2022 World Cup: Get to know your future new players

We love big events; who doesn’t? For marketers across brands and verticals, big events represent an opportunity to engage their audience more deeply. Every vertical has its version of a big event, from back to school, Cyber Monday, to National Ice Cream Day – they come in all shapes and sizes. The sports ones are easy to identify as they usually involve a ball.

But the presence of a ball is just the beginning, and this coming World Cup isn’t any big event; it’s a mega event. Mega sports events are often significant – think the Superbowl or Champions League Final – but few mean billions watching around the globe, more than a million fans in the stadiums, dozens of billions of dollars in projected spend, and other mind-boggling tidbits. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar does, though (21 November-18 December).

And if previous mega events are any indication, and they are, operators can expect vast numbers of new players placing their first bets, representing a great growth opportunity.

What do we know about these new players? Here are six points to consider:

1.More new and reactivated players to consider: In years without a big sporting event, you’ll mostly find the player type breakdown (see pie chart below) skewed more in the active players’ direction. However, big events like the World Cup bring many first-time and newly reactivated depositors. This means you should put the focus heavily on reactivated and new players and should dictate the allocation of resources to keep them engaged.

2.Low in value, so numbers matter: Operators should focus on acquiring the most significant piece of the pie possible from these players, who often become available during mega-events before the tournament. That sounds like a no-brainer; the more, the merrier, right? But there’s a solid rationale here – while those are casual players and of lower value, the more of those you gather, the better your odds of nurturing them into high-value players.

Don’t stop acquiring new players and build reactivation plans based on past bettor behaviour to bring back as many players as possible.

3. What about reactivated players, are they considered new? Reactivated players will probably consist of previous big events’ unnurtured casual players or, when the World Cup is held during summertime, those whose national leagues have finished their season long before the tournament. Like new players, there will be a deep pool of potentially reactivated players, representing an excellent opportunity to nurture them back to activity.

4. The more they bet, the better: Unlike active players, casual players will turn a cold shoulder if go unnurtured. Identify your new players and make sure to engage them regularly. Focus on promoting bets on their national teams.

     What happens if theirs didn’t qualify or were eliminated? To avoid a dip in activity, try to find “adoptive team programmes” to anchor your marketing plan (the same goes for non-participating countries) at a 26% clip.

      Consider gamification to help you achieve this goal; for example – bet on all your national team matches and get a free bet in the final (that gives you all the stages leading up to the final with their attention). Look at logins and email openings to measure how engaged those players are.

5. That all-important second bet: Our data shows that new players placing the second bet are twice as likely to be retained than those placing just one, and retention likelihood rises the more active those players become.

6. Bet and flee players: The newly acquired players’ churn rate after big events is higher. Most bettors activated during the World Cup will churn. Historically, new players acquired during sporting events have a 25% lower retention rate. Chances are your casual players won’t be interested in betting on other events, so try to tie the tournament they just watched into bets on their national leagues. For example, the gap between the World Cup final and the resumption of the English Premier League is just eight days; take advantage of this fact and try to link the events. For countries with longer breaks, try to find “surrogate events” to keep the momentum going. Incentivise deposits immediately for “zero-balance” users and those who have made a withdrawal, offering early preferential rates on bets made towards the resumption of other sports.

Let’s just call them pre-churn

What if instead of calling them new players, we called them “pre-churn”. Would that generate the necessary sense of urgency required to retain them? We’re not sure. What we do know is that operators will see new players arriving in significant numbers during this coming World Cup. From that point on, it’s up to each operator to tweak their strategy and targeted segments to accommodate. Are new players elusive, complicated and require a more thoughtful approach? Sure. Are they retainable and represent a huge opportunity for growth? You bet.

Optimove is the leading CRM marketing platform, empowering brands to personalise CRM journeys at scale with customer insights, AI-led orchestration and all the channels they need in one place. With a CDP at its core, Optimove leverages AI to autonomously surface valuable customer segments, orchestrate self-optimising CRM journeys and accurately deliver the marketing interaction of highest incremental impact across email, mobile, web and more.