Sports betting becoming the new priority
It’s no surprise that sports betting has started to take precedence for various gaming commissions across the continent.
The popularity of the sports betting market is undeniable, and attracting those customers will be vital for other parts of the industry.
“We are seeing in conversations with operators across the US and North American general the need to make sure that you have an integrated product offering, so that you can utilize sports betting as an acquisition channel and move those customers across the other verticals.
With sports bettors becoming the main target, catering to them has become important for operators everywhere.
They have started to realise that across the board that it’s cheaper to acquire sports betting customers than other demographic, such as lottery or casino players.
The task moving forward is now for providers to create sports betting platforms that are easy for customers to understand and use.
“There’s traditional sports bettors that have been doing this for a very long time and enjoy a sophisticated system – parlay bets and prop bets and different things like that – but what we’re hoping for is something simpler, easy to use, with a very friendly interface for people that like to watch sports and may be new to betting.
“Over time, we imagine those betters would become more sophisticated in their betting techniques and we feel that that is a great way to start to bring those people into the fold of all the other wonderful things that a casino resort has to offer. We believe that we can trigger a lot of brick-and-mortar trips from there.”
The future of the market appears to lie in the hands of sports bettors, even if they may not be the most prominent source of revenue.
Several operators have had to reintroduce sports betting – despite it not being their biggest source of revenue – due to the sheer popularity of the format amongst customers.
“We need to find out new avenues to reach out to them and this was the first step into the digital realm.
“So rather than focusing more on revenue, it was more focused on how do we get out there in this new day and age, instead of the old school lottery style we were used to.
“But the overarching goal for revenue is to transfer back to the state. We know that that’s not going to be for sports as large as what we have in our other offerings, but it is something additional that we can add in that helps overall company growth.”
New regulatory challenges
The new market is proving to be a steep learning curve for everyone involved, especially the market regulators.
Many were ready to launch iGaming initiatives as the market dictated, before sports betting started to rear its head.
Many find themselves starting from scratch, going from “being the expert to being the student all over again”, and while learning something new is beneficial in the long run, it provides its own set of challenges.
Whilst different states are trying to find out what works best for them, regulators are happy to borrow from each other in order to find the best solutions.
“As a regulator, I have to wait until some bits of information from the final legislated bill are actually handed down to me, so I have a working tool to start drafting the operations regulatory controls.”
“I think that the best practice is to look at what other jurisdictions are doing well, continue doing that and then some of the things that seem to be tragic or constrictive can be revisited. We can think of another method that we can use to accomplish the same compensating control without being so intrusive.”
Tribal governments vs commercial retailers
Whilst company growth and revenue may be top of the agenda for commercial retailers, tribal governments are looking at the big picture.
Operators who have had regular contact with both sides can see that the goals of the two differ greatly.
“I would you have to think of tribal governments as more of a lottery model where you know the owners of the operation are the primary beneficiaries – so that would be the tribal government in this case.
“Those revenues trickle down into their social programs and the operation of government.
“It’s a little bit different than the commercial respect where everyone cares about profits, but they have to answer to different types of stakeholders, whereas tribal operators are just trying to take care of their community and their government.”
Due to the fact that tribal governments are so deeply entrenched into the communities they serve compared to commercial operators, they have no choice but to be thinking in the long term.
Tribal operators have to consider the benefits of the community within which they reside, meaning that the long term effects of sports betting are just as important as short term revenues.
“We, we know that the sports betting industry is in its infancy, so there’s a big push around big multi state operators that are racing to the bottom. So what do you do to future proof your business that’s giving back to your Community over the next 10 to 20 years? It’s not just looking at that so we’re doing a lot of work with our partners around how to maximize that revenue across a longer period of time.
“It’s not just about the next two years, it’s how to have something in place that’s going to be of a long term benefit to communities.”