Analysis: Hitting the sports betting jackpot

This World Cup it seems the bookmakers have been overcome with a spirit of rare generosity. Million pound giveaways are de rigueur, bwin has a €5m competition and BetStars is giving away £100m if someone can manage to catch lightning in a bottle. But perhaps the one that most neatly captures the zeitgeist is BetVictor’s Million Pound Bet.

The contest taps into the big themes that are changing the way sports betting operates in the UK: user-created markets and gaming style jackpot bets. For BetVictor this means its £1m prize goes to the punter placing the bet that wins at the largest odds during the World Cup. That this is likely to be north of 1,000/1 when the final match is over doesn’t really raise an eyebrow anymore in a sector where the race to go bigger has become a sprint.

Request a bettor

The BetVictor Million Pound Bet is a smart attempt to grab a larger share of the request-a-bet (RAB) market that surged in popularity in the UK during the last Premier League season and to tap into a new generation of entertainment driven bettors. It’s reactive as much as anything, with the market seeming to have a thirst for ever bigger and ever more customisable betting options.

The single-game multiple, where related bets from the same match combine for a big potential payout, is big business in the UK. It’s a market largely generated by Sky Bet who debuted the user-generated markets in 2015 and quickly found demand was exceeding supply. Operators talk of the shift in direction towards these bigger win bets and a diminishing interest in traditional 1X2 markets as a result.

Customers can’t get enough of the bets, fuelled in part by the social media celebration of some absurd outcomes such as two penalty misses. The obvious in retrospect 500/1 winners are something everyone wants a part of, and the element of control and outwitting the bookies has proved seductive to UK gamblers. Anecdotal reports suggest these bets are equalling total bets, if not revenue, on some of the major football markets and still growing.

From sideshow to centre stage

Request a bets and their new offspring the build-a-bets have gone from an amusing sideshow that generated some fun social media engagement to one of the most heavily promoted markets on the recreationally focused sites. William Hill has YourOdds, BetVictor has PriceItUp, Paddy Power has WhatOddsPaddy and Coral has YourCall. And they all take up a lot of valuable screen real estate during a typical Premier League weekend.

Along with build-a-bet tools the end result is a shift from serious, studious analysis to a more entertainment driven product that appeals to a different customer type. In an industry trying to reinvent itself as mainstream leisure entertainment it fits squarely in the box, and it pushes sports betting into a new space. It’s the world of accas and scorecasts reimagined for the modern age.

With this style of betting arising almost by accident it’s wrong to characterize it as a carefully designed campaign to turn sports betting into a gaming style product, but that is undoubtedly where it has ended up. It’s so far broadly been a net positive, with operators delivering on the promise of betting as low-stakes entertainment, but it is not a change in direction anyone should be taking too lightly.

Warning signs ahead?

A glance at Sky Bet on a busy Saturday sees enhanced scorecasts, “bet £10 win £100” pre-loaded multiples and request-a-bets running from odds-on to 200/1 and above. That’s not to say Sky is alone in this, and the trend for bigger is better is hard to miss. Some of their rivals regularly have RABs in the 1000/1 or higher and bet builders allow users to create bets at even more outlandish odds.

On the one hand this is nothing new for a sector that has long thrived on the Saturday acca, and punters who chase that weekend dream. Everyone knows what to expect from a 200/1 bet. The dream of a big win are based in hope not expectation and the bets allow for more lower stakes gambling while locking in that “90 minutes of entertainment” promise. But it doesn’t come without some risk attached.

At the current time with most RABs in the low double digits and a healthy mix of betting options there is no particular reason for concern. But this is an industry where operators have a tendency to go all-in when they find a winning formula. The fear of missing out on market or wallet share gains in the sports betting industry means nobody backs down an inch and RABs could quickly become something of an arms race.

Suddenly the 200/1 special is perfectly normal bet to push out on a Saturday afternoon and the 20/1 scorecast begins to look like a sober relic of a bygone era.

Hitting the jackpot

The other aspect that plays into this is the use of jackpots as an acquisition and retention tool. The promise of winning a million if you can just answer 20 questions correctly or guess the outcome of 48 results has a big appeal to the average punter. And while most of these huge jackpots are just unique acquisition offers for the World Cup if would be wrong to dismiss their use out of hand for the next and further premier league seasons.

GVC has already revealed they will be working with supplier Risq for more jackpot games beyond the World Cup. Sky Bet have had some very cost-efficient success in acquiring players through its Super 6 app and with the trend moving more towards the idea of “jackpot” wins from day to day betting they may not disappear for another four years as previously. Not least because many of the jackpots simply won’t be won, with the odds stacked hugely against those playing them.

It’s unclear if customers are fully aware of this, or even if they care, but it is another factor to take into account. How long will recreational players enjoy playing competitions where nobody wins even if those games are free to play? And should operators make it clear what the true odds are when entering? It feels like a question a regulator would likely be asking at some point and perhaps one operators should be asking themselves before it gets to that point.

Being on the front foot

The danger with RABs, jackpots and turning sports betting into gaming is not in the product but in the presentation. To put it diplomatically jackpot giveaways where nobody wins and a race to turn sports betting into a slots-style “crank the handle and hope for a big prize” product don’t seem fully aligned with the regulatory trend. Even if they are very much in-line with customer needs and preferences right now.

Regulators in Europe have made it clear it’s not enough for operators to act reactively to prevent harm, they must be proactive in spotting the potential and taking action to prevent it at source. And this feels like an area where some caution and a step back to reassess might be in order. The industry has fallen foul of pushing too hard at an open door in the past and this feels like an area where some restraint would perhaps be wise.