Global Reviews – Key findings of sports betting industry’s digital performance in 2014

Corporate research and data specialist Global Reviews ran a number of studies into Digital Marketing Effectiveness, Digital Sales Effectiveness and Mobile Sales Effectiveness of the UK & Ireland Sports Betting industry in 2014.

Global Reviews , is a proven data leader at providing Sport Betting Companies with key digital customer insights and trends. In the webinar, recorded on January 8^th 2015, Gerard Farrell, a Senior Client Advisor at Global Reviews, outlined some of the findings of their research programmes* into the UK Sports Betting industry online.

Webinar Recording

Who this webinar for?

CMOs, CDOs, Senior Marketing, Heads of Sales, Heads of Digital, General Managers of Digital.

Ladbrokes, William Hill, PaddyPower, SkyBet, BetVictor, Sportingbet, BetFred, Coral, 888, Bet365 and Betfair were included in the Global Reviews studies.

Key findings include:

• Stronger Digital Strategy at Betfair

Betfair score well at driving bettors to their website when they start shopping around online, and they have the highest conversion ratio of unprompted recall to final preference, albeit from a lower base. However it does suggest that Betfair’s digital search marketing strategy is working.

• Lost Opportunities at Paddy Power and Ladbrokes

Both Paddy Power’s and Ladbrokes’ healthy shortlist scores (51% and 48% respectively) translate poorly into final preference scores (17% and 15% respectively). Given Ladbrokes’ very high brand recall (56%) and visited (42%) scores, you could be lead to question if Ladbrokes is depending too much on the loyalty of existing customers and not focussing enough in trying to “steal” additional customers online?

• Highest Final Preference:  William Hill

William Hill starts off with a really strong unprompted brand recall score (63%) in comparison to Betfair (23%), but even though they have the lowest number of visitors to their site (17%) of the four sports betting companies in fig 1, they have the highest final preference score (26%) across the entire industry.  What needs to be asked here (and answered) is: Why does William Hill have the highest final preference score?

• First impressions count and for William Hill they convert

The Global Reviews Digital Sales Effectiveness(DSE) programme focuses on the Consider and Act stages of the online purchase journey. The first part of the consider stage is “initial engagement”, where we measure the effectiveness of a website when consumers are locating service or product options.

William Hill out performs all other sports betting providers at the initial engagement stage and creates a winning impression; scoring 68% (compare this to Bet365’s score of 48%). This impression carries right through to the purchase stage – as William Hill score highest at the registration (72%).

International Best Practice

To find out more about what best practice looks like and those who are achieving it, or any other questions you may have about this research please contact Global Reviews [email protected]  or  +44 (0) 203 725 8260

Global Reviews Research Calendar 2015: UK Sports Betting Industry

• Digital Sales Effectiveness Programmes – February and August 2105
• Mobile Sales effectiveness Programmes – February and August 2105
• Digital Marketing Effectiveness Programmes – Monthly

In 2014 Global Reviews ran three programmes of studies into the UK Sports Betting Companies:

1. Digital Sales Effectiveness (DSE): This study measures how effective UK Sports Betting Companies are at converting customers online. Global Reviews ran the DSE programme twice in 2014 – Q2 and in Q3 – before and during the World Cup.  As UK bookmakers were expecting to take as much £3 billion in action during the World Cup, there was no better time to analyse online purchasing behaviour and track sports betting customers online.
2.  Mobile Sales Effectiveness (MSE): This study measures how effective UK Sports Betting Companies are at converting customers on their mobile sites. Global Reviews ran the MSE programme in Q3. The benchmark delivered an overall industry average of 54%, with a small variance between scores; the highest score being 55.9%, attained by SkyBet followed closely by Ladbrokes with a score of 55.7% and BetVictor with 55.6% The lowest scoring site – Betfair – achieved a score of 48.5%.
3.  Digital Marketing Effectiveness (DME): This study measures how effective UK Sports Betting Companies are at attracting customers online. William Hill came out on top in the DME study with an unprompted brand recall score of 63% and a shortlist score of  26% However Paddy Power performs better when you compare brand recall (45%) to shortlist score (51%), but then they lose more potential customers than William Hill with a lost opportunity score of -67%

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