Oren Cohen Shwartz: Personalisation and the paradox of choice

Personalising the player experience can help boost player loyalty and longevity, writes Delasport CEO Oren Cohen Shwartz, who explains why iGaming could learn a few lessons from companies such as Netflix when it comes to offering “a more contextual and relevant catalogue”.

iGaming as a form of eCommerce is still falling behind other eCommerce companies like Amazon, Booking, Netflix, and the like. One example of that is the lack of personalized customer experience

With most brands, returning players get the same generic offering in casinos and sports betting, disregarding their past activities. One example is the quick launch of favourite content. Most websites support this functionality but require the players to mark their favorite slots and sports and markets explicitly. While this DIY approach is valid for a new player, there is no good reason not to implement an implicit technique for returning players.

After all, in the digital domain, players leave fingerprints in the form of betting activities that can be collected and analysed and in a much more sophisticated way than just favourite content.

iGaming operators struggle to retrain players in a highly competitive environment where the competing operator is just one click away. It becomes an even more challenging task when in most cases, everyone shares the same content. Personalising the player experience holds a significant potential to increase player loyalty and longevity. The higher the level of service players will get, the higher their potential for a player to stick around.

Take content as an example. Returning casino players may get the same generic games matrix, which holds a huge portfolio of thousands of slots games in most cases. Players cannot possibly digest all of them, not to mention that another 10-20 games are added every week. Similarly, sports betting players are getting the same generic tables of 30+ sports x leagues x thousands of events x hundreds of markets.

In his book The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less, Dr. Barry Schwartz refers to “Choice Overload” and the tendency to get overwhelmed when presented with many options. iGaming operations can follow the Netflix example of personalisation to reduce the paradox of choice and offer a more contextual and relevant catalog. It starts right at the very first journey where new Netflix customers are presented with different titles so that Netflix can get a taste of their flavor and input their choices to their recommendation engine.

As a result, Netflix gets a decent starting point with building the very first personalised catalog view. From here onward, Netflix will collect a lot of customer input to personalise the offering further. Netflix has DIY functionalities like “Add to my list” and search. Still, in most cases, the level of service is so high that Netflix customers usually enjoy personalised service in an implicit approach, for example, the “Continue Watching” and “Top picks for you.”

The similarity between Netflix and an iGaming operation as a form of eCommerce does exist. In Netflix, there are thousands of titles, yet they use technology better to produce a better-personalised experience. The personalisation is not just with content but also with an offering like bonuses; there are cases where returning players who made a 2nd or 3rd deposit areis still being offered with the welcome bonus that they will not be able to getclaim. In other cases, the bonus offer does not meet with the player’s activities. For example, a player who bet 10 euro is offered a free spins bonus of a 1 euro bet.

At Delasport, we take a player-centric approach to perfect the user interface and give players maximum service at minimum friction. We have one of the most advanced Sports Betting interfaces in the industry. Our mobile UX allows smooth player navigation and elevates their experience through the many sports events and markets with intelligent categorisation, automation and personalisation.

We are presenting sports events upon past Player activities and by Geo-Location; for example, the second league sports event will get top UX position for players who live near the participating team. The Player’s minimum and maximum bet size may be adjusted accordingly to the Player’s VIP level and LTV. We have an ongoing goal to create a better product by continuous learning of the player’s activities. We analyse players’ sessions and betting activities to reveal deep insights into player behavior and offer personalised betting opportunities.