During its full-year results conference call at the end of February, Ladbrokes chief executive Jim Mullen said that football betting remained a “core opportunity” for the company to engage with the vitally important 18-35 age group “for whom it is their betting sport of choice”.
The results touted the company’s success in promoting its football offer both in retail, where 2015/16 season staking was up 13.2%, and online where the amount stakes on football rose 38% in 2015. Using Boxing Day as an example of the progress the company has made within the past 12 months, Ladbrokes said that football staking across both retail and online was up 56% on that one day (when there is by tradition a full English Premier League programme) over the year previous.
Register for BOFCON to explore the key facets of the betting industry’s relationship with Football!
But the popularity of football betting extends beyond the relatively limited confines of betting on the EPL. Martin Ramshaw, senior odds compiler at rival William Hill, makes the point that though traditionally English and Scottish football has been popular with the UK audience, the interest in betting on continental European football, has “grown significantly”.
“The main catalyst for this was Sky Sports coverage of Spanish football,” says Ramshaw who notes that this acted as the bridgehead towards betting on football that took place even further afield. “An increase in betting gradually spread to other major European leagues, particularly as more became accessible to watch. Over the last few years, we have moved on to betting on other less well known European leagues many of which are the Eastern European leagues and although we don’t have the same turnover as the major leagues, it is still a significant amount and shows demand for the product.”
There is a reciprocal element to the interest in betting on football from eastern European leagues. The most recent results from Fortuna Entertainment Group, which runs sports-betting retail and online operations in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, showed that interest in sports-betting was booming.
Amounts staked in the Czech Republic rose over 16% to €462.1m while gross win rose 7.7% to €59.6m, of which €43.9m came through online betting and €15.7m was retail. In Poland, gross win rose 14.5% year-on-year to €34.8m with €12.8m through the online channel and €22m via retail. Lastly, in Slovakia gross win rose 12.7% to €44.3m with a €28m contribution from the online channel and €16.3m emanating via retail.
The company gave little detail regarding a product breakdown for any of its gross win revenues, but it did suggest that football would be a main driver for the current year as all three of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia qualified for Euro 2016.
BOFCON will shed insight on consumer trends and impacts which operators and stakeholders will actively engage with during Euro 2016 and beyond.
With Fortuna as with its western counterparts, in-play is one of driving forces behind the current rates of online growth. But the desire to have betting opportunities available at all times during the day is no longer just an online phenomenon. One of the features of Ladbrokes’ results statement was what the detail it offered up with regard to its burgeoning estate of self-service betting terminals (SSBTs) which has now reached 6,400 across the entire estate with some shops hosting up to eight machines.
Ladbrokes pointed out that 75% of all bets on SSBTs are football bets and that 30% of all bets occur in-play. Scott Ferguson, head of UK product at Best Gaming Technology (BGT) which supplies Ladbrokes with its machines and software, points out that a lot of this retail in-play football growth came from leagues outside of the UK. “It’s not just the top leagues available, you can drill down several divisions in many countries,” he says. “The old days of only ever betting on leagues you can see on TV are far behind us.”
Register for BOFCON to find out about the latest in-play developments to engage customers.
The recognition factor still plays a part both online and in the shops, says Ramshaw at William Hill. “The higher profile a league is the more punters will look to bet on it,” he says. “If teams such as CSKA (Moscow) or Shakhtar (Donetsk) do well in Europe, clients will be more aware of them and are more likely to bet on them. Another factor is if the teams have high profile players or managers.”
Yet as Ferguson suggests, timing is perhaps the most important factor in the popularity of some football competitions. Says Ferguson from BGT: “For example a competition which punches well above its weight is Czech U-21s. Ideally scheduled around lunchtime during the week, it’s a perfect competition for in-play betting, especially since this season’s goals per match average is about 3.4. Goals betting is more popular than traditional 1×2 betting on these lesser-known leagues, and with several matches in-play at the same time, it leads to accumulators rather than singles betting.”
As with online this interest in betting away from the higher-profile events is aided by the data available. Online in-play is serviced by supplier such as Perform Group’s Running Ball feeding in data regarding football and other sports taking place globally, and the same is now happening in UK shops. “The availability of pre-match and in-play statistics gives the customer confidence to bet anywhere,” says Ferguson from BGT. “One thing you never need to worry about is the absence of data on matches from far-flung places, it’s all available on the terminal and it clearly drives turnover on matches played in places few people could ever pinpoint on a map.”
About Betting on Football
With the Euro 2016 Championship in France this summer leading into a blockbusting new 2016/17 football season, there will be more eyes than ever before on the sport. There will also be more demand for betting. Betting on Football plans to explore best practice in a number of areas including sponsorship, marketing, integrity, cultivating innovation and trading, both pre-match and in-play.
