Market Make-up: Secondary Sports punch hard in CE battles of Poland & Czech Rep

Following a short break in Q1, Jake Pollard’s Market Make-up series returns with Propus Partners dissecting the online sportsbook trends of dynamic CE markets of Poland and the Czech Republic.

Vying  for a larger slice of market share in Poland and the Czech Rep, sportsbooks have deepened their offerings of secondary sports such as MMA, ice hockey and esports, spearheaded by CE frontrunners Fortuna, BetClic, STS, Tipsport, Betano, Betclic, and Superbet.

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As part of a series examining European betting markets, Propus Partners gathered data from the Czech Republic and Poland to examine the betting opportunities beyond what would typically be deemed to be the main sports.

The list of operators has been chosen to represent the market leaders, the  data has been analysed to provide a high-level overview of how bookmakers in the Czech Republic and Poland provide betting opportunities to their customers for pre-match betting:

Among key takeways:   

• There is significant differences in the number of events offered for these sports.
• Margin offered on the main markets in these sports is similar across bookmakers.
• The number of markets offered varies significantly. 
• Most operators in this sample have their own technology and teams, which enables them to offer unique betting markets.
• Most operators are giving these non-core sports exposure on their sports homepage.

MMA – Czech Republic and Poland

The two charts below show the main operators in the Czech Republic and Poland and how many competitions, events and markets they offer for MMA.

• We can clearly see the importance Fortuna is dedicating to MMA betting, closely followed by BetClic and STS in Poland.
• Only Fortuna offered an MMA bet builder product.
• Fortuna and Tipsport also promoted MMA betting on their homepages.
• The large amount of events on offer, and inclusion of local events, allows customers to engage with the non-core sports more easily. It also gives greater opportunity to build multiple bets (and, in Fortuna’s case, this is extended to bet builder within the same events).
• The margins offered on the main markets of Fight Winner and Total Rounds were notable for their conformity. However, we did note that Fortuna is the most aggressively low margin in the sample.

Ice Hockey -Czech Republic

The charts below show ice hockey margins across the main pre-match markets, with the number of markets in a chart below that. This data was gathered from the Czech Superliga play-offs being played now, the climax of the popular national league.

• The conformity in margins is clear. The margins are also already low, leaving little room to be more aggressive.
• Where Fortuna again excels is in the quantity of in-house unique markets it offers to its customers. All the operators offered some unique betting markets, but Fortuna offered the most. 
• All the operators offered bet builders for these events and included promotional banners for the events on their sports homepages.

Ice Hockey -Czech Republic

The charts below show ice hockey margins across the main pre-match markets, with the number of markets in a chart below that. This data was gathered from the Czech Superliga play-offs being played now, the climax of the popular national league.

• The conformity in margins is clear. The margins are also already low, leaving little room to be more aggressive.
• Where Fortuna again excels is in the quantity of in-house unique markets it offers to its customers. All the operators offered some unique betting markets, but Fortuna offered the most. 
• All the operators offered bet builders for these events and included promotional banners for the events on their sports homepages.

Overround and Expected hold margin

European sportsbooks use ‘overrounds’ or ‘expected hold margin’ as measures of margin application:

• Overrounds are calculated by summing up the ‘implied probabilities’ of all selections in a market, for example, a 1.909 vs. 1.909 market in decimal odds (-110 vs. -110 market in US odds), would have an overround of:

100 / 1.909 + 100 / 1.909 = 104.76

• The overround is a measure of how much a bookmaker would expect to take in order to expect to pay out 100
• Expected hold margin is calculated by 1 – 100 / overround. In the example:

1 – 100 / 104.76 = 0.0455 or 4.55%

Esports – Poland

Wagering on eSports in Poland has become very popular and as the country hosted major events such as the CS:GO World Championship finals in 2015, bookmakers have continued to promote betting markets on.

• STS has been strongly promoting eSports for some time and its betting product supports this by offering the most markets and events in all the areas surveyed. 
• STS also promotes eSports heavily on its sports homepage, while Betclic has CS:GO in its ‘top sports’ its players can bet on, while Superbet offers more events and betting opportunities. 

Conclusion 

The intention of this article was to demonstrate how operators use non-core sports in pre-match to generate more betting opportunities for players, and how this is supported in the overall product. The local powerhouses of Fortuna and Tipsport in Czech Republic and STS in Poland are leveraging their highly localised brands by providing quality and breadth to their betting offers. Newer entrants such as Betano, Betclic and Superbet may look at this data and decide to increase the range of markets and events they offer to their players as a way to boost volumes via these secondary sports.

When looking at local heroes in sports betting, being able to show, through the betting opportunities available, product and promotions that the brands understand and cater to the local audience is hugely important in competing with large worldwide sports betting brands. The continued market dominance in the Czech Republic and Poland of these brands shows how this can be achieved. It can also make these brands strategic acquisition targets for the huge gambling groups, as seen in the Entain acquisition on STS in Poland.

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Article is published by SBCNews in partnership with Gaming&Co.

Propus Partners is a consultancy specialising in sports betting with a specific focus on trading, trading technology, product, operations and the supplier marketplace. Propus works with operators, platforms, feed providers, regulators, data rights holders and sporting organisations.