The World Cup highlighted that players truly still do tap into engaging products, according to Malachy Rooney, Head of Football Strategy and Pricing, Flutter Entertainment.
In the first of our two-part deep dive with Rooney, he emphasised that this was highlighted in the success of the firm’s micro betting proposition and Bet Builder outrights during the tournament.
Sitting down with iGaming Expert ahead of SBC Summit in Lisbon, where he will be speaking on the World Cup vs Sportsbook Regulation panel, Rooney also underpinned the consistency of Bet Builders within a sportsbook.
iGaming Expert: Can you tell us about some of the key reflections in terms of World Cup trading?
Malachy Rooney: Two key reflections for me were: firstly, customer familiarity with specific players continues to drive engagement more than an affinity to the teams themselves. This appeared even more pronounced in international football than it would be for the English Premier League, and we repeatedly saw a heavy concentration of staking on a very small number of marquee selections, such as Harry Kane, Kylian Mbappé, Lionel Messi and Erling Haaland, largely dominating betting patterns.
This overt concentration in stakes is not necessarily problematic for a bookmaker but can create larger variance swings than many would prefer – particularly if you’re from a Finance background and prefer to have fewer shocks to the forecast.
From a Trading standpoint, it wasn’t rocket science to pre-empt which players were most likely to surface within this concentration and we deployed enhanced pricing due diligence throughout each round of fixtures to ensure we were confident in the accuracy of our compilation, as well as pulling a variety of risk management levers to spread liabilities where it made sense to do so and without adding friction to the customer journey.
And secondly, customers still love to see engaging new products. Across our global brands, we rolled out a suite of new innovations in time for the tournament and features like our BetBuilder Outrights, our micro-betting proposition and 120-minute Player Markets all proved hugely popular with both new and experienced bettors alike.
Would you say the expanded tournament helped boost betting engagement? What challenges did it provide when it comes to trading?
Absolutely, although we did see lull periods at different stages throughout. One consistent theme was that a lack of jeopardy created an interest vacuum. This was most evident in the final round of group stage games where teams had already qualified and were able to rotate lineups and approach the matches with a lower tempo. In any sport, jeopardy and competitiveness are what largely drive excitement; this filters through into customer engagement too.
It was certainly a hectic 39 days! This year’s World Cup was my 6th major international tournament within our Trading department and it was by far the most challenging due to the expanded number of games and scheduling. More participants meant more one-sided affairs, which are always more challenging to price accurately and the wide spread of kick off times created an “always on” feel where, for the group stage particularly, there was very little respite between matches for operational teams.
Where do Bet Builders sit in the current portfolio for football engagement and what steps need to be taken to evolve the role of the Bet Builder?
They’re a huge part of any sportsbook’s football proposition. This is true for your typical English Premier League game and was no different for the World Cup. In essence, Bet Builders are largely about offering choice. They provide customers with the flexibility to embed their own narrative for a match into their bet and they create a sense of uniqueness within each customer’s journey. Football has been the sport with the largest amount of product innovation over the last 10 years and this has lent itself strongly to building on that flexibility.
In terms of the future evolution of Bet Builder, optimising ease of use and winnability are two key elements to keep customers engaged. More choice, in terms of market breadth, depth and innovative generosity mechanics, will continue to be well received provided the experience doesn’t become bamboozling – particularly for newer customers.
Improving winnability is also important. That doesn’t mean offering inaccurate prices or being unintentionally generous for the sake of it, it’s that a customer who never actually wins doesn’t tend to stick around, no matter how much they’re enjoying the product
Bet Builders are seen as very customer-safety friendly as they typically involve small stake bets from recreational customers at high price points – but if you’re placing bets at an average price of 20/1+ then you can go a long time before you actually win one of them. For bookmakers, ensuring optimal price elasticity on the product and embedding new generosity levers, like we’ve done with Super Sub and Ghost Leg, will help ensure customers are playing safely while also having plenty of opportunities to win.
How much have your new features – Paddy Power’s Feed, Mix and Match and SOT including woodwork products – as well as old ones like Betfair’s 90 min guarantee and Sky Bet’s Super Boosts and Acca Freezes been in this tournament? Can you say that these have had a measurable impact on customer acquisition and retention?
Some features definitely lend themselves better to tournament football than others. Match Odds 90 for Betfair continued to prove popular with what is typically a sharper customer base and we did see several game-changing goals post 89.59 but on the flip side, SkyBet’s ACCA Freeze is much more of a domestic season promotion and, as we expected, it doesn’t lend itself as well to tournament scheduling where, in the knockout rounds in particular, there is often only 2-3 matches per day.
The Feed on Paddy Power showed strong engagement across socials and in terms of conversion, which is helping us surface valuable feedback to optimise in future. “Shot on Target including woodwork”, (a mouthful to say I know), is focused around increasing BetBuilder winnability but also around building trust.
In my experience, a key characteristic of successful new features is that they fix a known customer pain point – this was true of Super Sub, which Paddy Power launched into the UK&I market, but originally, the ideation came from our Sisal colleagues in Rome and the genesis for the idea was to reduce friction for something that annoys all customers – your player being subbed off. I think the widespread industry adoption since then is testament to how successful it has been from original ideation to global execution.
