The customisation revolution in sportsbook

After several years bemoaning the lack of innovation in the sportsbook sector it feels as if the industry is in the midst of a genuine product reinvention. In an ironic twist, a raft of me-too product iterations seem to have pushed operators away from one much trumpeted area of development into another more challenging and complex area. We’ve seen a swing away from personalisation towards customisation, and this has some interesting implications.

Mr Green is the latest to join the party with a number of bettorlogic integrations helping users have a more “customised” experience when placing bets. The most intriguing is the oddly named Football Combi Spin, which allows users to set their odds and then suggests the best accumulator bets for the price. There have been similar products in the past but the difference here is the bets are, in theory, less random and more informed due to the bettorlogic technology that provides supporting reasons for the bets.

“I think we are the first sportsbook really trying to help our customers bet smarter,” Enda Gaffney, head of sportsbook at Mr Green, said. And while the conclusion is arguable, the intent is what’s important. Clearly the operator doesn’t actually want customers to truly bet smartly and beat their lines, but it wants to empower them and give them a feeling of control in their bets at the same time as pushing them towards higher margin products.

Customised accumulators have become the new black in the sportsbook sector. Sky Bet was arguably the leader in this with their RequestABet product that began as a novelty product used by a relatively small number of punters looking for larger priced selections on football matches. Since then it has grown into a monster with RequestABets dominating the suggested bets on a typical Premier League game and now being rolled out into other sports.

Customising the experience

And, of course, it’s been a product most of Sky Bet’s rivals have lovingly reinvented for themselves.

William Hill’s YourOdds, Paddy Power’s WhatOdds, BetVictor’s PriceItUp and Coral’s YourCall are all a big part of their promotional efforts this football season, not just on social media but increasingly on TV advertising too. The conceit is customer’s ask for a price on an unquoted market on Twitter and receive a price on their selection that others can also bet on. Until now it’s been a fairly manual process with a trader making a call and some widely varying prices between the operators as a result, but that too is changing.

Ladbrokes #GetAPrice and Coral #YourCall markets are now automatically priced by Digital Sports Tech. The system also allows LCL’s trading teams to create and customise all of their own player prop and accumulator markets, which are then automatically pushed directly to the front-end of existing event pages. And in a similar move supplier Betgenius has partnered with data providers Sportcast to launch BetBuilder, a new accumulator service that allows punters to add multiple selections to their betting slips from the same event. Three sportsbook operators are ready to go live with the product this month with all major global sporting events set to be included in the offering.

Evolution, not revolution

It would be wrong to suggest this is a wholesale revolution in the sports betting sector. RequestABet style products and custom accumulators are simply evolutions of existing betting options that both operators and customers are familiar with. But they appear to have hit a sweet spot where they increase engagement and entertainment value for the punter while protecting and even increasing margin for the operators. And crucially they are pushing online sports betting towards a more customised and personal user experience.

Personalisation remains the holy grail for most, but customisation is proving a neat solution in the short-term and is something other verticals can learn from. In an online world where customers are increasingly price sensitive and odds comparison sites are king, having more customised markets allow for a more recreational product that’s less about value and more about fun by directly engaging with the customer. And that should be good news for everyone.