1.
INSIGHT
60 iGB Affiliate Issue 51 JUNE/JULY 2015
iGB’s Social Monitor has been analysing and comparing the social media buzz of English-language
iGaming brands since the start of 2014. We caught up with lead consultant Joakim Nilsson to find out
how the performances, strategies and key metrics of the leading brands have evolved in this time.
You have been tracking sportsbooks’
share of voice since the start of 2014.
Which brands have seen the biggest rise
and fall in their rankings since then, and
what has been driving this?
Paddy Power is, as everyone knows, the
most talked-about sportsbook of all,
making up more than 50% of the total
online sportsbook brand buzz. The share
of voice between brands was pretty
even across 2014, except for one notable
instance, when 888 came from practically
nowhere to being mentioned more than
100,000 times during the World Cup in
Brazil. Twitter is clearly the channel that
drives the volume. Of the 8.2 million
online mentions we analysed, 89% were
tweets, and that’s after filtering out a big
portion of the “noise” from spammy
affiliate accounts on Twitter sending out
the same kinds of bonus tweets thousands
of times per month.
Spikes in brand mentions, especially on
Twitter, are very much influenced by what
the brands themselves are doing. 888sport’s
jump in mention volumes during the World
Cup was heavily related to content that
they tweeted, in particular, a couple of
well-curated vines from @FootyHumour
with Thomas Muller spring to mind here:
https://vine.co/v/MFUTdPuQeAH
Paddy Power is always cited as the
example of how to do social media and
always appears to come out top on Social
Monitor. Are any of the other brands
actually managing to close the gap on
Paddy’s, and if not, why not?
If we look at Twitter, then yes, Paddy
Power is playing in its own league.
But once you remove Twitter from the
equation and look at all other online
sources such as blogs, forums, news
sites and affiliates, then the picture is
completely different and Sky Bet comes
out as the most talked-about brand.
The number one reason that Sky Bet
comes out as the winner here is their
headline sponsorship of the Sky Bet
Championship, as that is how the various
news and content sources now refer to the
second tier of English professional football.
Q&A: JOAKIM NILSSON,
SOCIAL MONITOR
0%
0%
1%0%
3%
3%
3%
89%
1%
Blog Facebook Forum General Image News Review Twitter Video
Figure 1: Channel split across all brands in English language for 2014

2.
INSIGHT
62 iGB Affiliate Issue 51 JUNE/JULY 2015
Even though the title sponsorship for the
Premier League might not yet be available
to a betting company, if we’re to believe
the words of CEO Richard Scudamore,
it’s still a very bright move compared to
being a shirt sponsor of a team in the
same league, as the latter won’t yield
anywhere near the same volume of online
mentions. This is because when we refer to
a team in writing, we don’t refer to them,
for example, as “Dafabet Aston Villa” but
simply as “Aston Villa”. Hence league
title sponsorships have proved to be more
effective in upping the amount of earned
online buzz your brand receives.
Have you noticed any major changes in the
way operators use social media since you
started tracking their activity last year?
If I look at it from the perspective that I’ve
been in the iGaming space for just over a
decade now and involved in social media
since the early days of both Facebook
and Twitter, I have seen a major shift in
how operators approach social media. At
the risk of over generalising, social media
“back then” was seen more as yet another
set of channels for your products and
promotions. Today, I think a section of
the industry’s operators have now started
to embrace social media more holistically
across the organisation. They realise
that the online landscape looks different
from yesterday, with the customer’s voice
notably amplified, hence this section of
operators now asking themselves how they
need to adapt and change throughout the
organisation. Such questions are likely
to include: What’s the role of customer
service today? Do we need to proactively
look for problem mentions outside our
inbound channels? If so, should customer
service be treated as a profit centre rather
than cost centre? Does our six-month
marketing plan and budget make sense in
the advent of real-time marketing? Are we
agile enough to respond to opportunities
quickly enough?
