Developing a community for your sportsbook

Blog written by Ronan Tighe

In my recent podcast with Richard Hewitt, I asked him what new features he thought sportsbook operators could introduce to their mobile channel that would add value to their users. His belief was that location based services within a community based environment would be the next biggest innovation. Providing content that is relevant to the user based on when and where they access your product would obviously greatly enhance the experience. However, determining what that content should be is a massive challenge.

As with online sportsbooks, operators need to determine what added content such as statistics or news is relevant and appreciated by their users. This can be tricky, but creating an appropriate social media strategy is even harder. The news that social betting site Pikum has folded, will scare people away from experimenting with social media on their site (although there were other reasons behind Pikum’s demise).

I’ve no doubt that the most successful sportsbooks in the future will be those that create a community around their site, as the days of acquiring and retaining customers purely on the basis of bonuses are limited. What a community on a sportsbook should look like, is something I don’t know, but the important thing to remember is that a community does not have to mean a social network. Sportbooks will need to understand what media their users are currently consuming, to develop an understanding of what content and functionality they are currently missing that should be offered to them. By creating content that leads users back to their site regardless of whether they intend to place a bet or not, will build loyalty and inevitably increase revenues.