Cricket World Cup 2023: What Makes New Players Click?
The 2023 Cricket World Cup will generate a massive wave of first-time bettors like mega sporting events always do. Who are these casual bettors, how do they affect your KPIs, and how can you prevent them from churning quickly? We explain
Casual bettors are all around us. They could be your friendly neighborhood waiter or your colleague at work. They won’t bet on just any random mid-season match. No, they join the action when the excitement surpasses a certain threshold, and the 2023 Cricket World Cup fits the bill perfectly. But casual players are notorious for churning quickly, how can you keep them?
With millions of viewers worldwide, tens of thousands in the stadiums, and projected spending in the billions, this tournament offers a golden opportunity for operators and brands.
Mega sporting event? Expect new and reactivated players
If history is any indicator, and it certainly is, operators can anticipate a flood of new players making their inaugural wagers, presenting a lucrative avenue for growth. Our data from Euro 2021 shows that in mega-event years, many first-time and newly reactivated depositors, that silent majority, turn off their invisibility cloak and dip their toes in the betting pool. This means you should focus heavily on reactivated and new players and direct your efforts on retaining them.
New players come in droves but churn quickly
Numerous newcomers will try their luck by depositing modest sums. Operators should prioritize capturing the largest share possible of these players. While these new, casual players may start with lower deposit amounts, accumulating more of them enhances the likelihood of transforming them into high-value players. It’s crucial to continue player acquisition efforts and to construct reactivation strategies based on past bettor behavior to bring back as many players as possible.
Treat reactivated players as new players
Reactivated players will most likely be a batch of previous big events’ unnurtured casual players or players who churned during the hiatus before the tournament. Like new players, you’re likely to see many of those, and they represent an excellent opportunity for you to nurture them back to activity.
The higher the bet, the more likely to retain
Unnurtured, casual players will go cold after a concise while. To keep them, you must know who they are. Make sure you identify your new players, create a new marketing segment for them (and start breaking it into personas), and engage them regularly.
One way to get them to bet more is to focus on promoting bets involving their national teams. If their national team is absent or eliminated, and to avoid a dip in activity, try to find “adoptive teams” to anchor your marketing plan (the same goes for non-participating countries). For example, Spanish soccer fans place bets on their team 62% of the times, but in their absence, they’ll probably bet on Portugal at 26%. Consider gamification to help you achieve this goal; for example – bet on all your national team matches and get a free bet in the final (that gives you all the stages leading up to the Final with their attention). Look at logins and email openings to measure how engaged those players are.
Make the 2nd bet a goal
This bit of data can be a game changer. Our data shows that new players placing their 2nd bet are twice as likely to be retained as one-timers! As you might expect, retention likelihood rises the more active those players become.
Bet and flee players
New players’ churn rate after mega events is higher than usual. Historically, new players acquired during sporting events have a 25% lower retention rate. That still leaves a big opportunity on the table.
One way to make them stay is to try to tie the tournament they just watched into bets on national leagues or other sports. For example, the gap between the soccer World Cup final and the resumption of the English Premier League was just eight days; operators began piquing casual players’ interest even as the World Cup was progressing. For countries with longer breaks, try to find “surrogate events” to keep the momentum going. Incentivize deposits immediately for “Zero-balance” users and those who have made a withdrawal, offering early preferential rates on bets made towards the resumption of other sports.
With smart marketing, you can win it all
Now that you know your future new players better, you see why we view this segment as the most significant marketing opportunity for operators in the coming Cricket World Cup. They will come, bet small amounts with you, and head for the exit. With the right strategy, you can be at the departure gate with just the right offer and turn them from one-time to lifetime players.
Guy Leshno, a seasoned PR and Communications professional, with a successful track record in leading PR strategies and projects in emerging startups. With over a decade of experience, his expertise lies in blending creative ideation, analytics, and expert writing capabilities, driving brand awareness, and improving sales.
