World Cup Economy: How to leverage the mobile Internet to boost sports betting?

Research conclusions:

1. Sports betting has the largest market share in the entire gambling industry and is very profitable;

2. Online lottery sales have become the mainstream lottery sales model, but offline lottery sales outlets still have high value;

3. With the help of mobile Internet and social media, the number of people buying lottery tickets is expanding, which also brings more opportunities for lottery sales.

Preface: The World Cup is a carnival of football and sports betting

The World Cup is in full swing. Like every World Cup, this sports event has attracted the attention of hundreds of millions of people around the world. In addition to the fierce competition, the World Cup is also a grand event for the sports betting industry.

Every World Cup is an opportunity for bookmakers to make a fortune, but the uniqueness of this World Cup is that mobile Internet has become an important sales channel for sports lottery. Both traditional sports bookmakers and emerging Internet lottery companies are trying to use mobile Internet to attract more people to participate in sports betting.

1. The gambling industry is closely linked to sports and the World Cup

When talking about gambling, people may first think of Las Vegas or Macau. But in fact, in the global gambling market, casinos only account for a little more than 20% of the market share. The largest proportion is the huge gambling industry, especially sports betting. According to a report by the British H2 Gaming Capital, the scale of the entire sports betting industry in 2013 was as high as 700 billion to 1 trillion US dollars.

The country with the most developed gambling industry is the United Kingdom. The world's first gambling company was founded by the British Harry Ogden in 1790. At the same time, the United Kingdom also introduced regulations for the gambling industry as early as 1845. However, in terms of the market size of sports betting, the United States is the world's largest gambling market, and China ranks second.

According to the Ministry of Finance, China's lottery sales in 2012 were RMB 261.5 billion (US$42.7 billion), an 18% increase from the previous year. The Ministry of Finance predicts that by 2015, China's lottery sales will reach RMB 450.4 billion. According to iResearch, more than 40% of all lottery tickets sold in China from 2010 to 2012 were sports lotteries.

In addition to formal sports betting, a large part of sports betting is illegal underground betting. Different analysis agencies have different statistics on the scale of illegal betting, but it is generally believed that the scale of illegal betting is more than 20 times that of legal sports betting. The scale of legal sports betting in Asia is relatively small, but illegal betting accounts for half of the global market share.

Just for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil, according to the GBGC (Global Betting & Gaming Consultants), a gambling research organization, the scale of betting on each World Cup has increased compared to the previous one, and the World Cup has always been the largest gambling event. William Hill, a British bookmaker, said that their company's betting scale for this year's World Cup will exceed 340 million US dollars, an increase of 75% over the previous one. At the same time, they expect the overall betting scale of this year's World Cup to reach 1.7 billion US dollars.

2: How did the traditional gaming company William Hill achieve a market value of $5 billion?

William Hill is the largest bookmaker in the UK and the first company to sell sports lottery tickets over the Internet. William Hill was founded in 1934 and launched the Internet sports lottery service in 1998. In 2013, the company sold a total of $13 billion in sports betting, and its current market value is around $5 billion.

William Hill's main market is the UK, with an 85% share, Australia has 6%, the US has 2%, and other countries account for the remaining 7%.

William Hill's betting sales channels:

Offline retail stores accounted for 61% of William Hill's lottery sales in 2013. William Hill currently has the largest number of offline gaming retailers in the UK, with a total of 2,432 stores and 13,000 retail store employees.

Although it is now a digital age, retail stores are still very important in lottery sales. The process of buying lottery tickets in retail stores is very easy, and you can communicate with store staff and other lottery buyers. In a sense, offline retail stores have become the center of communication for lottery players.

In 2013, 30% of William Hill's lottery tickets were sold through online channels, and it also occupied 15% of the UK online gambling market, making it the largest one.

It is worth mentioning that mobile sales accounted for 40% of online sales, a 166% increase over the previous year. Currently, William Hill's iOS app downloads have exceeded 2 million times.

3: How does 500.com do lottery business in the Internet era?

