Online gambling marketing: the blizzard in Oz
Centrebet marketing chief Luke Brill explains why the online gambling world is waking up to Australia.
Upon arrival from the UK, I was told “you can’t market in Australia” and any attempts to sponsor, advertise above the line or for that matter anywhere near the line, would result in the same fate as Ned Kelly.
However, with some solid marketing efforts that pushed the boundaries from both Centrebet and Betfair, the cross-border advertising laws were relaxed in October 2008. Since then corporate bookies have gone marketing crazy, much to the delight of a depressed advertising market.
Print, broadcast and online are swamped with marketing messages from the great and the good and now nearly every NRL or AFL team has a betting partner and key sporting TV shows carry integrated odds about, and tips from, the key presenters name checking corporate bookmakers.
From a European perspective a lot of this has been seen before, but never in Australia where the propensity to gamble is a lot higher than elsewhere and where the whole nation stops to watch a horse race.
Is all this marketing working? I can only speak for Centrebet, and the answer is a resounding ‘yes’. We are seeing more registrations and new bettors month on month than we ever have.
There are, of course, hurdles to get over: the inability to offer casino and poker or live betting on the internet to Australian residents and new legislation currently being rushed through parliament to outlaw the use of free bets. But that’s all part of the challenge for a marketer.
The Australian gambling market feels like it’s about to boom and the competition reflects this, it will be very interesting over the next two years to see who the winners are.
The next logical step, consolidation, has already started with Paddy Power’s acquisitions of Sportsbet and IAS. It looks like the world is waking up to Australia.