The Blask blast: Emerging markets bet big on summer of sport

This month, we look at whether the Olympics will ever become a major betting event, what a national team’s early exit from a tournament means for the local industry, underserved and overserved markets and the data that shows why cricket is still king in India.

Olympics betting has been underwhelming, so far

Betting brands have historically struggled to capitalise on the Olympic opportunity. Audiences worldwide may be captivated by the action, but the event rarely drives betting traffic in the same way as a major football tournament.

The early days of Paris 2024 suggest this trend will continue. Our global Blask Index rating puts a number on the level of engagement and interest in betting brands worldwide. It’s currently measuring 33 markets across Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe, and the overall index is trending slightly down during the first days of the Paris Olympics.

This is no surprise. Events including gymnastics, canoe slalom and mountain biking are never going to be major betting draws. Operators will be hoping the later stages of the football and the flagship track and field events can turn things around.

Coping without the Copa

Conventional industry logic states that local bookmakers tend to profit when a respective home country exits early from a major tournament, raking in large numbers of losing bets from fans backing their own team.

What this doesn’t account for, however, is the impact on customer engagement throughout the rest of the tournament.

Two early exits from this year’s Copa América can give us a better idea.

Firstly Chile, a country that endured a miserable campaign, failing to score a goal on the way to a group stage elimination.

We measured a steady decline in user engagement and interest in betting as the tournament progressed, and we saw a modest 9% boost to estimated GGR (eGGR, which we calculate via a bespoke AI) for June versus May. Operators would have been hoping for much more – both from the team and the tournament.

And then there’s Brazil, which crashed out in the quarter finals to Uruguay. Brazil’s group stage matches drove large surges in betting interest and we’d have expected a potential semi final against Colombia to have topped them all. Instead, the day registered one of the lowest engagements with betting in the country for three months.

Brazilian football fans did recover by the time of the final, with our index hitting its highest point of the year. If those fans were betting against rivals Argentina lifting the trophy, they’d have once again been disappointed.

Underserved markets?

As we track more markets worldwide, we’re beginning to identify a handful where we believe there is significant opportunity for new brands to expand rapidly.

We do this by tracking the number of active brands in a market alongside an estimate of the market’s monthly GGR. The ratio gives a good indicator of the level of competition relative to the potential reward.

Using this method, we see markets including South Africa and Serbia generating about $1m in monthly eGGR per active brand, while Poland and Mexico are doing roughly half that number.

But of all the markets we currently track, one stands out for offering a particularly high GGR/brand rate: Bulgaria. Currently, just 23 brands compete for around $60m in monthly eGGR. If you are an operator looking to expand your global footprint, take note.

Cricket still reigns supreme in India

While most of the global betting industry long had June-July highlighted as peak season, it has been a different story in India, where we’ve actually seen a drop off in both eFTDs and eGGR following the conclusion of cricket’s Indian Premier League.

By our estimates, eFTDs in India increased steadily throughout the IPL, but actually declined by the time Euro 2024 kicked off.

This year’s IPL began on 22 March. For a benchmark, we estimate 921,000 FTDs in India for February. That increased to 1.3 million in March, 1.7 million in April and 1.9 million when the competition came to its conclusion at the end of May.

Despite growing excitement in India around both Euro 2024 and the Copa América, FTDs for June dropped back to 1.5 million. Cricket still reigns supreme.

Let’s take Brazil as a benchmark, where we see 172 brands competing for an estimated monthly GGR of $373m. That means a theoretical ‘fair’ share of roughly $2m in eGGR for each brand – even if in reality, a handful of operators are capturing much of the value.

Max Tesla is CEO and co-founder of market analytics ecosystem Blask, working at the forefront of revolutionising the igaming industry through the power of AI and data intelligence.

Blask is an AI-powered market analytics ecosystem that empowers igaming businesses to make data-driven decisions based on real-time information.