5 Important Must-Haves For Every Successful Sportsbook
Online sports betting is not only a growing, lucrative market, it’s also very competitive. Your rivals include both big established brands and hungry young newcomers. You need to ensure bettors choose your website to place their bets instead of your competitors. Let’s look at five of the most important factors you must consider below.
1. Wide Sports Coverage
It’s no surprise that bettors located in different countries prefer to bet on different sports. Soccer is the most popular international sport with worldwide events such as the FIFA World Cup drawing global attention. Basketball is a growing sport and bets on National Basketball (NBA) and other league games in the United States, China and Japan are very lucrative. NFL football takes center stage in U.S. betting, while cricket is very popular in India and Australia. Wherever you decide to operate, you’ll need to provide plentiful betting opportunities in your customers’ preferred sports to make your site popular and profitable.
Even though you’ll want to feature the most popular sports, don’t leave out smaller niche markets. For example, while soccer is the dominant sport in Europe, hockey has a following in northern and eastern nations. While not the biggest betting sport, horse racing showcases major events including the Kentucky Derby in the U.S. and the Grand National in the UK that draw plenty of betting action.
It’s also important to offer a variety of plays and odds for your users. You want to have a range of different picks on your site from point spreads to parlays, so customers will go to your app to make their bets, not your competitors.
2. Accurate And Reliable Sports Data
Once you’ve got bettors hooked, you want to keep them playing and keep them on your platform. Games, matches and plays can all change in real-time. Player injuries, substitutions and even weather conditions for outdoor events can all affect betting odds. To stay on top of always moving outcomes, your online sports betting website needs access to the best, most reliable and accurate real-time data.
To do this, you’ll want to access an odds data service that provides you with the latest information on changing odds, statistics and plays. A good odds provider can deliver betting information across a wide range of sports and tap into the most up-to-the minute stats and plays bettors demand. Sports betting sites that gain access to this data enjoy a crucial advantage over competitors who don’t.
3. Good Design And Ease Of Use
You not only want your site to contain accurate information, it needs to be well-designed and easy to use. New customers should be able to sign up and easily navigate the site to find and place their bets. Providing secure and reliable payment methods, with credit and debit cards in your customers’ preferred currency, are a must. Choose a design that makes locating information, including sports, odds and plays on the latest games, effortless. In addition, you should entice bettors with live odds throughout the match that encourage them to continue wagering.
Another important factor many sportsbooks have to address is ensuring their app is accessible on different devices. While smartphones are the most popular way to bet, some users like to wager using their PCs and tablets. Designing your app to make it compatible on a variety of devices gives you access the widest possible betting audience.
>> Read more about how to develop your sportsbook app in the right way, and what could be the challenges you’ll face.
4. Excellent Customer Service
Good customer support can make or break an online sports betting website. Let’s face it, not everyone who wagers on sports is an experienced bettor and even longtime users can encounter problems such as a computer crashes and payment problems. Even the most well-run site can still suffer glitches. Since users will be on your app any time of day or night, you need reliable 24/7 customer support.
One of the biggest issues users have with poor apps is a lack of reliable customer service. Not only should you hire knowledge staff who know how your app works, can walk users through their challenges and answer questions, you should provide support in different languages and time zones, based on where you’re operating. That way, customers can get the answers they need, when they need them.
5. Customer Rewards And Bonuses
Once you’ve got users on your site and provided them with the best bets, using odds from a good odds provider, you’ll want to reward them for their loyalty. Customers enjoy getting bonuses and incentives to make them feel they’re appreciated. These extras encourage them to keep betting with the app. There are a variety of ways to do this.
One approach is by giving customers reward credits for every bet they place. Straight bets are lucrative but parlays are even more profitable. For example, you could offer double the credits for parlay bets, while still giving rewards for straight wagers. If a customer bets $100 on a moneyline, you could give them 10 credits, while offering 20 credits for a parlay bet in the same amount. Customers can then redeem those for bonus cash and use it to place additional bets. The idea is that the more users spend, the more credits they’ll receive.
Another method is to target customers who want to make small bets. Instead of offering credits for higher wagers such as $100, your site could give customers bonuses for smaller wagers including $6 straight bets or $3 parlays. Users who aren’t big spenders are still incentivized to stay on your site and keep betting.
Whether you hope to attract high rollers or small bettors, including good rewards, bonuses and incentives on your platform will draw users and entice them to continue playing.
Partner With LSports
Launching and running a sports betting website is not something anyone can accomplish by themselves. You need a partner who can provide you with access to the latest, most accurate sports betting information available. Contact LSports to learn how we can help you make your online sports betting site a winner.