Bet365, Paddy Power and William Hill are all long established betting brands that dominate television commercials and many Google search results.
It can seem quite intimidating for new betting sites to compete for players with these juggernauts without the right strategy.
That doesn’t stop new companies from starting up and attracting players to join their sportsbook instead. If you have a look at the latest bookies in the UK you’ll find many new to the game.
Here are how those new bookmakers can grab a small corner of the market:
Focus on different sports
There is no doubt that football and casino is where the money is at when it comes to bookmakers, whilst horse racing and tennis have huge popularity too.
These sports are the main focus of the biggest and long-established bookmakers and where the majority of their budgets go.
This means that they don’t cover all of the different sports available as betting markets very strongly. And there are lots of sports that players follow and enjoy betting on.
From Mixed Martial Arts, E-Sports and even the WWE, there are a number of fairly small new betting sites markets that a new bookmaker could focus their marketing around and essentially dominate.
E-Sports in particular are growing each year, particularly over the past 12 months, and yet, no bookmaker has really cornered or focused on this niche. Whilst it may be because there isn’t a huge interest in betting on it just yet, you can be sure it will only be a matter of time before it takes off. So why not focus your attention on this with your startup?
Not just PR and branding, but also dominating Google’s search results where they could gain a number one ranking for potential new players to find.
WWE is another event that is growing in popularity among bettors. This includes the Royal Rumble, WrestleMania and other big shows on their yearly schedule.
Offer something unique
Today Betfair are a huge company but when they entered the marketing in 1999 few understood their product because they were the first to offer a betting exchange.
Now they have the majority of the betting exchange market as there are still very few competitors and those that they do have, have failed to take away much of the market share.
The traditional sportsbook is a highly competitive industry, so Betfair could be an inspiration to many of the newcomers in creating something unique.
That doesn’t necessarily mean changing the way people bet completely as Betfair did by allowing players to lay bets. It could be betting as a syndicate, a change in how free bets are rewarded, or create a unique feature.
Play by the rules
Gambling laws vary from country to country so it’s important that all new bookmakers study them carefully and abide.
It is all well and good to think that this isn’t difficult but actually many bookmakers get fined each year for breaking the rules. For a new bookmaker without sufficient funding and with a lack of members, this could be critical.
Never before has it been important to protect player’s safety, and many bookmakers now put an emphasis on safety to make sure they not only abide by the rules but in order to protect the players they do have. New laws continue to be introduced and changed each year, with the United Kingdom notably getting tougher than it was just a few years ago. So, it’s important for new bookmakers that want to compete with the top companies that they play by the rules with new betting sites.