500 Lottery Network was established in 2001 and is the largest online lottery sales company in China. In September 2012, 500 Lottery Network and China Sports Lottery Network obtained the pilot qualification of sports lottery agent sales, which became an important "certificate" for 500 Lottery Network to officially sell lottery tickets online.

In 2013, 500.com's sales exceeded RMB 3 billion and its registered users exceeded 20 million. 500.com went public in the United States last year and its current market value is approximately US$1.2 billion.

As a pure Internet lottery sales channel, 500 Lottery Network has also made a lot of efforts in lottery sales channels, such as cooperating with some e-commerce platforms to connect to its own lottery purchase business. At the same time, 500 Lottery Network also sells lottery tickets through its own website and mobile Internet.

Similarities and differences between William Hill and 500 Lottery Network:

William Hill and 500.com are both sports betting companies that rely on selling lottery tickets as a source of income. But there are also big differences between the two companies.

On the surface, the biggest difference between William Hill and 500 Lottery Network lies in the difference in sales channels. William Hill's sales are mainly offline, while 500 Lottery Network is a pure online channel. However, from the perspective of business model, due to the influence of laws, policies and other macro environments, the business models of the two companies are also different.

William Hill is a sports betting company that can set its own betting methods and odds, and has a large degree of autonomy in sports betting, and is not limited to sports betting. In its iOS app, it provides a variety of different betting methods. 500 Lottery Network is more like a simple sales channel and does not have much power to formulate rules.

4: How can World Cup Sports Lottery leverage the mobile Internet and WeChat to expand its influence

The biggest difference between this World Cup and the 2010 World Cup is that mobile Internet has now truly entered people's lives. Mobile Internet and mobile social networking have increased people's interaction around the World Cup. As for the World Cup lottery, the number of people participating in lottery purchases has increased significantly due to mobile Internet and mobile social networking.

1. Mobile online ticket purchase expands the population of lottery buyers

The relatively low-end group of people who buy lottery tickets are those who buy them in the hope of "winning the jackpot", and these people were also the main force of lottery purchases in the past. For others, there is often no motivation to go to offline stores to buy lottery tickets, but if there is a minute of free time on the mobile phone and the payment is convenient enough, it would be very convenient to buy a lottery ticket, and occasional purchases can also become a spice of life.

2. The topicality of the World Cup stimulates people to buy lottery tickets

Although the mobile Internet has opened up channels for buying lottery tickets in the past, people still pay little attention to it. The World Cup element has stimulated people's discussion about the outcome of the game, and sports lottery is also related to the outcome, so the World Cup can also drive the purchase of related lottery tickets.

3. WeChat Lottery’s entrance function and social elements

This is the first World Cup after the launch of WeChat, and the most popular lottery for this year’s World Cup is WeChat Lottery. “Lottery” has already had a good entrance in WeChat, and the excitement of the World Cup has made more people willing to click on the lottery page to guess. At the same time, cashback and lucky draws have attracted more people to participate. At the same time, because many people discuss the World Cup and lottery on WeChat, it has also driven people to buy lottery tickets from a social perspective - because they are all in the same application and payment is very convenient.

Conclusion: World Cup time, gambling time

This World Cup is the first World Cup held in the mobile Internet era. From the perspective of the event itself, mobile Internet has changed the way people obtain information about the event and watch the game, but the extension of the World Cup - gambling around the World Cup has also undergone great changes due to mobile Internet.

While consolidating their offline sales channels, traditional gaming companies have also begun to work hard to develop online channels; purely online lottery sales platforms have become listed companies and are expanding their own channels online; WeChat, as one of the portals to the mobile Internet, brought World Cup lottery tickets to people's attention when the World Cup became a hot topic, attracting more people to buy lottery tickets, and this habit of buying lottery tickets will continue after the World Cup.

But everything has its pros and cons. While the mobile Internet provides convenience for lottery purchases, it also makes it easier for people to participate in illegal gambling. On the one hand, legal sports betting needs to adapt to the development of the times and meet people's needs for participating in guessing and buying lottery tickets. At the same time, it also requires judicial organs and event organizing committees to increase their crackdown on illegal gambling and allow the gambling industry to develop healthily.