The World Cup: Betting bonanza or damp squib?

For most tech teams, the World Cup started in about October last year and by now it will be a few days to a code freeze. Then comes a month of crossed fingers and toes before the first ball is kicked in anger on June 14. But will Russia 2018 deliver the sort of uplift that betting operators are looking for? And who will be the winners and losers in the competition to attract and retain customers?

In theory, European and Asian operators should see a big uplift in performance, with games played in a friendly time zone (the later games in Brazil 2014 were played in the worst possible timeslots for the Chinese and Southeast Asian markets) and a month of games in which there are only seven days without a fixture.

Normally, you would expect to see a huge year-on-year improvement in financial performance. Yet personally, I think it’s going to be tough to meet those expectations. I don’t think the 2018 World Cup offers the same sort of guarantees of easy profits as everyone seems to expect.

First, I think the tournament draw in the group stages has produced a slightly dull line up. Five of the eight groups have a heavy odds-on favourite and I don’t see glamour ties like Morocco vs Iran and Argentina vs Iceland producing the required turnover. Yes, every World Cup has some pretty dull matches but there seem to be more of them this time around.

Second, it feels like there is simply less of a buzz around this World Cup. Around 10,000 England fans are expected to travel to the Group games, roughly half the number that went to Brazil four years earlier.

I suspect that the long distances between venues, the ridiculous cost of poor quality accommodation and the threat of Russian hooliganism is going to mean something of a negative vibe around the event. Add in the geo-political hostility towards Russia at the moment and you wonder how much goodwill the media will be willing to offer the hosts.

That don’t impress me much

Third, I think betting has moved on. Eight years ago, it was a rarity to have three or four back-to-back televised matches a day. Now most European leagues have caught up to it and there are matches scheduled at almost every time slot imaginable to ensure there is televised football at all times. It is no longer a novelty and I suspect that punters won’t be quite as excitable as analysts hope.

Finally, and I may well be proved wrong by a slew of amazing new product launches in early June, but it doesn’t feel like there is a lot of innovation among operators around this World Cup. Unless someone comes up with something as market-shaping as cash-out in time for Russia, it feels like most companies are just trying to achieve marginal gains by improving their mousetrap.

In addition, UK-facing sportsbooks are facing their own pressures around regulation, especially related to responsible gambling measures, the implementation of GAMSTOP and the ending of the ‘bet now’ slogans. I’d expect the tone of their World Cup marketing campaigns to be substantially different to 2014. In what is the largest regulated market in the world, it is going to make it a lot harder in the UK to get a big comparable performance improvement.

Will it be a disaster for operators? I very much doubt it, unless the favourites win all their games by big margins. But am I buying shares in all the big companies? No. I hope I’m proved wrong for the sake of the industry but I’m not expecting Russia to be a vintage betting tournament.

Joe Saumarez Smith is chief executive of Sports Gaming, an online gaming consultancy, and chairman of Bede Gaming, a leading developer of online gaming platforms and distributor of online slots and table games.