Focusing just on the last year and what
changed during this period, we always see
companies experimenting with the latest
channels such as Snapchat, which is all
well and good if you have the basics in
place, but for most operators I think it risks
becoming more of a distraction than a
powerful marketing tool.
You’ve stated that the combined voice of
customers, affiliates and partners talking
about a brand can be 25x the reach of
the brand’s own social media channels.
Which types of strategy or campaign
have proved effective in delivering this
reach for brands operating on more
limited budgets?
That figure does vary a lot across the
brands, but we’ve seen many incidences
of brands having a much larger combined
reach from their audience talking about
Dec 2013
0k
60k
40k
20k
80k
100k
Jan 2014 Feb 2014 Mar 2014 Apr 2014 May 2014 Jun 2014 Jul 2014 Aug 2014 Sep 2014 Oct 2014
MentionVolume
Nov 2014 Dec 2014 Jan 2015 Feb 2015 Mar 2015 Apr 2015
Paddy Power Sky BetBet365 Betfair Betway Boylesports Bwin888 CoralBetVictor Ladbrokes Totesport Unibet William HillBetfred
Figure 2: Brand mention volume per month across all channels except Twitter
Figure 3: Most popular topics and keywords related to Sky Bet
Championship (March 2014)
Sky Bet Championship promotion
Sky Bet Championship side
announced on Friday
Watford
Blackpool
Barclays Premier League
BirminghamSouthampton Kick
Everton
second-half
first-team
Bolton Leeds
Stadium
Hull
Manchester City
Nottingham Forest
ForestFA Cup Football
fourth roundCity
QPR London club
Allardyce
Johnson
Leicester
Blackburn
Derby County
Reading
Derby
Burnley
Wigan
Premier League
Sky Bet Championship club
Sky Bet Championship rivals third round year-old
Sky Bet Championship promotion hopefuls
McClaren

3.
INSIGHT
With over a decade in
the iGaming space and
his background as Head
of Social at Betclic Everest
Group, JOAKIM NILSSON
heads up the iGB Social Monitor
solution, the industry’s first tailored and
fully managed social media monitoring
and analytics solution for iGaming.
them than from their own social media
channels. Unfortunately, limited budgets
aren’t the answer here, but rather a
well-executed PR stunt that gets people
talking. If we’re going to borrow the
space of our customers’ social media
profiles, we need to give them something
they want to talk about, something that
makes them look smart, entertaining or
good in some other way.
Twitter is by far the dominant channel
when it comes to social mentions – are
there any emerging channels operators
should be looking at?
Instagram has slowly gained traction over
the past year as a channel for players,
affiliates and operators. From a player
perspective, it’s mostly shared bet-slips that
are being hashtagged with an operator’s
brand, and affiliates are perusing the
same strategy as they have on Twitter i.e.
automation and volume. If you ask me if
brands should be on Meerkat or Periscope,
the answer is that although each of these
new platforms brings new opportunities
in how you can communicate and engage,
they need to be backed up by a profound
strategy outlining what the operator really
wants to achieve.
Looking more widely at the space, what
share of total mentions are generated
by sportsbooks compared to the other
product groups such as casino, poker,
bingo etc, and which brands lead the way
in these verticals?
No other product vertical can really
challenge Paddy Power’s sportsbook in
terms of mention volume. PokerStars
would be the nearest contender outside the
sportsbook segment, with around 60,000
mentions per month in English language
and across all online channels.
Another product vertical that is growing
exponentially in terms of online buzz is
fantasy sports. We see brands like FanDuel
and DraftKings racking up in the region of
30,000 mentions per month, coming from
virtually nowhere just a year ago.
But mention volume isn’t necessarily the
metric to always look at, as it runs the risk
of becoming a mere vanity metric, such as
the total number of website visitors. In the
casino vertical, for example, a big chunk of
mentions are from Twitter and affiliates,
but the real insight are to be found in
customer forums, where speed of deposits,
bonuses, and other experiences are being
discussed amongst players.
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