Billed as a “fun, fast and fair cryptocurrency and fiat sportsbook,” Sportsbet.io, a brand operated by Yolo Group, quickly set about carving its own path through a saturated environment following its establishment eight years ago.
Despite a swift and widespread embrace of sporting partnerships to gain traction across strategically targeted jurisdictions, to utilising digital currencies to appeal to a new generation of players and implementing tactical initiatives to help shape future developments, the operator is far from resting on its laurels.
Set against the backdrop of Portugal’s coastal capital city of Lisbon, SBC News sat down with Alexander Haig, Director of Sportsbet.io, to discover the thoughts behind the brand’s calculated journey so far, and just how it plans to continue to stay ahead of the game.
Sports solidify market positions
It is no secret that Sportsbet.io looks to sports, as well as esports, as a way to secure crucial momentum across either legacy regions or markets that may represent a fresh point of entry.
A rich history of such alliances is clear should you make a visit to the company’s Tallinn HQ, with replica jerseys complete with brand visibility adorning the impressive office space.
However, for Haig, market size simply doesn’t matter when it comes to assessing how these partnerships are deemed a correct fit that will deliver the desired results.
“Ultimately with our sports partnerships, how we assess it in the early days is by looking at where we are as a business,” he says.
“If we’re small in the market or if it’s a partnership where we’re trying to solidify our position, those are the kind of variables that we’re looking at as to whether we want to proceed, whether it’s an EPL or a basketball sponsorship or an ambassador.”
In essence, it’s the overall values of a sports association, team, league or a similar such target that retain the utmost importance. As Haig continues, ensuring similar principles and standards are met is key.
“It’s not just a blank cheque that we send to them. It’s a mutually beneficial partnership,” he states. “We don’t want to just send them money for brand visibility.
“We want to work with them as a partner so that they get as much out of the partnership as we do.”
However, entering a partnership is one thing, but correctly harnessing these to penetrate a new market or make additional headway into a current one provides another challenge.
In addition to highlighting that research into what will deliver the maximum mutual benefits is of the utmost importance, Haig reiterates that “it’s a lot down to the partner and their values as well, and what they can bring to the table without it just being a brand visibility play”.
Internal product feedback
Gaining information on a product to shape future improvements is often easier said than done, but for Haig the solution was a relatively simple task.
The Know Your Sportsbet.io initiative was rolled-out earlier in the year as a result of user testing, and sees employees gain their own test account, complete with $50, amid an encouragement to play on the wider group’s sites.
“They can play whatever they want, sports or casino, and whatever they win, they get to keep,” Haig explains.
“Ultimately from a feedback perspective, we get immediate feedback if something on the sites isn’t working, and we get it from a member of staff and not from a customer, which is why I’m here.”
Driven by a desire to keep staff members happy and gain a deeper understanding of the group’s products, it’s the immediacy of product feedback that makes this scheme a win-win for Haig.
“I obviously can’t say to everybody ‘please go and play on one of our competitor sites for your own money’, but I’d love them playing on our own product,” he says.
“And every month we pay out a few thousand dollars to internal staff. So everyone gets a nice little bump in their package.”
A progression to $10bn
A consistent catalogue of upgrades are essential, especially amid the ever increasing competition that is being witnessed across the global landscape.
However, for Sportsbet.io, a recent viewpoint of progression was gained after a milestone of $10bn of bets was surpassed amid the reveal of a series of key facts regarding this volume of activity.
These include paying out a bet at the largest odds – 192,000/1 – in Sportsbet.io history, having “one of the fastest withdrawal speeds ever”, and recording another major win, paying out $2.9m to a lucky punter.
Looking at how all of this points towards justification that the level of progression is hitting internal targets, Haig continues: “I would be reasonably confident that we would have been the fastest, if not one of the fastest, to hit $10bn from day one to day 10 billion.
“In terms of how we’re celebrating it, we launched a week-long campaign where we gave away $100,000 in free bets.”
Eliminating crypto fears
As a long-standing crypto, and fiat, sportsbook, the team at Sportsbet.io, in addition to the wider Yolo community, are well placed to advise on the current uptake and if hesitancy of customers due to perceived risks and challenges is being eradicated.
“There’s an overarching hesitancy of some customers to utilise cryptocurrencies because historically crypto was viewed as an investment asset,” he comments. “It’s not necessarily always been a utility that you could use for gambling.
“And Yolo Group, with Sportsbet.io and Bitcasino, kind of paved the way to launch that where you can actually gamble with crypto.”
The challenge of a demanding audience
As entertainment choices widen in their variety, players are becoming increasingly demanding when it comes to their wants and needs being met in a prompt manner.
However, when it comes to the challenge of meeting the need of an audience that is constantly wanting more, Haig addresses just how you ensure that experiences remain engaging and personalised.
Amid a sustained lookout for product enhancements, the Sportsbet.io Director points to the addition of fresh products, such as NFT horse racing and extra betting options that includes sumo wrestling, as examples of how a fresh wave of options can stimulate an audience.
Returning to a more familiar theme, Haig explains: “The most recent feature that we launched was an on site feature feedback. This allows customers in real time to send through feedback of their product or their gameplay of whatever they think would work for us.
“Whatever they think would not work, any negative feedback [or] positive feedback. We go through that once a month with the product teams and any feedback that’s coming up more consistently we would place into the product roadmap. We proactively try to add the customer feedback into our product roadmap.”
AI – the darling of tech development
When it comes to the current trends being talked about across the betting and gaming industries, artificial intelligence is very much the hot topic at the tip of seemingly everyone’s tongues.
From a front-end product positioning standpoint, Haig notes that AI will, sooner or later, witness a changing of the tide from localisation to personalisation.
“What you want from a personalisation perspective is that that product then starts to tailor towards you,” Haig continues, noting that customers across jurisdictions should be bearing witness to their local offering.
Despite an abundance of data being in existence to allow research for sports bets to be undertaken, the basic benefit of AI would permit this to be done in a much more timely manner.
“AI will ultimately allow customers to start researching their own products and receive information in a significantly faster and easier way than they’ve ever been able to do so in the past,” he concludes.
“The plan that we have, within the next few months, is to launch something on site where you would get AI feedback on what the recent trends of an individual player market or team would be to allow you to replicate what is a more clever bet, or a bet that is substantiated by a bit more data than in any other way.
“It would’ve taken you a couple of hours to research to do all of that, but AI delivers it to you all in a very easy to digest package.”
