The online gambling industry has moved from the Vegas strip to the web at a staggering rate. Racking in more than more than $45bn in 2016, online betting currently takes place in 85 countries (according to the American Gambling Association) and is expected to reach $66.59bn by 2020, analysis by Technavio has revealed.
Through an analysis of 111 gambling sites, we were able to draw conclusions on an interesting yet rather disappointing relationship between the web presence of the booming betting industry and its social media presence – on Facebook specifically.
The numbers prove that the already profitable industry has grown exponentially online due to two premises:
Gambling & Social: can they get along?
The industry can safely sit on its throne in terms of web presence. A natural assumption would be that a strong web presence forges a streamlined relationship with social media channels. Therefore, we extensively researched how effectively online betting sites are engaging their audiences on Facebook. This raises two main premises:
The analysis was carried out over a three-month period. A main KPI (key point indicator) noted as engagement rate was created to measure these results.
Our Facebook engagement analysis
The analysis has a two-part process of first finding the main engagement rate based on Facebook’s metric called PTAT (people talk about this) and finding the overall engagement rate pertaining to all 111 sites.
The results were not very appealing and mediocre at best:
The average Facebook engagement rate on December 15th 2015 of the said gambling/betting sites was 3.4%. On March 29th 2015, the rate dropped to 2.5 %.
The damage? A 26% drop over a three-month period.
If we were to break down the three biggest sites, some damage may be salvageable:
The progress of huge betting players is inching along, yet the struggle is ongoing.
The struggle of online betting/gambling sites on Facebook
For starters, a few more indicators that the industry is surrendering to the Facebook game:
While these sites do solicit a decent amount of likes, their actual engagement is struggling to prevail. Their users don’t seem to be interested in following up a ‘like’ with further interaction, perhaps due to a weak content strategy.
Therefore, three main assumptions can be inferred:
The gambling industry doesn’t know how to benefit from Facebook
For an industry that has perfected monetisation, SEO and affiliate marketing, the issue is quite perplexing. We consulted an online gambling executive, who preferred not to be named nor his company name announced. He mentioned a couple reasons: “One is trying to maintain a social presence for the brand. If someone looks up the brand on Facebook or Google, having an active page with engagement – even if limited – can improve trust.
“Second, since we run a lot of Facebook ad campaigns, some users end up on our Facebook page. We don’t want these users coming from ads to see an inactive page.”
Regardless of how well the page is performing, it simply needs to exist to build trust and successful campaign landing points.
A follow-up question remained for the executive: What are you getting from your Facebook presence? He replied: “Not much. It’s really not our focus at the moment. It’s just supporting our brand presence on social. If some players come from it, that’s a nice bonus, but not the main goal.”
That wraps it up nicely. Although gambling/betting companies have more than enough budget to compete in the social media world, they simply don’t see it as a benefit – rather, as a bonus.
Gamblers don’t want to be identified on Facebook
As for our second assumption, that gamblers simply don’t want to be exposed, we further examined this in countries and US states where gambling is legal. We interviewed another specialist, Dr Natasha Dow Schüll, a cultural anthropologist at New York University. We asked whether betters would share their hobby on social media. She replied: “Gambling is a solitary activity and not one they are likely to advertise to friends.
“It’s socially acceptable to some extent – meaning, understood as something people do, but they often do it alone.”
There you have it. Gamblers don’t want to share their habit to friends and family on social media even if it is somewhat accepted by society. It simply doesn’t fare well.
Users don’t really want to engage with betting brands
Not all brands are engagement-worthy for users. Coca-cola and Nike have certainly mastered their relatability in terms of their ad content. Who wouldn’t comment on an ad loaded with famous sports celebrities?
We spoke to Allen Moody, an award-winning journalist of sports gambling culture. He said: “I think the reason a lot of sportsbooks don’t appear to be too concerned with their social media output or the content on their websites is that people will play at certain sportsbooks based on their reputation for paying their debts.
“So, I’d say you’re correct that gamblers aren’t really interested in content or interaction, but just want to play.”
So, according to Moody, gamblers simply want to play, they don’t want to get involved beyond that.
To surrender or not: learning from the biggest online media players
Given the results of our data and research, we aren’t too optimistic about the performance of gambling players in the social media arena. They could do with a serious strategy overhaul.
Take Redbull for example. Their page has 47,464,096 Likes, 2,010,933 PTAT (29.03.17) and an Engagement Rate of 4.2%.
Their content strategy has nothing to do with their product. If anything, it’s just a bunch of people doing crazy stunts and yet it’s remarkably effective.
Betting companies could likely use a crazy content strategy that is detached from their product to generate different feelings from their users whom can go from just playing to engaging.
Let’s take a look at a player that took this advice:
freebets.co.uk
81,718 Likes | 6270 Talking About This
Frequency: 7-12 posts /day
Type of activity: soccer related links, videos that are perfectly silly and not dense at all
Form of user engagement: Less comments or likes, yet videos are overwhelmingly engaging
Bottom line: Finally, a betting company that discovered how to wield the power of silly videos without putting a cat in them.
The information above is based on the research paper Why the Top Casino Sites Are Failing on Facebook, published on The SPIN Blog.
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