SEO: How the Euros will be felt across all verticals
BlueClaw's Alex Humphries looks at the impact big sporting events has on the online gaming search market
Like most major footballing events, there is a great deal of excitement for Euro 2016 (which is likely to be followed by great disappointment if you follow England). Affiliates and operators everywhere are rubbing their hands together with glee at the prospect of generating more sign-ups and taking more bets. Or at least they will from a sports betting perspective.
What about the affiliates who focus on the other verticals such as bingo, casino and poker? How does Euro 2016, an event which grips the attention of the majority of Europe, affect these other areas of the gambling industry? That’s what we’re aiming to find out.
Firstly though, we’ll start by looking at how the tournament affects sports betting, so that we can compare the other verticals later on. Unsurprisingly, the search trends show us that every time there is a major tournament, the search interest goes up.
What is interesting here is that in 2008, when England failed to qualify for the Euro tournament, there was still an increase in search interest, despite the Three Lions not being involved. This suggests that football fans in the UK will still watch a tournament, regardless of whether their team is competing. However, with most of the home nations competing, it’s likely that search interest around football betting, prior to and during Euro 2016, will increase considerably.
From the horse’s mouth
With search interest increasing, more bets are likely to be placed. On this, Alex Donohue from Ladbrokes said: “We anticipate Euro 2016 to break betting records. The combination of nearly all home nations and Ireland sending a team, the European stars and an exciting England side is a potent one for our recreational customer base so we expect bet count and turnover, both in-play and pre-match, to hit a record number.”
Joe Crilly from William Hill told us that they expect to see approximately two million bets on Euro 2016, and that “England are our worst result, Northern Ireland our 2nd worst result and Wales our 3rd worst result in our current outright book. This is likely to change as the tournament progresses but I would expect that England would remain our worst result. We took lots of money on England when they beat Germany in a recent friendly, however, punters were brought back down to earth a few days later when Holland won 2-1 at Wembley.”
Meanwhile, Simon Clare from Coral said that they too were expecting a large number of bets: “With three home nations and Ireland all making it to Euro 2016, the increase in the number of teams and therefore matches at the tournament, and the huge growing popularity of football betting, we will take more bets on Euro 2016 than Coral has taken on any other major international football tournament.”
“At this stage we are seeing some support for England, but nothing for the other home nations, as their chances of success are considered slim. We expect to see plenty of betting interest on all the matches involving the home nations and Ireland, from patriotic supporters of those countries.”
Beyond the core
Next we take a look at how Euro 2016 is likely to affect the bingo market.
Indications are that it is in fact the World Cup, and not the Euros which has an effect on the bingo market, with the trends for the ‘bingo’ phrase down in June (from the previous month) in 2010 and 2014, both of which were years in which a World Cup was held. In June 2008, the trend for the same term increased, with June 2012 also seeing a marginal increase. The term ‘online bingo’ saw similar results, with 2010 and 2014 both seeing a downward trend from May to June.
We asked Andy Edwards, who runs Madaboutbingo.com, how the sector is affected by tournaments such as Euro 2016, and he told us: “Whenever major sporting events are on there does tend to be a slight drop in players when the matches are on, however the majority of bingo players will be playing on a tablet or mobile so tend to be playing whilst the match is on in the background. We notice that there is a slight increase in female players during this time as they are abandoned by their other half whilst the match is on so may log on and chat to fellow bingo players and have a game to pass the time.”
With the online casino phrase, we found that 2008 is down May to June, 2010 is marginally up, 2012 remains at a stable level and 2014 is down.
The term ‘casino’, which has a slightly higher average monthly search volume than the previous term, sees no change in 2008, slightly up in 2012, but down in both 2010 and 2014. This is similar to the ‘bingo’ and ‘online bingo’ terms, which both see a decline in June of 2010 and 2014, both years in which there is a World Cup, which again suggests that the bigger tournament has more of an effect on other verticals.
A good hand?
Where poker is concerned, we know that the search market is suffering greatly from a loss of interest, and so it’s difficult to really assess how it is affected by Euro and World Cup tournaments. So, do Euro tournaments have an effect on other verticals? The answer seems to be a resounding yes, but whether this is a negative or positive effect remains debatable. From a search perspective, it appears that World Cups have more of a negative impact on search for other verticals with downward trends evident across bingo and casino during World Cup years.
Edwards from Madaboutbingo.com says the search trends are representative of what happens: “We did notice a bigger impact on player numbers and player values during the World Cup, whereas the majority of the bingo players were more patriotic during the World Cup match and we didn’t see a big drop in figures and player volume during the times the matches were on. Having said that there was a slight spike after the match was finished which would suggest players were waiting for the match to finish before they logged on and played.”
On the other hand, several bookmakers see the Euros as an opportunity to promote their other services. Ladbrokes’ Donohue said: “Undoubtedly, interest in other verticals is heightened during a tournament like this and we see it as a great cross sell opportunity.” And Crilly of William Hill agreed, saying: “Major events have a positive effect. More customers use our website to place bets on major events which leads to increased migration of customers from sportsbook to our poker, casino and bingo sites.”
Despite this, Coral isn’t as optimistic, with Clare adding: “The domination of Euro 2016 will likely see positive spikes in Coral and Gala online gaming activity, but may slightly depress betting turnover on other products, in particular Royal Ascot turnover may suffer year on year, given the football matches taking place throughout the week, most notably England vs. Wales on Ladies Day, Thursday 16 June.”
Of course, we have been looking at the interest in these verticals from a search perspective. If a player is already on an operator’s site, it’s unlikely they will come away from that site and search for another game such as bingo. Instead they are more likely to click directly to go to their preferred part of the site, for example, to go and play casino. This may help explain the apparent lack of organic search interest, and the comment from two of the three bookmakers featured that they expect to see a rise across other verticals and not just sports betting during Euro 2016.