As US and Canadian sports betting markets continue to regulate and mature, we take a look at a key driver of revenue growth, Same Game Parlays (SGPs) or, as better known within Europe, bet builders.
Same Game Parlays allow customers to place ‘multiple’ bets, or ‘parlays’ on several different things to happen within a single sporting event, such as: Buffalo Bills to win; Josh Allen to throw for 3+ touchdowns; Stefon Diggs to register 100+ receiving yards. Traditionally, operators would restrict customers from selecting multiple outcomes on a single sporting event, but SGPs have helped relax this restriction by offering dynamic pricing that considers the relationship between each selection, and prices accordingly.
Within Europe, soccer bet builders have become an expected piece of functionality for any major bookmaker, driving revenues through increased turnover and margin. We are now seeing a similar level of adoption within the North American market on major US sports.
Matt Howard, product-focussed consultant at Propus Partners sees a slight difference between the adoption of European SGPs on sports such as soccer, and what is happening in the US: “The growth and success of bet builders [SGPs] within Europe, primarily on soccer, has been significant over the last few years. However, over the last 12 months, the shape of these products has started to change, with more and more stats-based markets being incorporated, such as player shots, shots on target, assists and more. These are metrics that are occasionally shown on TV broadcasts but have not previously been front of mind with the typical fan. In other words, the betting audience is increasing its statistical awareness in parallel with betting product development.
“In North America however, the awareness of these types of statistics on major US sports is already extremely high due to both TV coverage and fantasy products, therefore it is crucial that the sports betting product caters to this type of audience at the outset by including a wide range of player stats-based options within both pre-canned and user-driven bet builders.”
Andre Zammit, VP of Sportsbook at Tipico, the European giant and emerging US brand (live in Colorado, New Jersey, and Ohio, and soon to be live in Iowa & Indiana) agrees with the importance of the product: “For any online sportsbook within the maturing US market, SGPs are a key component to customer acquisition and engagement. A quick look at social media around major sporting events, where customers share their winning SGP bets or unlucky losers, shows just how mainstream the product is and will continue to be.
“Given that we are new to the market, we need to compete by offering the highest-quality product to our customers, of which SGPs are an essential part. We have recently launched our NFL SGP product [see image below] which has so far proved very popular with our customers.”
The complexity of developing mathematical models to support SGP products is high, and therefore many operators have chosen to partner with suppliers in both Europe and North America, across soccer, US sports, and other sports. Zammit adds: “We took the decision to outsource the pricing for our SGP product to Sports IQ – a partner that we work with for player props, where we have seen their quality in action. A key consideration in this choice was price consistency – we didn’t want to be in a position where the pricing of our main team lines and those same lines within the SGP product were inconsistent as it could confuse our customers. Sports IQ has a solution for this.”
Omer Dor, CEO of Sports IQ explains: “We would of course love to provide our current and future partners with the full set of main team lines, player lines and SGP products, however we know that in some cases this won’t be immediately possible, and as such, we developed our SGP solution to work with any source of prices. We ingest prices from the partner regardless of the source and return a price for each SGP request, consistent with its individual parts.”
Regarding the size of the SGP opportunity, Dor adds: “FanDuel’s November investor deck showed that 4 out of 5 active sportsbook customers had placed a SGP bet. If this is an indication of the wider market, which we believe it is, the potential of the product is clear. We believe that our approach to modelling, the breadth of market types that we support, our easy integrations, and indeed the consistency point mentioned above, sets us apart from what else is in the market. We are delighted to be working with such an impressive and ambitious business as Tipico and have high hopes for the success of the product and partnership.”
To see Tipico’s SGP product in action, visit www.tipico.com/us