet of the betting world that can usually be relied upon is the enthusiasm with which customers seize on the opportunity to place bets on The Beautiful Game.
This year is set to be no different and, with the 2022/23 season of the Premier League intertwining with the World Cup, sportsbooks have the potential for increased engagement as more people will be at home watching matches than would normally be the case.
However, operators are finding it increasingly difficult to market their branding to football fans and bettors in light of recent regulatory changes. The current landscape in Europe has seen measures restricting and, in some cases, banning promotion of online gambling products.
We are now in the midst of the 31st Premier League season and, with the betting environment more hostile than ever to the attracting of a player base, it has become an even greater priority to ensure a sportsbook has its own means to attract and retain bettors.
The top tier features of these sportsbooks must now take on this responsibility – and this is something that Sportingtech is prepared for.
Features like Bet Assist are ideally placed to tackle these new challenges, as they make traversing platforms more straightforward for players. By generating automated betting tips based on historical data, live-score and AI analysis, covering both pre-match and in-play markets across seven sports and with complete bet slip integration, user engagement is increased, as well as retention and turnover rates.
In addition, FastBet, the only feature of its kind on the market, can enable users to wager multiple single bets across all sports at the touch of a button without creating a betslip. New, exciting tools like these are highly effective at retaining existing audiences but also attracting new ones to the world of sports betting.
Easing the transition from the Premier League to the World Cup
Another issue to navigate for operators and the industry at large is the position this year’s World Cup takes in the calendar. Unusually, the 2022 World Cup, held in Qatar, will take place much later; the last set of Premier League fixtures before the tournament will be held on November 12-13 and the first World Cup match is on November 20, meaning operators will barely have time to draw breath between each event.
Our job as a platform provider is to equip our clients with the tools for them to be successful. What is needed here is a sportsbook that can quickly adapt.
The Quantum platform is flexible and modular, providing an ability to manage and integrate any features that suit specific market and business needs.
Our existing operator customers place huge value in Quantum’s ability to take full control of their operations and configure the sportsbook to create a player-centric betting experience. In today’s marketplace, this is fundamental in helping an operator to differentiate themselves, a vital factor when considering the added obstacles to attracting a player base.
Whether an operator is launching a new project or expanding into the online space, the platform itself is extremely customisable and flexible to fit any operator’s needs.
Offering increased engagement to players during two of football’s biggest events is an almost guaranteed way to both attract and retain them.
Our Popular Bets and Popular Events widgets offer our operator customers a localised, intuitive way to immediately boost engagement, allowing operators to display a particular market’s current top-10 bets and top-10 events, automatically refreshing every five minutes. With minimum effort on the operators’ part, they can be confident that their players are constantly being shown the most popular bets and events at any one time.
Our priority is to provide flexibility of use, allowing operators to display the bets and events on different areas of their sites while also being optimised for mobile and desktop. It is important that they auto-populate according to the operators’ markets, which has gone a long way to making this the hassle-free and personalised engagement tool we set out to make.
Next-level sportsbook features are now the differentiator when it comes to the successful promotion of a brand. Despite the difficulties presented by European regulation, the variety of innovative tools on offer at Sportingtech are proof that sportsbooks can attract and drive engagement on their own terms.