How sportsbooks and publishers are rethinking the terms of content-based sponsorships

By Kayleigh Barber

The start of the American football season is like ringing in the new year for the sports betting industry. And this latest season seems to mark a new austerity era for dealings between sportsbooks and publishers.

“[Two years ago] was like the silly season of investing in massive marketing budgets that return [bettors acquired through paid marketing] at really gigantic levels, and all of that was in search of scale,” said Liam Roecklein, svp of content at sportsbook PointsBet. Now, “there’s much more of a search for fiscal responsibility [so] we need to take this approach [of prioritizing organic customer acquisition]. As a disruptor brand, we have less money to invest in traditional marketing.”

Unlike the past few years, 2022 is not seeing a growth economy. Therefore, the marketing budgets that some sportsbooks are working with are a lot leaner than before. Caesars, for example, announced during its first quarter earnings call in May that it was cutting marketing spend on Caesars Sportsbook by $250 million. And The Washington Post reported that U.S. sportsbooks are trying to get savvier about the use of high-yield promo offers that promise first-time bettors deposit matches of thousands of dollars or no-risk first bets up to $5,000.

As a result, the relationships between sportsbooks and publishers are changing as well, particularly with deals moving away from the traditional cost-per-acquisition model. That model was a win for publishers with audiences that had a high propensity for sports betting, as it paid anywhere from $250 to $500 for each first-time depositor they referred to sportsbooks. But it is also a risk for those media companies whose audiences did not fall in that category.

The CPA model is no longer as affordable, and sportsbooks like PointsBet and FanDuel are reconsidering how content fits into their content acquisition strategies altogether, including looking for ways to bring content production in-house and signing deals that rely on different payment models like revenue shares or flat fees. Meanwhile, publishers are looking for deals that offer them more guarantees.

Taking the content strategy in-house

The content team within PointsBet, which Roecklein oversees, is working to build a media brand that “delights” the platforms’ users. The hope is they become evangelists for the content and the platform, and get their friends to sign up for the sportsbook and make a deposit by word of mouth or sharing the content his team produces.

One content product Roecklein is working on is a thrice-per-week newsletter called PointsBet Hustle that was created through a white-labeled content and technology partnership with Front Office Sports, which was a flat-fee payment deal. The newsletter is produced by PointsBet’s senior editor Teddy Greenstein, but uses FOS’s expertise to craft the subject lines, body and other elements.

The origin of this partnership came from PointsBet’s desire to find ways to decrease its customer acquisition costs, according to Adam White, CEO of Front Office Sports, who spoke on stage last month about …read more

Source:: Digiday