SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Leading bookmaker Coral achieved the highest share of voice on social media versus competitors during the notoriously competitive Cheltenham Festival, the biggest and most important week of the year for UK betting operators.
Using the leading social media data analytics platform Crimson Hexagon, Coral have identified that they achieved a 28% share of voice, compared with 16% for Betfair, the next best performing competitor.
Coral attribute the success to three major spikes of activity generating quality conversation around the brand:
- The Coral Cheltenham Festival Preview event, which saw a record 45,000 tune in to watch the live web-streamed event, and which trended on Twitter for the entire two hour duration on Sunday 8th March;
- The light-hearted #CheltenHAM festival, which saw Coral re-create a daily Cheltenham Festival feature race using micro-pigs instead of racehorses;
- Positive reaction as online and mobile customers, new and existing, enjoyed big pay outs and received free bets thanks to a variety of strong Cheltenham festival customer offers.
As expected, conversation around the Cheltenham Festival is typically skewed to a male audience with a keen interest in horse racing and football, particularly the Premier League.
Tania Seif, Head of Coral Social Marketing commented; “This is the third year that the Coral social media team has worked on the Cheltenham Festival and it’s been our most successful on social media yet. We set out with the objective of creating content that would drive conversation among our target audience of males interested in horse racing and football. We are delighted with the results.”
Liliana Osorio, EMEA Marketing Manager for Crimson Hexagon commented that “By analysing the World’s largest focus group – social media – brands can not only measure the impact they have at a given event but also gather valuable insights about their target audience. Being able to profile Affinities™ between a company and their interests outside of the brand provides marketers with key opportunities to engage with their audience”.
