Market Make-up: Bet Builder ingenuity breaks static UCL plays for UK sportsbooks

The Market Make-up series returns with an in-depth look at UK sportsbooks’ pricing strategies and bet builder deployments during a high-stakes UEFA Champions League quarter-final week. While pre-match pricing reveals a striking uniformity, in-play markets and bet-builder mechanics expose subtle but purposeful deviations— designed to capture customer engagement  in a make-or-break market.” 

With two English clubs playing in the Champions League quarter finals last week, Matt Howard of Orbital Bet ran the rule over UK bookmakers’ offerings over key pre-match, live and bet builder markets.

One new entry of note is that of challenger brand Midnite, which is also the betting sponsor of the World Snooker Championship that concludes this weekend.

In addition, with so many of the UK’s biggest betting brands running their own internal sportsbook operations, there are interesting nuggets to pick out as three of the eight sportsbooks surveyed run third-party bet builders.

Pre-match main markets

The chart below shows the range of ‘overrounds’ applied to markets across match result, total goals, both teams to score and double chance.

We see an overall uniformity across the board with all the operators included being fairly aggressive on the main markets. The standout aggressive pricing is from SkyBet on Match Result with the operator offering a margin under 104%, the only operator in the sample to do so. On an event of this size and interest this would allow for headline marketing as ‘Best Price’.

Pre-match takeaways

• Interestingly, newly-launched challenger brand Midnite offered a margin over 107% on Match Result markets. Considering it is quite aggressive on the other main markets, this does seem slightly strange, but may be a way of avoiding a price war with their much bigger UK competitors on these important markets.
• Overall we see strong uniformity, which is to be expected in a market as mature as the UK, with its settled market share leaders and where operators are, for the most part, largely in control of their odds and markets. They can therefore choose when and where to push odds (as SkyBet does).

In-play main markets

The chart below again shows the range of ‘overrounds’ applied to in-play markets across match result, total goals, both teams to score and double chance.

Once again there is a degree of uniformity, but the margins themselves have been pushed out for in-play. This is similar to the strategy shift we saw in France between operators’ pre-match and in-play markets. The lack of easy ability to compare the odds as they shift frequently during events also means operators are less aggressive in their live prices.

In-play takeaways

• The Total Goals and BTTS markets often have the lowest margins. Both are markets that do not require the entire event to finish (like Match Result and Handicap), as a result customers gravitate towards them in-play, where fast-settling markets are highly attractive to players.
• Outside of Match Result, Betfred is the most aggressive operator on in-play markets. This is likely a strategic decision, as it is not a particularly aggressive operator in general.

Bet Builders

We also examined operators’ bet builder offerings. This is partly because of their importance to the industry as key products of an overall sportsbook offer, as well as being widely expected by customers at this stage. The other reason is that, due to their high expected margin nature, they are an excellent way to offset the aggression which can be applied in single markets.

• Unlike in France, where some operators did not offer a bet builder at all, one was present, at least in pre-match, for all UK operators.
• The Betfred bet builder is hidden behind login, which again can be highlighted as detrimental to potential new customers as they cannot test it. But we also know it is the Sportcast bet builder product, so it will be similar to Midnite’s offering.
• We also saw that BetVictor and Ladbrokes’ bet builder could not be found for in-play betting when we checked, although in the case of Ladbrokes we don’t believe this is always the case.

Third-party vs In-house 

Aside from Betfred, Midnite (both Sportcast) and Unibet (Kambi), the other UK operators surveyed all use in-house bet builders. This has the benefit of allowing them to develop at their own prioritisation, offers differentiation possibilities and it gives them control over the content and margins offered to customers.

• Whilst UX and UI always include an element of personal opinion, the Bet365 and William Hill bet builders in particular have a nice look-and-feel and offer an ease-of-use which many have yet mastered.
• Recent front-end changes by Bet365 are also worth highlighting because they give prominence to player-based bet builder markets, which likely reflects the betting habits of customers already and will encourage further usage of those market types.
• Another important design point is that pre-built bet builder bets are given plenty of prominence, which reflects their continued value in offering customers a shortcut to placing a multi-selection bet builder straight onto their betslip without having to navigate and build it themselves.