BOF Blog – Crowd Control – affiliate marketing panel discussing how to attract football traffic

The final session of the 2014 Betting on Football Conference covered the subject matter of affiliation and partnership marketing for football and sports betting. The expert panel consisting of John Lee – Director  BDSports Group, Andreas Phillipsen, Head of Marketing Better Collective (bettingexpert.com )and Iain Coward, Managing Director BiggerBet gave insight into the changing dynamics of operating a sports betting affiliates.

The session panel shared their thoughts on how affiliate marketing strategies and operator relationships would likely change due to new technologies, regulations and customer trends. The Panel further focused on how operators and media partners should look to generated cost effective traffic and player acquisition in saturated markets.

SBC Session Notes:

• John Lee believes that it is harder than ever to define affiliates and their practices, since affiliates are leveraging more mediums  than ever to generate traffic and acquisitions to operators.  However many operators view of affiliates and partnership marketing is simply outdated labeling them as just ‘referral sites’. Industry needs to work on better definition and overall understanding of affiliate practices
• Phillipsen – believes that data gathering and data mapping between the affiliate and operator is still behind other industries.  The relationship between affiliate and operator has been harmed by what Phillipsen regards as a ‘black box’ of undisclosed information between both parties. This does not help affiliates looking to streamline their communications and player journeys.  Phillipsen argues that there has not been any clear explanation as to why this information has been excluded from affiliate and partnership platforms.
•  Iain Coward – Many operators fail to leverage the full utilities that an affiliate has to offer. Coward points that affiliates should have gained player trust through better content and clear information on their websites. However Coward feels that promotion of bookmaker services is still to singularly focused on odds and bonus provisions. Bookmakers should look beyond these elements, and look to engage further with the affiliates communities, content and social channels.
•  When asked about the future of affiliate marketing, the panel commented that affiliation would evolve dependent on the technologies that its customers used. Phillipsen states that affiliates like operators and other media owners face a multi content future, where affiliates will have to deliver content and coverage on multiple mediums.  However Phillipsen further points that content output on multiple mediums will only be effective if the quality of content is engaging and deemed worthwhile by the viewers. The focus should be on quality and not quantity.