YES: Stuart Simms, FairPlay Sports Media CEO
While the mixed product promotion ban may force some operators to shift their acquisition marketing strategies, it further iterates the direction of travel in the industry. This is towards engaging and retaining a loyal customer base by delivering innovative experiences and personalised opportunities to engage with.
Bonus mixing can attract shallow engagement and one-time users, whereas relying more on progressive customer-focused technology and products, to create greater stickiness with a community, is proven to be a sustainable and profitable long-term strategy. Businesses that failed to invest in those products and services – that more innovative firms with greater foresight are now reaping the benefits from – are already playing catch-up to those that command a deeper level of engagement.
We’ve been making that shift over the past two years, and more forward-thinking operators have also been putting their front foot forward with better experiences and technology in anticipation of legislation like this, which I’m sure won’t be the last of its ilk.
Mixed product promotion is a less relative and unique proposition to a sports bettor today, with their ability to shop around for more than just best price and promotion. The likes of bet builders, in-play, micro-markets and player props attract their own audiences, and this specific product delivery to individual segments creates those tighter relationships rather than generic catch-all promotions.
The onus is now on the industry to innovate how it goes about stimulating and retaining its customers through the use of smarter technologies. AI is set to dominate that path with its benefits for personalisation and automation, in both a pre-game and live environment, for the foreseeable future. This ruling only heightens the need for that innovation. The “mixed product promotion ban” is as much a reflection of industry development as it is for consumer protection.
NO: Robert Mabbett, Better Change engagement director
I don’t think it was right of the Gambling Commission (GC) to ban mixed product promotions. Cross-selling or upselling is part of business, and any company should be able to market and promote its own products. As a consumer of mixed gambling products such as sports betting, slots, bingo and lottery, I am interested in receiving promotions across different products, so I don’t feel like I am missing out.
That being said, I do not blame the GC for introducing the ban, nor am I surprised. This is because of gambling operators’ failure to cross-sell or market different products responsibly or well.
When I worked at an operator, we would often be incentivised to sell new or different products. Often, they were slots games on the gaming machines. To someone who had been betting on more traditional markets such as horseracing or football for many years, this was not an attractive offer and equally not a good customer experience. It was obvious we were trying to get customers to play higher risk, more volatile and more profitable products than what they usually bet on.
I genuinely believe that during this time, prior to the reduction in machine stakes and the pandemic, retail betting neglected its core product, and it is one of the reasons for the dramatic decline in the number of retail betting outlets in the UK, falling by a third since 2019.
Cross-selling should be a benefit to both your business and customers. However, the industry’s failure to properly know their customers, offer appropriate promotions to products that customers actually want, or to work with players through opt in/opt out options and interactions has led to a distrust and fear that the industry could be pushing customers to riskier, and potentially more harmful, products.
This is why the GC felt they had to step in and, while I think it is not their place to do so, I fear we have nobody to blame but ourselves.
The post Big Debate: Was the Gambling Commission right to introduce a “mixed product promotion ban”? first appeared on EGR Intel.
FairPlay Sports Media CEO Stuart Simms and Better Change engagement director Robert Mabbett answer this month’s burning question
The post Big Debate: Was the Gambling Commission right to introduce a “mixed product promotion ban”? first appeared on EGR Intel.