Regulation in the gambling industry has been on the rise in recent years, with operators and suppliers placing significant focus upon the development of tools to detect and restrict harms caused. In a chat with Optimove, who is sponsoring this year’s Betting on Football, their Director of new business Motti Colman detailed how they are running a session on how predictive modelling can be used to detect problem gambling among customers.
Colman discussed how operators cannot afford to be complacent, and wish to show to attendees how Optimove’s product can be of use.
What are you looking forward to at Betting on Football?
It is both a fantastic opportunity to network with senior industry executives and always provides interesting content, both of which are a welcome change from the normal exhibitions.
I am also hoping to hear about the different ways that the industry is looking to tackle problem gambling.
What are you promoting at Betting on Football?
As well as our normal core product that helps operators maximise player value through personalized campaign management, we will be running a session on our detection techniques for problem gambling through predictive modelling.
This is obviously a very hot topic in the industry at the moment and one that I feel must be tackled head on. There are many regulatory eyes on the industry right now and Operators need to start getting ahead of the problems before it is too late. I am hoping to show how our detection model can bring this about.
What industry innovation will capture the most attention in 2019?
I believe that front end personalization needs to have a huge impact on football betting. The variety of betting options are huge and the customer is still being presented with far too much choice when they login in to most sites. Operators need to have a much more focused, one to one approach to the individual player and use all available data to provide the customer with the most relevant betting options.
I always enjoy hearing about the progress that Bookee are making as I think they have built the most innovative product on the market in regards to a personalized sports betting experience.
Do you expect speed of innovation to slow in the absence of a major football tournament?
From my time on the B2C side, I would actually say that an absence of major events allows the company to focus on longer term and more profitable strategies including innovations.
As a side note, I am hearing more and more from acquisition departments in major Operators that they are dramatically cutting back on marketing spend for these major tournaments and events as the ROI just isn’t there anymore.
How can betting and football stakeholders work together more effectively?
The 2 industries need to find a way of self-regulating the level of marketing that it does, particularly on shirt sponsorship. If this doesn’t happen, the regulators will do it for them, and it will be a much worse outcome for all parties.
Which parts of the conference agenda have caught your eye?
Franco Baresi is one of my all time favourite players, so I am very excited to hear from him.
I am also very interested in Day 1’s afternoon with a very strong lineup in the CEO Panel and Supplier Q&A, in addition to the networking event at Mahiki.
#bofcon will be held at Stamford Bridge from the 19-22 March. The international sports betting trade event will feature 2,000 senior executives from across the sports betting industry, 200 of which will be taking part in discussions across 40 different conference sessions.
