The coronavirus epidemic is first and foremost a personal tragedy for too many people. We want to open by knowing this and transport our thoughts, prayers and best wishes everywhere.
It has also led to a change in the daily lifestyle of billions of people, including the way we, as marketers, do our jobs.
Very suddenly, the situation of people has changed enormously. We must now adapt our communications and our offers accordingly while being particularly sensitive and emotionally intelligent.
Sports gambling has taken a hit
In recent weeks, all major sporting events have been canceled worldwide. And just a few days ago, it was announced that the long-awaited European Football Championship (Euro 2020) this summer had been postponed to the summer of 2021. All signs indicate that the Tokyo Olympics this year would also be strengthened.
Of course, this leaves sports bettors in line with a few minimal betting options.
To find out how important this impact is, we marked the Italian blockade (March 9) as a threshold, then compared it a month earlier, to the following week. Our analysis includes ten leading European companies, each with different brands and products.
The first figure that caught our attention was the number of sports bettors and a significant drop of 30% on average.
This dramatic drop has affected the entire sports betting industry and is the main concern of all online betting companies. With an average drop of 30% and some brands experiencing a 60% drop in their active sports bettors in the first week after the Italian closure, we can really understand why operators are looking for immediate answers. Without a real estimate of when high-performance sports will return to normal, we can expect this figure to drop further.
Online casino is stable
It looks like COVID-19, and the fact that people are at home did not affect the number of daily online casino players when comparing the two periods. We saw a slight non-significant increase (+ 4%) after the virus spread began.
We can suggest that a good cross-sell may be helpful, although we haven’t seen a dramatic migration from online sports betting to casino games.
Online poker activity has grown significantly
Since the closure, we have seen a massive 43% increase in the number of daily Idn poker games compared to the previous period. This is a big enough spike to make poker a potential savior for many traders.
All of the poker product companies we looked at saw an increase, and some even doubled the number of poker players.
We can only assume that this is the result of the fact that many people are at home and unable to play sports.
Sport in poker?
We saw a 255% increase in first time poker players over the period, compared to an average day before the crash. But, one day before closing, only 3.5% of poker players played their first day of play, in the past week, that number has risen to 9% of new players.
However, the most important thing is to see how many of them were completely new to the business. Not as much as you might think: on average, 50% (and up to 75%!) New poker players had already made sports bets on the same brand before having their first day of poker. This figure is quite similar to standard hours (as in, plus the pre-lock).
What about virtual sports?
Surprisingly (or not), we noticed a significant increase in the Virtual Sports product (not to be confused with e-Sports). Could this niche, a hybrid product, a sort of combination of situs judi poker online sports betting and casino, be the one that keeps online sports betting afloat during these times and helps stabilize your business? Apparently yes.
It seems that the new situation, with the lack of real sporting events, has led more players to bet on fictitious. Over the past week, we have seen a significant 30% increase in the number of daily virtual sports players.
Although it depends on the volumes, it won’t hurt to try to promote this product on a small scale at