Sports Betting: Bookies and Bettors are Reshuffling Their Relationship

Among the many things that have changed in the sports betting industry in the light of digital technologies and the internet, it is also the relationships and exchange transactions between the sportsbooks and their customers. Sports betting Obviously, the structure of these transactions has changed because now nearly everything happens online, but there is much more than the plain distribution and communication channel being brought into the virtual world. Sports betting

Today you can live in one part of the planet and bet on an event that takes place in the other part of the planet. You can be here and wager your money there. Bookmakers don’t have to exist in the natural world – they don’t have to be brick-and-mortar betting shops – they can just be online bookmakers. Sports betting

They don’t necessarily take cash from customers, or give cash for winnings in that manner- there are so many different means of transactions that we can constantly see sites featuring alternative payment methods, as for example the betting sites with PayID in Australia. In some cases, they don’t even need to accept traditional, fiat currencies, when cryptos are becoming so widespread across the world that we are witnessing them slowly taking over many of the conventional markets.

Today, bookmakers don’t just compete with each other on the basis of geographical reach and locational proximity to the punters. Since they can reach out to the greater masses, they engage in another form of rivalry which in the end benefits the bettors themselves.

They offer attractive bonuses, they invest heavily in promotions, they provide competitive prices and lines and they even feature betting schools and consultation on how punters can improve their game, how they can manage their bankroll, how they can develop winning strategies and so on.

The relationship between sportsbooks and their customers is acquiring a new kind of dynamic. It’s not the bookmaker that sets the guidelines and the rules now, as much as it is the bettor who gets to gain more control and this is all due to the fact that the online world has increased transparency and shifted the power to the user.

Bettors don’t just sit with one particular betting site if they are not really happy or fundamentally satisfied with what it offers. They can shop around in a way that is faster than anyone could imagine in the past. They can compare prices, services and offerings instantly and effortlessly and this gives them a more substantial bargaining power. The switching costs are low and so they can turn to a competing bookmaker just like that.

For this reason, bookmakers need, now, to be more creative, more innovative and nearly more of everything if they are to sustain their transactional relationships with bettors. In other words, they need to be very appealing to get the attention of bettors at first, turn them into customers then, and in the end, transform them into loyal clients.

They need to offer a diversified portfolio of betting markets, competitive odds or lines that are closer to the actual chances of events. They need to be more open to everything new such as new forms of payments – such as there are now betting apps with payID, new types of bets – such as more prop bets, new markets – such as eSports and so on. In short, they need to stay tuned to anything new that emerges and be ready to grasp that, so as to avoid risking their ability to deliver what bettors want.

We constantly hear that sports betting has undergone great transformations with the internet, and that the relationships between bookmakers and punters are changing. But what is really happening is that the bookies are reshuffling their relations with their customers, in their effort to sustain these relations.