With the new NFL season set to kick-off, Bettor Vision is about to launch an app designed to be a one-stop shop for the fan with multiple sportsbook and fantasy accounts.
Picture the scene – it may well be a familiar one. It’s Sunday afternoon and as the games head into the third quarter, you’re worried about whether the Falcons can beat the spread at the Saints and if your over/under in the surprisingly low-scoring 49ers-Bears game is slipping away. At least Mac Jones is doing the business for your fantasy team and the Steelers, Texans, and Browns look set to hold up their legs of the parlay.
If you weren’t so busy checking multiple apps and websites to assess your latest positions and find the best in-game odds, you may actually be able to sit back and enjoy RedZone!
It is this problem that Bettor Vision founders Brett Lanier and Geoff Doyle set out to solve with their new app. Ahead of the app’s debut, SBC Americas sat down with Brett to discover how it was developed, and how it can help bettors to stay on top of the action, while also presenting operators with a simple way to put their odds in front of prospective customers.
SBC: With the Bettor Vision app set to launch on the App Store, could you give our readers an overview of what it does?
Brett Lanier: Bettor Vision is the only app that allows sports fans to track both their fantasy sports and sports bets in one place. Checking different apps to get updates on all your bets and fantasy contests is annoying! Users will no longer have to waste valuable time switching between multiple apps to view all their fantasy lineups, scores, contests, and wagers. We offer an easily digestible dashboard for a quick high-level summary of your complete sports gaming performance.
SBC: What sort of research process did you undertake when planning the app and its features?
BL: First, we conducted secondary market research to better understand the competitive landscape, our target market, and the features and services currently being offered to our target consumers.
Then we conducted many brainstorming sessions based on our years of experience to identify current pain points and opportunities for improvements to the user experience. We identified our core assumptions and created hypotheses for what we believed consumers might want and how they may behave.
Next, we conducted a survey among known crossover players (consumers who participate in sports betting and fantasy sports) to determine the appeal of a sports gaming aggregator. We wanted to know more about the average number of fantasy leagues, the average number of fantasy apps, and the average number of sportsbooks each respondent had on their phone and the subsequent pain-points associated with those apps.
After validating the poor user experience created by having a high number of sports gaming apps, we conducted a hypothesis test to uncover user behavior around price shopping. We hypothesized that since sports betting is still such a new industry in the U.S., not many U.S. consumers were participating in price shopping behavior because it’s time consuming. This was confirmed.
Additionally, we assessed the potential changes in user behavior if they were proactively informed of superior odds at a different sportsbook. The vast majority of respondents indicated they would place their bets at whoever had the best odds, indicating a lack of brand loyalty in the sports betting space. This fact was supported recently by research presented by Leger, conducted on behalf of the Fantasy Sports & Gaming Association (FSGA).
Next, we hired a marketing firm, We Are Bill, to conduct 100 in-depth interviews to gain a deep understanding of our target consumers. Ninety percent of these consumers were excited about and interested in a sports account aggregator. Additionally, we learned that consumers wanted a simpler, more streamlined experience and the importance of the social and community experience while playing/competing.
Finally, we conducted a beta test of our application with a mid-sized group of crossover players to confirm or reject the hypotheses we made on player behavior and desired features.
SBC: Perhaps the most important feature of any sports app is that it is robust enough to always be available during even the busiest of game days. What steps have you taken to ensure the speed and reliability of the app?
BL: We used Apache Jmeter to load test back-end calls to the Heroku API server. We are simulating thousands of users to ensure we have the ability to maintain the load of the expected 40,000 – 50,000 user base we plan to acquire over the 2022 football season.
Additionally, we have partnered with the best data service provider in the industry, SportsDataIO, to provide us with all the stats, odds, fantasy scores, and other relevant data that our consumers will want in a timely manner.
SBC: The user interface is another key area for any successful app; could you talk us through your thinking for the design of that in Bettor Vision?
BL: As we evaluated the competitive landscape, we noticed many competitors are very data heavy. They pride themselves on their ability to offer all of the lines to all of the games. And that’s great for a certain audience who love to dig into all the data and numbers. However, we learned from our research that many consumers don’t care about ALL the odds, but just want to know the BEST odds available to them.
The brand had a minimal impact on their purchase or betting decision – consumers just want to know they are getting the best value. This fact fueled our desire to eliminate the noise and provide our users with a very simple interface that makes it extremely easy to determine the best odds and if there are better odds elsewhere.
Similarly, when creating the aggregated dashboard, our goal is to combine the performance data from all of our users’ accounts into a simple, easily digestible dashboard. When games are on, customers said they don’t want to miss any of the action. They want to quickly see where they stood and how a play might have changed things, but a simple, high-level view was sufficient – we just show what matters.
