Football World Cup showed that online betting is bigger than ever

European iGaming Congress and Expo (EiG) will take place next 19-21 October, at Bella Center, Copenhagen, where industry leaders such as Betboo and Betsson will share their experience and success stories.

Pontus Lindwall, CEO of the online gambling firm Betsson, says “it has been a very good World Cup even though we noticed that the turnover took a slight hit after all the upsets in the beginning of the tournament where some customers lost some money.”  The CEO of Betboo, Almir Ribeiro, says the early exit of favourites teams such as Italy and France “was fantastic from an operator’s point of view”. While Betsson saw the most action on the England vs USA game, for the Brazilian company Betboo, Brazil vs Ivory Cost was one of the most popular games early in the tournament. 

Betsson’s Pontus Lindwall says a marked difference between the 2006 and 2010 tournament is the increase in live betting.  “Now more people wait until they see how the teams are playing before placing their bets and customers who already have bets pre-match take new bets during the match. The number of different betting opportunities in the live betting has also increased a lot and during the 1/8-final between Paraguay and Japan we offered live betting on the penalty shootout where our customers could bet on if the player would score or not. This means that the customers knew in seconds if they won their bet or not!” 

Betboo’s sports betting arm is less than three years old so it cannot compare its World Cup return to anything.  However, says Betboo CEO Almir Ribeiro, “our cash-back promotions in 100% of the games is a unique concept in the industry and we offer a combo bonus  which  means  for three or more bets we are increasing the payout between 3 - 10%”. 

The World Cup provided a golden opportunity to target new customers with Betboo investing in social networks and on-line media buying as part of its marketing campaign. Says Almir Ribeiro:  “I expect to retain 100% of the new clients as we don't have so many competitors here and we invest a lot in CRM and Customer Service”.  

Betsson’s marketing strategy included running pre-event competitions and focusing on post-event customer retention. “We decided to focus on customer acquisition the months before the World Cup with World Cup competitions,” says CEO Pontus Lindwall, “rather than during the tournament since we knew that it would be cheaper for us to get new customers at that point rather than spend a lot of money during the tournament which would have cost more money. We have also had a strong focus on the development of our live betting the last 6 months in order to keep the customers that we have got. A customer should not have any reason to leave Betsson!”

Pontus Lindwall and Almir Ribeiro will both be speaking at EiG in October when more than 1500 iGaming experts will gather again to discuss regulatory, marketing and technological challenges in what is the world’s largest iGaming event.

Programme highlights and leading speakers include:

· USA regulatory keynote: When and how iGaming will be regulated in the USA – the California perspective - Senator Roderick Wright, State of California
· Impact of localised regulation in Europe, with particular focus on France and Italy
· EiG MegaDebate 1: iGaming vision for 2015 – discussing emerging B2B and B2G business models and future growth areas in iGaming
· EiG MegaDebate 2: Future market leaders:  Exploiting technology developments, innovative business models, niche products and new audiences
· Start-Up LaunchPad: Discover ‘The Next Big Thing’ in iGaming
· Partnership and competition: Media and entertainment brands, lotteries, social/casual games meet gambling
· Innovation in products, CRM, online marketing, branding

For more information, www.eigexpo.com.