Strive Gaming’s Chief Marketing Officer has urged sportsbooks to place player education around in-play betting options at the center of their plans for 2024.
Jamie Shea told fellow podcast guests and listeners of the Xtremepush ‘Experts in the Room‘ that live betting has only scratched the surface of its potential in the US and that sportsbooks must teach players about the benefits of the vertical to reap rewards.
Shea explained that to unlock sustainability and profitability in 2024, operators should educate their players on in-play betting options and push to retain expensively acquired players via increased personalization.
She stated: “The education of the player is the best retention tool, as it teaches them how to play. A lot of the time, customers just don’t even realize that certain bets exist. One of the things that’s driving me crazy right now in the US industry is in-play. Why is that not bigger? Seventy percent of bets should be in-play, as they are in Europe because it’s fun and provides instant gratification.
“I would love to see that happen in the US. We need to educate the players on how it works and where they can find it in an app and that’s where push notifications come in. Brands should be doing all they can to let the customer know that hey, there is this wager available, and it’s a lot of fun.
“Every time that I’ve sat down with people and taught them how it works, they love it, and it becomes their go-to.”
Shea is the CMO at Strive Gaming, a US-focused platform provider serving sportsbooks with technology. Previously in her career, she was the VP of Sportsbook at DraftKings.
She told podcast host Will Hansen that, in order to maximize efficiency when it comes to acquisition and retention, operators should align their acquisition budgets with their player lifetime values.
“After the first bet on Aug. 1, 2018, in New Jersey, it was a free-for-all,” she added. “Nobody knew what should be done or how it should be done, just that they wanted as many active customers as possible. And so it was a bonus here, a bonus there.
“Unfortunately, as everybody came to realize, this set the customer up with an expectation that isn’t realistic, because those offers can’t last forever. It also created a lot of promiscuity within the different brands through ‘promo hunters’ and it started to become a race to the bottom. Nobody was profitable.
“Having Strive Gaming and Xtremepush in the US market allows for so much more targeted marketing, so that bonuses aren’t just thrown at everyone. It allows us to look at what resonates with certain player types, as a targeted and measured approach.”
