After another enthralling season of domestic football Oddschecker has digested the season’s key themes with specific reference to how the impact they have on operators.
Oddschecker revealed that the back end of the season (Apr/May) saw the most bookie-friendly PL results since Q4 2015; with just 56% of games involving the big 6 PL teams being won by the favourite vs. 76% for the same period last season. How this will effect staking levels during the World Cup remains to be seen.
It added that PL overrounds look to be turning a corner. Following consistent season on season erosion since it started collating data in 2010/11 last season saw the first reversal (i.e. increase) in 1×2 overrounds; rising 22bps to 103.88%.
There have also been some significant season on season movement in how operators position themselves on the demand/price continuum. Although bet365 still dominate PL betslip clicks on the OC platforms they are doing so to a lesser extent, in fact as evidenced in the monthly analyst notes Oddschecker produce with Barclays bet365’s football clickshare has fallen 3pp season on season, meanwhile Paddy Power (PP) experienced a v. challenging season prompted by an inferior product offering (albeit temporary) which coincided with their single customer platform (SCP) migration.
Now complete it is already seeing improvement to the level of interaction with the PP brand across our platforms and expect such momentum to continue throughout the World Cup. The standout performer this season however was Marathonbet, having priced the most competitively for every week of the season bar one Marathonbet saw their clickshare more than treble to just shy of 10%, helping them to eclipse the likes Sky Bet and William Hill.
The importance of a comprehensive API offering is now as stark as ever with well over 80% of all Oddschecker betslip clicks being associated with those sportsbooks which provide betting API functionality. Even within this cohort we are seeing greater performance by the bookies which offer greater functionality exposure via their API (deposit, withdraw, cash out etc.).
The consumption of live sport in its entirety is waning – as people opt to consume short form nuggets of content. To echo the sentiment of the NBA commissioner “The games are the meals and the highlights are the snack”; and it seems from the PL viewing data that ‘snacking’ is becoming more and more prevalent season on season. We know that televised games on average attract more than twice the stakes of their non-televised counterparts so this is a very important trend to monitor, especially given the importance of in-play betting to UK bookmakers. Curiously the importance of the broadcaster remains subdued despite Sky Sports outperforming BT from a viewing (both peak and average) perspective.
The benefits of an Oddschecker takeover were once again realised by the myriad of operators with whom we partnered. On days in which a partner had a PL takeover (advertorial skins and banners across our site) registrations and first time depositors increased by 40% and 33% respectively.
Oddschecker’s omnipotence within the PL domain went from strength to strength with Football page views increasing by over half season on season. Leveraging on our domain authority Oddschecker has been able to significantly improve its Google rankings for a number of key search terms, not least ‘football tips’ where our ranking has sky rocketed from #12 to #2. Such improvement can partly be attributed to Oddschecker’s outreach programme which sees its brand feature in national online publications on an almost daily basis. Our success in these areas has direct spill over benefits to our bookmaker partners who in turn are able to piggyback on our independence and credibility within the sphere of judgment of both Google and national media outlets.
Moving on to the World Cup we’re already seeing a sharp uptick in interest surrounding what will undoubtedly be the biggest betting event ever. Unsurprisingly bet365 are dominating the ante-post outright markets but marketing tactics are already coming to fruition with Paddy Power’s Golden Boot 6 Place offering resonating especially strongly with punters, their share of bets for the Golden Boot market is twice that of the tournament winner market. With Bet Victor’s eagerly anticipated World Cup offer due on Monday the next few weeks should prove to be very exciting indeed.
Whilst Oddschecker have sold the vast majority of its World Cup takeovers some opportunities still remain and should you be interested I implore you to contact me at your earliest convenience to avoid disappointment.
