Sports betting is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and new platforms are emerging and entering this market all the time. But how do sports betting platforms attract new customers in such a saturated industry?
Sports betting, particularly the online side of the industry, has seen a prodigious amount of growth over the last decade. Particularly with many jurisdictions around the world, notably the United States, seeing changes in regulation that have opened up legal avenues for expansion for operators. But as online sports betting platforms expand and rise to prominence, the online sports betting market becomes more and more saturated. In such a saturated industry, how exactly do platforms try to attract new customers and continue to grow?
There is a range of techniques that different platforms use, some with more success than others, to stay ahead of the crowd and keep a good portion of the market share. Big platforms spend lots of time and money investing in customer acquisition. Common techniques include offering sports betting vouchers and other promotions, improving the user experience that they provide, expanding the betting markets that they offer, and increasing the level of personalization that users experience.
Let’s take a closer look at some of the techniques that big sports betting platforms use to try to attract customers.
Promotions, Welcome Offers and Bonuses
By far the most common of all the different methods that betting platforms use to attract new customers is offering promotions. It’s almost certain that you’ve seen some of these promotions advertised, even if you don’t engage in sports betting or gambling.
These promotions can take on a wide range of shapes, with bonuses for new customers being the most common. They provide better odds, matches on amounts deposited, free bets and a host of other things. The idea is that users will sign up to the platform with the best welcome bonuses, and then are more likely to stay on that platform than to move to other platforms.
One type of promotion that has recently become popular with bettors is sports betting vouchers. These allow customer to explore and place wagers on a new platform without needing to put as much of their own money on the line. Platforms hope that by offering promotions like this, customers will try their services and enjoy them so much that they stick around.
Mobile-Focused Platforms Are Winning
By far the most common way that people place bets is through their smartphones. As a result, platforms that have focused on mobile-friendly and mobile-focused design and interfaces have risen to prominence over those that have not.
Being mobile-focused means that all of the app or website should be easily and intuitively navigable by finger taps and thumb swipes, the systems for depositing funds should be tied to mobile-native e-wallets, and the different pages should be optimized to load quickly on mobile.
Platforms that provide a stronger and friction-free experience on mobile will see increased customer attraction and retention over competitors that do not have mobile-friendly platforms. When bonuses or betting markets on offer are similar, the level of mobile-friendliness can prove to be the differentiator for many customers.
A Wide Range of Betting Markets Brings in Niche Bettors
One thing that is as true in the betting industry as it is in many others is that consumers like variety; it is the spice of life, after all. This means that operators who build platforms that offer a wider range of betting markets are seen as more attractive options by bettors.
Almost every platform is likely to carry betting markets for major international competitions and sports like soccer, basketball and football, but offering markets for esports, combat sports or even for world events is something that can strongly set apart a betting platform.
The wider the range of betting markets, the wider the pool of potential customers. The bigger the net, the greater the catch.
A wider range of betting markets also protects platforms from going dead in the off-season. If a platform focuses too strongly on only football, what happens to its revenue when football season is over?
The Trend of Personalization Exists Here Too
One trend that is sweeping through modern betting platforms is something that exists in almost every facet of digital culture: personalization. Just about everywhere you go online, services are keen to offer you a better level of service, a more personal level of service, that is driven by data about what you like and what you do.
For betting platforms, personalization means offering customers promotions based on their betting history, tailored dashboards that push matches and games that they might be more interested in betting on further to the front, and marketing emails and reminders when teams or athletes they enjoy are due to play.
The idea is that an increased level of personalization makes it easier for customers to find things they are interested in, rather than having to wade through the noise of things that aren’t relevant to them. If you are uninterested in the increasing levels of personalization around the internet, using a VPN can help to block some of the tracking tools that enable personalization.
Final Thoughts
In saturated markets, the experience for customers tends to get better as operators fight to gain their attention. In the sports betting market, this means better promotions, better user experiences, more options for betting and increased personalization, among other things.