SBC: Being able to monitor bets and fantasy sports contests from multiple operators in a single place, rather than spending game day flicking between tabs on screen has the obvious benefit of convenience for the bettor? What other benefits does the Bettor Vision app deliver for users?
BL: Another benefit of Bettor Vision is easier price comparison across sportsbooks. Line shopping is one of the best ways for sports bettors to save money over a long period of time. However, it’s time consuming to check multiple apps, so many U.S. consumers do not price shop their bets.
By identifying which sportsbook that they have an account with, in their state, that offers the best odds, they get the benefit of quickly finding the best value available to them. Moreover, we notify our users when better odds are available at a sportsbook in their state with whom they don’t currently have an account.
If consumers are hesitant to price check their existing accounts, they are extremely unlikely to research odds at operators where they do not have an account. By proactively providing them this information, a link to register, and the best sign-up promotion for that sportsbook, we are cutting through the noise and showcasing the two primary data points that consumers care about as they consider creating a new sportsbook account.
Another factor that we strongly believe in is responsible gaming and keeping our users safe. Many sportsbooks offer responsible gaming features that allow users to self-impose monetary betting limits. However, if they pass their monthly threshold with one operator, there is nothing to prevent them from placing bets at another legal sportsbook in their state.
With Bettor Vision, we give the customer a complete view of their gaming activity across all operators, so they can set a monetary limit and we help them know when it has been reached in aggregate across all accounts. Once it has been reached, we will stop promoting sports betting lines to ensure the safety of our customers for their desired and selected ‘cool-off period’. We strongly believe that sports betting can be a fun and exciting activity, but it is important to provide bettors with the information and tools to help them make responsible decisions.
SBC: You describe the app’s odds analyzer as being the ‘Kayak of sports betting’. There’s a lot of competition in the odds comparison space, how does Bettor Vision stand out from the crowd?
BL: Many of our competitors in the odds comparison space overwhelm many users by showing ALL the odds. We have learned from our audience that many users mostly care about getting the best odds and value, so we are focusing on providing that simpler solution.
Additionally, many of our competitors charge a monthly or annual subscription to use their tools and try to sell picks to the users. We are giving our users an unbiased determination of what the best value is for them for free.
SBC: How do you envisage working with sportsbook and fantasy sports operators, and what benefits can partnering with Bettor Vision give them?
BL: Since the value of the product to our users increases with the number of sports betting and fantasy sports operators we integrate onto the platform, our goal is to create partnerships with all the top sportsbooks, fantasy sports operators, and daily fantasy operators in the U.S. At this point, we have the ability to aggregate accounts for users at 9 of the top 12 sportsbooks and 7 of the top 10 traditional fantasy operators in the U.S.
The benefits we provide our sports betting partners is the promotion of their odds and promotional offers to a target-rich audience. They don’t have to worry about their outbound marketing inefficiencies due to the campaigns being broadcast to non-sports bettors or fantasy participants. Secondly, our platform makes it easier for users to manage multiple accounts, so our users will be more likely to sign up for an additional account if it’s easy to manage.
Thirdly, data has shown that the two leading drivers for customers to create an account at a new sportsbook are better odds and a compelling promotional offer. We showcase these two data points which we believe will maximize the chance of a customer opening an account with one of our partners. Lastly, since Bettor Vision has full visibility into our users’ sports gaming portfolio, we are able to develop more informed customer behavior profiles, leading to more efficient and effective marketing for our partners.
From a fantasy operator perspective, their goal is to get as many clicks as possible on their content. Since we know all our users’ fantasy rosters and favorite teams, we can push relevant articles that interest our customers and increase engagement for the operators. While our partners are pushing personalized content within their own apps, they are not reaching customers with relevant content across platforms. We provide them with the ability to extend their reach in a targeted, efficient manner.
Additionally, the aggregation tools make it easier for customers to manage more fantasy leagues and teams, so using our app may increase the number of leagues joined by our customers, benefitting the fantasy operators with whom we partner.
SBC: What is in the long-term plan for the company and future iterations of the app?
BL: Our long-term plan is to become the second screen of choice for crossover players on game days.
Additionally, we will build useful tools and an engaging experience that will lead to industry-leading levels of customer engagement. Tools like notifications when users have the opportunity to hedge or double-down on a bet or fantasy outcome, depending on their unique betting styles. We also have features like historical analysis, a draft competitive analyzer, and an expansive community on our roadmap.
Once we have established our large, engaged audience we will have the ability to provide a robust view on consumer behavior and strong customer segments, making Bettor Vision the marketing partner of choice for sports betting and daily fantasy operators.
Through the combination of our existing platform and the new tools we will deploy in the near future, we will become the go-to platform for sports betting and fantasy sports activity in five years by simplifying the way consumers research, place and track bets, and engage with operators.
