SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
As more sportsbooks pour into the UK marketplace undoubtedly it’s a glass which is now overflowing. The question of how to stand out becomes ever more prevalent and whilst many operators go down the route of adding new features, games and markets to attract new customers and attract new ones, there’s one bookmaker taking a different approach. 
JABet specialises in tennis, though it’s soon to add football to the mix, and this year at Wimbledon it enjoyed a 500% increase in betting volume from the previous year.
We spoke to Vincent Leonard, Head of Marketing at JABet to discuss specialisation and the JABet method.
SBC: Why was the decision made to specialise in tennis, and what are the plans to roll out football in the future? Will you continue to expand beyond this or remain focused on these two?
Vincent: We specialised in tennis because of our previous experience in tennis modelling within the B2B market, where we have been perfecting the model for the past 10 years. We are looking to launch football at some point during the next season. These two sports will be our focus for the near future.
SBC: In an increasingly busy marketplace, many bookmakers add new features and games to retain customers and gain new ones. Do you conversely regard simplification as a more effective measure for attracting punters?
Vincent: Simplification is one of our cornerstones alongside giving customers the best value prices.
Everything we do from decreasing a bet delay to adding a new market on the site, throughout the whole process we ask, ‘Is this as simple and easy as it can be for an end user’s experience?’.
By stripping away casino and bonus gimmicks we try to concentrate the customers’ attention on our unique product.
SBC: This year saw a huge increase in your betting volumes for Wimbledon 2016. What do you attribute this to, and how much marketing and promo did you do in the build up to the event?
Vincent: It was very much down to natural word of mouth growth as more customers find our site.
To date we have engaged in no direct marketing other than a Twitter feed manned by our tennis experts giving unique insights. As we differentiate from the marketplace we have excellent retention levels, in other words once customers find us they don’t shop anywhere else.
Our proprietary tennis product offers tighter margins, the ability to back, lay and trade (with no commissions or charges) and no closing down or stake factoring of winning accounts.
SBC: What have you discovered about the trends amongst tennis punters; where is it most popular, do they bet more on mobile and what of the live betting markets?
Vincent: The majority of our users tend to be concentrating on live and in particular the fast moving next game winner markets although our pre-live markets have also fared very well since we introduced them earlier this year. Mobile is an area we will look to add in the future, although we have no timelines for this yet.
