AffiliateCon panel: Niche betting markets' novelty is fading

According to the findings of a recent panel, the novelty of alternative betting markets is beginning to wear off as the length of time that live sports continue to be missing increases. Players aren't as invested in niche markets like stay-at-home darts and the Belarusian Premier League, according to the director of public relations for Pressbox, Alex Donohue. As a result, these niche markets are seeing less participation from players.

During the Gambling Insider-powered AffiliateCon Virtually Live conference that took place today, Donohue was one of the speakers. The recovery of sports betting operators and affiliates from the coronavirus outbreak was a topic that he and the other panelists explored.

There has been some interest in specialized products and services, which is good for the business world in general since having something to discuss is preferable than having nothing at all to discuss "he added. "If you are a fan of the Premier League, the most of the bets you place will revolve around the clubs and players that you are familiar with and like seeing play.

One of the misconceptions that people who are not involved in our industry have is that gamblers have transitioned uniformly from betting on the Premier League to some of these obscure sports. While it will be interesting to place a wager on Belarusian football, this is one of the misconceptions. To my way of thinking, that hasn't really taken place yet, and I don't think we'll be able to make an accurate assessment of the recovery until we've participated in some live sporting events that are recognized as legitimate. One of the challenges you face is having an excessive number of these specialized services, which creates the possibility that your consumer base would become bored with them. You may place a wager on the first night since it's exciting and novel, but the novelty could wear off really fast.

Warren Sammut, the owner of Betsson Group SEO marketing, concurred with Donohue that alternative offers such as esports have been helpful; nevertheless, because of a lack of familiarity with them, they will not be able to replace conventional leagues in the foreseeable future.

Sammut continued by saying, "I believe that in order to follow that sport, you need to be involved to some amount, which might take months, if not years." The return of major league sports is very high on the agenda, and there is a lot of appetite for these sports to come back. The new offerings were helpful because they created something new and exciting to follow, but I think the return of major league sports is very high on the agenda.

The pandemic has had a greater impact on the Racing Post, which, according to Louise Agran, the CMO of its parent company Spotlight Sports Group, decided to stop publication of its newspaper on March 26, after 34 years of daily UK circulation. This decision was made after the newspaper was affected by the pandemic.

"That should give you some notion of how significant the effect has been," she added to me. This is something that has never been done before, and it is not something that we intended to accomplish in any way. Because there wasn't enough racing in the UK and Ireland, it wasn't financially or logistically practical to print anything. We did not have enough content that was relevant to our audience to include in the paper, and we also did not have enough content to justify the price of the paper. That was a huge step for us, and despite the fact that there is racing in some places around the world, there is still none in the United Kingdom or Ireland. I believe it is an indicator of what we have had to do and how we have had to adjust, and that is that we have been really striving to advertise everywhere there has been racing.