INSIGHT

60 iGB Affiliate Issue 51 JUNE/JULY 2015

iGB’s Social Monitor has been analysing and comparing the social media buzz of English-language iGaming brands since the start of 2014. We caught up with lead consultant Joakim Nilsson to find out how the performances, strategies and key metrics of the leading brands have evolved in this time.

You have been tracking sportsbooks’

share of voice since the start of 2014.

Which brands have seen the biggest rise

and fall in their rankings since then, and

what has been driving this?

Paddy Power is, as everyone knows, the

most talked-about sportsbook of all,

making up more than 50% of the total

online sportsbook brand buzz. The share

of voice between brands was pretty

even across 2014, except for one notable

instance, when 888 came from practically

nowhere to being mentioned more than

100,000 times during the World Cup in

Brazil. Twitter is clearly the channel that

drives the volume. Of the 8.2 million

online mentions we analysed, 89% were

tweets, and that’s after filtering out a big

portion of the “noise” from spammy

affiliate accounts on Twitter sending out

the same kinds of bonus tweets thousands

of times per month.

Spikes in brand mentions, especially on

Twitter, are very much influenced by what

the brands themselves are doing. 888sport’s

jump in mention volumes during the World

Cup was heavily related to content that

they tweeted, in particular, a couple of

well-curated vines from @FootyHumour

with Thomas Muller spring to mind here:

https://vine.co/v/MFUTdPuQeAH

Paddy Power is always cited as the

example of how to do social media and

always appears to come out top on Social

Monitor. Are any of the other brands

actually managing to close the gap on

Paddy’s, and if not, why not?

If we look at Twitter, then yes, Paddy

Power is playing in its own league.

But once you remove Twitter from the

equation and look at all other online

sources such as blogs, forums, news

sites and affiliates, then the picture is

completely different and Sky Bet comes

out as the most talked-about brand.

The number one reason that Sky Bet

comes out as the winner here is their

headline sponsorship of the Sky Bet

Championship, as that is how the various

news and content sources now refer to the

second tier of English professional football.

Q&A: JOAKIM NILSSON, SOCIAL MONITOR

0%

0%

1%0%3%

3%3%

89%

1%

Blog Facebook Forum General Image News Review Twitter Video

Figure 1: Channel split across all brands in English language for 2014

INSIGHT

62 iGB Affiliate Issue 51 JUNE/JULY 2015

Even though the title sponsorship for the

Premier League might not yet be available

to a betting company, if we’re to believe

the words of CEO Richard Scudamore,

it’s still a very bright move compared to

being a shirt sponsor of a team in the

same league, as the latter won’t yield

anywhere near the same volume of online

mentions. This is because when we refer to

a team in writing, we don’t refer to them,

for example, as “Dafabet Aston Villa” but

simply as “Aston Villa”. Hence league

title sponsorships have proved to be more

effective in upping the amount of earned

online buzz your brand receives.

Have you noticed any major changes in the

way operators use social media since you

started tracking their activity last year?

If I look at it from the perspective that I’ve

been in the iGaming space for just over a

decade now and involved in social media

since the early days of both Facebook

and Twitter, I have seen a major shift in

how operators approach social media. At

the risk of over generalising, social media

“back then” was seen more as yet another

set of channels for your products and

promotions. Today, I think a section of

the industry’s operators have now started

to embrace social media more holistically

across the organisation. They realise

that the online landscape looks different

from yesterday, with the customer’s voice

notably amplified, hence this section of

operators now asking themselves how they

need to adapt and change throughout the

organisation. Such questions are likely

to include: What’s the role of customer

service today? Do we need to proactively

look for problem mentions outside our

inbound channels? If so, should customer

service be treated as a profit centre rather

than cost centre? Does our six-month

marketing plan and budget make sense in

the advent of real-time marketing? Are we

agile enough to respond to opportunities

quickly enough?

