Online sportsbetting operators say they took advantage of the recent World Cup to target thousands of new customers by increasing their gaming offering and investing in social media.

Customer acquisition and retention in online gambling is an important theme at this year’s ninth annual European iGaming Congress and Expo (EiG) in Copenhagen in October where industry leaders such as Betboo and Betsson will share their experience and success stories.

Early exits profitable for operators

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.

Live betting increases the gambling offering

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%”.

Converting new customers

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."

Event website: www.eigexpo.com