How to Craft Effective Sports Betting Advertising Message that Instantly Drive Bettors to Action

 

Sports betting Market in Nigeria

The online Sports betting market is such wherein product differentiation is minimal and price inelasticity robust. Business insiders widely accepts that product innovation is instantly replicated across competitors, which are permanently seeking to generate, so far unfruitful, distruptive competitive edge. In a context where the number of licensed bookmakers is constantly growing, advertising plays a big part in luring customers who cannot tell the difference between companies and brand offer

Advertising and marketing spend on sports betting has greatly increased over the last five years in Nigeria.  1xBet and Betking shuggled it out during the last AFCON 2021; Bet9ja and Betway move to gain mileage by sponsoring the popular tv reality show series, Big Brother Naija.in 2020/2021 respectively. Report shows that 45% of the total advertising spend online are from the Sports betting industry. Every company is fighting to put their brand in front of bettors’ mind and using every possible channel to put out their message.

In crafting an effective advertising message should first of all, understand bettors’ persona and behavioral dynamics 

Understanding Bettors Persona

The demographic report shows that 82% male and only 18% female are involved in staking bets regularly in Nigeria.

Sports Fans: 64% of regular bettors are sports fans, especially football fans who believe they understand how the games play out and have up to date knowledge of each team’s competitive level that enable them to relatively predict outcomes of each fixture.  

Masculinity: The masculinity behavior of being a real man and being able to take risk, damn the consequences of losing and enjoying the spoil when win. Bettors set their mind more on what they will do with their winning money than the consequences of losing their money.

Understanding Bettors Behavioral Dynamics

Chronic gamblers will always bet but are not loyal to any brand. Most of this class of bettors usually register with several bookmakers and at the slightest difficulty with one website or company, they quickly move over to another.

However, some have this superstition that they are lucky with a company than others and that can keep them loyal as long as do not face any difficulty.

Surprisingly, bettors patronize companies because of their brand nomenclatures, colors, the celebrity influencer like JJ Okocha for Betking, or their advertising story or message on television or online.

New bettors are mostly lured by the winning testimonies of their friends, colleagues. Again, when some people face financial challenge, they turn to sports betting as the only hope that can bring them out of their quagmire.

Sports Betting Advertising Message

Here, I will outline two of the most utilized master narratives in online betting advertising; namely Skill-enhancing narratives, in which there is an over emphasis on the capacity and knowledge of the bettor, and the other end of the spectrum, risk lowering narratives, which under-emphasis the risk involved in betting and over-estimate the probability of winning.

Skill Enhancing Narratives Advertising:

 Vahe Baloulian, CEO of the betting software company BetConstruct, declared that new features were there to give customers a chance to feel more in control by engaging more often and making decisions’ (Lopez-Gonzalez, Estevez & Griffiths, 2017), with ‘feel’ and  ‘control’ being the keywords here. The ‘feel’ component refers to a perceived non-factual sensation that lies at the heart of the advertising endeavor. The perception of control over the betting activity has been found to be a common attribute of gambling narratives in Nigeria, in which elements of skill have been exaggerated (Binde,2009), as well as in televised commercials, wherein betting has been associated with the imagery of media sport communication, skills, and long-meditated strategies, while luck was downplayed(McMullan & Miller, 2008).

Many betting features newly added to online platforms are said by commercials to enhance the control of the user over the outcome of the event bet upon, including more gamified experiences (where passive bettors supposedly become players), immersive betting experiences, and fantasy sports (where the player actively recruits a team). In these examples, the betting experience demands a higher involvement from the bettor, arguably resulting in a psychological transference between the active role of a bettor executing actions and the actual influence a bettor’s action can may have on the outcome of an external event.

In essence, advertising contributes, to the myth of gambling and portrayal of betting as a sport (McMullan & Miller, 2008) an activity that is healthy, harmless, and that can be mastered with knowledge, practice and talent.

Among the most used selling points that enhance the self-efficacy and control of the sport bettors are the narratives of masculinity. Attributes such as loyalty to the team, being a real man, and being brave enough to prove sporting knowledge been implicit in some sport betting messages, including stereotyped gender depictions and sexualized imagery (Thomas et al. 2015). According to Hing et al.  2016, the prototype sports bettor is male, young, tech-savvy, and professional, which aligns with the target audience of betting advertising. This reinforces the idea of male providers that sublimate in gambling their manly instincts for aggression, competition, and combat.

Risk-lowering Narratives Advertising:

 in parallel to the skill-enhancing strategies, advertising diminishes the harmful consequences of excessive betting by representing it as a risk-free activity. The combined narrative would be that of a safe environment where intelligent people possess the tools to succeed. In an attempt to lower the perceived risk inherently embedded in any betting activity, three major messages have been emphasized by advertisers: (i) betting is a perfectly normal activity; (ii) errors in betting predictions are not fatal; and (iii) betting is a social activity (Lopez-Gonzalez, Estevez & Griffiths, 2017.)

 Advertising has been frequently proposed as a significant mechanism of gambling normalization including new social media channels. The portrayal of gambling attitudes and behaviours in media representations as well as an intrinsic form of entertainment. This is true for all forms of gambling but sport betting presents some singular intensifiers. Unlike any other gambling form, sport instils in betting its health and sanitization attributes (McMullan & Miller, 2008). Attributes such as fair competition, success through talent and perseverance, equal opportunities and big rewards, respect for nature, green and healthy habits are transmitted to betting behavior. Celebrities deepen that connection as they have been proven to reduce the perceived risk by the public of the products they endorse (Lamount et al., 2016). Sportspeople tell the story of young, talented risk-takers who challenged the odds but emerged successful in the end, arguably a perfect incarnation of the bettor’s own aspirational narrative.

Another marketing technique broadly employed by betting operators concerns the provisions of risk-free bets. Advertisements typically offer welcome bonuses for new customers, free bonuses for loyal clientele, and money-back exceptions in multiple complex accumulated bets (Lopez-Gonzalez, Estevez & Griffiths, 2017). All of these free offers pose a dual threat. On the one hand, the so called free-money requires bettors to engage in further betting in order to reclaim their benefits (leading to money losses in the process). On the other hand, even if it is a bona fide free bonus, problem gamblers might conceptualise betting as a riskless activity that entails no responsibilities even when done excessively.