Focusing just on the last year and what

changed during this period, we always see

companies experimenting with the latest

channels such as Snapchat, which is all

well and good if you have the basics in

place, but for most operators I think it risks

becoming more of a distraction than a

powerful marketing tool.

You’ve stated that the combined voice of

customers, affiliates and partners talking

about a brand can be 25x the reach of

the brand’s own social media channels.

Which types of strategy or campaign

have proved effective in delivering this

reach for brands operating on more

limited budgets?

That figure does vary a lot across the

brands, but we’ve seen many incidences

of brands having a much larger combined

reach from their audience talking about

Dec 20130k

60k

40k

20k

80k

100k

Jan 2014 Feb 2014 Mar 2014 Apr 2014 May 2014 Jun 2014 Jul 2014 Aug 2014 Sep 2014 Oct 2014

Men

tion

Volu

me

Nov 2014 Dec 2014 Jan 2015 Feb 2015 Mar 2015 Apr 2015

Paddy Power Sky BetBet365 Betfair Betway Boylesports Bwin888 CoralBetVictor Ladbrokes Totesport Unibet William HillBetfred

Figure 2: Brand mention volume per month across all channels except Twitter

Figure 3: Most popular topics and keywords related to Sky Bet Championship (March 2014)

Sky Bet Championship promotion

Sky Bet Championship side

announced on Friday

WatfordBlackpool Barclays Premier League

BirminghamSouthampton Kick

Evertonsecond-half

first-teamBolton Leeds

Stadium

HullManchester City

Nottingham Forest

ForestFA Cup Football

fourth roundCityQPR London club

Allardyce

Johnson

Leicester

Blackburn

Derby CountyReading

Derby

Burnley

WiganPremier League

Sky Bet Championship club

Sky Bet Championship rivals third round year-old

Sky Bet Championship promotion hopefuls

McClaren

INSIGHT

With over a decade in the iGaming space and his background as Head of Social at Betclic Everest Group, JOAKIM NILSSON heads up the iGB Social Monitor solution, the industry’s first tailored and fully managed social media monitoring and analytics solution for iGaming.

them than from their own social media

channels. Unfortunately, limited budgets

aren’t the answer here, but rather a

well-executed PR stunt that gets people

talking. If we’re going to borrow the

space of our customers’ social media

profiles, we need to give them something

they want to talk about, something that

makes them look smart, entertaining or

good in some other way.

Twitter is by far the dominant channel

when it comes to social mentions – are

there any emerging channels operators

should be looking at?

Instagram has slowly gained traction over

the past year as a channel for players,

affiliates and operators. From a player

perspective, it’s mostly shared bet-slips that

are being hashtagged with an operator’s

brand, and affiliates are perusing the

same strategy as they have on Twitter i.e.

automation and volume. If you ask me if

brands should be on Meerkat or Periscope,

the answer is that although each of these

new platforms brings new opportunities

in how you can communicate and engage,

they need to be backed up by a profound

strategy outlining what the operator really

wants to achieve.

Looking more widely at the space, what

share of total mentions are generated

by sportsbooks compared to the other

product groups such as casino, poker,

bingo etc, and which brands lead the way

in these verticals?

No other product vertical can really

challenge Paddy Power’s sportsbook in

terms of mention volume. PokerStars

would be the nearest contender outside the

sportsbook segment, with around 60,000

mentions per month in English language

and across all online channels.

Another product vertical that is growing

exponentially in terms of online buzz is

fantasy sports. We see brands like FanDuel

and DraftKings racking up in the region of

30,000 mentions per month, coming from

virtually nowhere just a year ago.

But mention volume isn’t necessarily the

metric to always look at, as it runs the risk

of becoming a mere vanity metric, such as

the total number of website visitors. In the

casino vertical, for example, a big chunk of

mentions are from Twitter and affiliates,

but the real insight are to be found in

customer forums, where speed of deposits,

bonuses, and other experiences are being

discussed amongst players.

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