While Gareth Southgate plots to end 54 years of hurt, the marketing teams of the major bookmakers will be busily drawing up their own plans for this summer’s Euro 2020. Major football tournaments are defining moments for betting firms and the performance of their marketers will have a significant impact on the year’s financial performance.
The annual reports of the big players are unusually revealing for any marketers curious enough to learn from past tournaments. In many sectors it can be difficult to access hard data relating to a specific campaign, yet in the gambling sector there are facts and figures aplenty.
The beauty of live sport is its unpredictability, but the sporting calendar itself is episodic and repetitive with World Cup followed by Euros followed by World Cup on a biennial basis. This means bookmaker annual reports provide a free, immediately accessible, treasure trove of information for anyone working towards a Euro 2020 campaign. It’s possible to look back at which bookmakers were most successful at previous tournaments - and then consider what drove that success.
As an example, I worked with Betfair to develop their 2014 World Cup campaign. A quick check back to the annual report of the time gives the results - a massive 50% increase in Betfair’s active customer base and an uplift in sportsbook revenue from £24m prior year to £36m in 2014. (Source: Betfair Annual Report 2014.) There were three reasons why the campaign was so effective, all of which could be applied to a Euro 2020 marketing plan.
First, product innovation is critical. The sector is awash with generous sign-up offers and the average online gambler has already set up accounts with four bookmakers. (Source: Gambling Commission Annual Report 2018). So Betfair had to give the portfolio punter a tangible reason to log into their Betfair account, when it was just as easy to log into any one of numerous competitor accounts. Betfair’s Cash Out and Price Rush products were therefore central to the campaign, offering two products that, at the time, were both well ahead of the market. The sector has attempted a number of innovations since, but nothing has come close to matching the impact of Cash Out. Any bookmaker with ‘the next Cash Out’ up their sleeve will have a great shot at winning Euro 2020.
An awesome, table-tennis playing Octopus helped Betfair to success in the World Cup
Second, it’s essential to own a striking piece of well branded, unique visual equity. There will be numerous Euro 2020 campaigns, not just for betting companies but for soft drinks, cars, banks and supermarkets. Within the betting sector, Euro 2020 campaigns will be multi-media and multi-message. There are 51 different matches across 31 days and there will be hundreds of different offers and prices to communicate. So a visual wrapper is essential if a ragged, fragmented campaign is to be avoided. We solved this by giving Betfair an awesome, table-tennis playing Octopus. He went everywhere, from TV to digital to a life-size 3D structure that stopped traffic at Oxford Circus. In fact, the culmination of his journey was the Betfair annual report, where he was heavily featured. The more unusual and original the visual equity, the more effective it will be, because more people will notice it*. NB: Four geezers larking about, looking at their mobile phones and punching the air with delight is not a piece of striking visual equity.
Third, it’s important to recognise that different pieces of communication have different roles to play. We need to get people to notice our campaign and take an interest in it. And we need to give people the right offers at the right time. But not everything we produce has to do both jobs. For the World Cup campaign, we launched and made an impact with the Octopus first, establishing him on TV in the opening week with a stunning TV commercial, then quickly deployed him to serve tactical messages via Betfair’s phenomenal performance marketing team. This model could be easily replicated at Euro 2020 with the right strategic planning up front.
So much for the marketing battle, but who do the bookmakers think will win Euro 2020 on the pitch? Remarkably, given their performance at previous tournaments, most have England as the current favourites!
*We repeated the use of striking visual equity a few months later, by putting horses inside rally cars for Betfair’s Tap Tap Boom Cheltenham campaign.