SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
When does a brand truly become a brand? Should operations exist across multiple jurisdictions, this could be a familiar question. For Soft2Bet, this primarily revolves around resonating with users, which could deliver its own conundrum.
On the showfloor of last month’s SBC Summit Americas, CBDO, Martin Collins, pulls back the curtain on the innovative work in the realm of gamification, touches on responsible gambling and the challenge of establishing a local voice and takes a whistle stop tour through the US, Canada and Europe.
SBC News: To kick-start, I’d like us to cast our minds back to the launch of MEGA, which was done with significant fanfare. Could you offer an update since this date and touch on some of the feedback that you have received?
Martin Collins: MEGA continues to grow in terms of mechanics. What we do is look into other industries and try and take mechanics that are driving customer engagement from other areas. At launch we had around 10-12 mechanics, and now we’re up above 25.
We know that these mechanics, if they’re targeted towards the right audience, they’re driving engagement, and we continue to see metrics increasing, particularly concerning screen time.
Traditionally within our industry, the relationship between the customer and the brands has been very transactional. If you were lucky, you could maybe find an average screen time of 15 minutes a session.
Now we are seeing 4x that amount of time. We are really pushing the entire MEGA concept and really working with the audience in order to deliver content and an experience that resonates with them. We continue to do this. We continue to bring different narratives and themes.
However, I think it’s really, really important for everybody to understand that we do have the standard gamification solutions, such as leaderboards and achievements etc, but this is taking it one step further and delivering mechanics and content that is coming directly from other industries, and isn’t available within our experience as an industry.
This is groundbreaking. It’s different and it’s something that can really drive engagement within your customer base.
SBCN: Looking at things from the perspective of MEGA and beyond, what challenges accompany a rethink of the player experience and doing things a little differently?
MC: It’s interesting that I’ve been with Soft2Bet for almost two years now, and the one thing I realised when I came here is that art design in UI and UX is really our USP.
We have artists that sketch out everything from scratch. We do use a little bit of AI for a little bit of generative stuff, but predominantly it’s done by hand. As a consequence, every single touch point that the customer has with the brand is very, very important to us.
When we spoke about MEGA, we wanted to create an experience within a casino or sports betting flow that creates a loop.
For example, you go in and spin slots and you’re rewarded within the gamified side. You participate in this, whatever the narrative may be, and then you get rewarded back within the casino experience. It creates a retention loop.
Again, this increases screen time because customers are engaged on two fronts, not just in one as they would’ve been previously. The other thing to consider is that actually they’re spending their money in a much more sustainable manner.
Previously, if someone came in and wanted to spend $100 it would be within 10-15 minutes, so it’s up to one hour and 15 minutes. It’s actually much more responsible and sustainable.
However, MEGA isn’t the only place that we concentrate on these areas. The entire experience and customer flow is really important to us.
When we launch in New Jersey, we’re going to deliver an entirely different UI and UX that the industry hasn’t seen yet.
When we wanted to come into the states, it had to make financial sense, which has become a little bit more attainable with some of the European operators pulling out, but we wanted to deliver something entirely different that isn’t already in the market, and we believe that we’ve done that.
SBCN: Sticking on the theme of New Jersey and the recent announcement you will be launching. Knowing it is one of the most competitive markets, how are you planning to stand out?
MC: The thing is just because there’s a challenge doesn’t mean there’s not an opportunity. In a lot of markets our analysis and data would show that the market is not for us.
With New Jersey, we realised that it is actually an opportunity for us because the transactional relationship brands have with their customers in New Jersey is something we think we can change.
When you drive from New York on the Lincoln Tunnel into New Jersey, there was a big billboard when you come out. It was deposit $5 and get $500.
I think even people that aren’t in industry can appreciate that actually that’s not particularly a profitable way to do business, and this is exactly my point. That’s a transactional relationship that you develop with a customer.
I’m not saying that we won’t do bonuses, they’re a part of our industry, but what I’m saying is that we want to build a product and an experience that makes them want to come back time and time again, and engage with the brand rather than it just being transactional.
That’s where the opportunity lies in New Jersey for us. We’ll look at brand development off the back of that, I think that is a logical way to go.
SBCN: When it comes to developing a local voice within brand development, how do you approach development when you’re entering new markets to ensure you’ve got that local flavour?
MC: You’ve just got to constantly iterate, because a brand doesn’t become a brand until the customer engages with it. You may think you have a brand with good equity, but what does that actually mean?
If you put a brand out there and launch but you’re not constantly trying to make improvements it’ll never become a brand. Again, it’ll either be a transactional relationship, or people won’t engage with it at all. This is really important. You’ve got to constantly iterate, and that over time allows it to become a brand and resonate with the customer.
SBCN: When it comes to responsible gaming, what’s Soft2Bet’s overall approach?
MC: From a gamified experience, which we embed within all of our brands, we believe that it actually drives a more sustainable experience for the customer so they’re not constantly spending their money in a transactional way.
With average screen time up over an hour that engagement and sustainability is there and we believe that that delivers a more RG approach to the customer themself.
Europe is a little bit more advanced in terms of RG than the States, but it’s catching up and it’s a strong area of concern now, which it wasn’t for a long time.
We’ve got a lot of experience in Europe. We operate in Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Romania. and we understand what regulators expect from an RG perspective.
I would actually argue that, maybe even in terms of some of the American operators, that maybe we have a little bit more of an advanced approach and more mature understanding to RG.
Sustainability in RG is very important to us as an organisation and it’s something that we constantly iterate on and work with third parties and develop tools ourselves in order to really be ahead of the curve with it.
SBCN: We’ll take a slight sidestep here to look at Soft2Bet internal innovation fund. What’s the vision for this, and how is it going to shape the company’s future?
MC: Soft2Bet Invest is a $50m fund, and the reason that started this is because we are a really innovative organisation, but there’s only so much that you can do and there’s only so many ideas that you can act upon.
What we also saw was that some of the VCs that consider our industry are ironically very transactional in their approach. They look at opportunity, they put in X amount of cash, and in three years time they expect an ROI on that cash.
That’s okay. I have no issue with that. It helps a lot of organisations really get off the ground and drive things forward.
What we thought was that rather than it being a transactional relationship, why don’t we utilise our own liquidity and give these start-ups some battle testing.
We bring them into our ecosystem, put them in certain markets or certain brands, and see how they perform and allow them to iterate more real time data. That allows them to improve the product.
Not only that, if they’re a B2B business, for example, it allows them to actually go to the customer with real time data and show them how it’s performed and how it’s taking a particular KPI, for example, and driving it up.
We are really trying to help these organisations beyond the normal VC situation. Of course, we’re looking for a return as well. There’s nobody in the world that wouldn’t be, but we’re doing it a bit differently.
We’re trying to really get involved in, use our ecosystem and our expertise in order to really drive these businesses forward faster.
SBCN: It’d be remiss not to look to the future. What have you got coming up? What kind of milestones do you want to hit moving forward?
MC: In 2024 we entered five new markets. This year it will be four or five again. That’s a footprint that is increasing year on year. The trajectory and the delivery of this is incredible and we’ll continue to do that.
We are very much about analysing new markets. We’ll look at the opportunities that are coming up in the US and Canada. We hear a lot about Alberta at the moment. We’re already live in Ontario with ToonieBet, and we’ll definitely go into Alberta as well.
Our footprint is very, very important for us. As opportunities present themselves, we’ll assess them and we’ll decide what we’re doing. But expect that to expand.
