With the emergence of corona crisis which has become a great impediment and ravaged our global economic growth, the question that is yet to be answered is that, is there any industry or organisation that is immune to the massive effect of this pandemic? The answer is absolutely no. Not only are the top industries, governments and businesses affected but also the less-developed and staggering organization are affected, so are the bookmakers on the sporting industry. How then, can the bookmakers revive from such a desperate situation and try to cut their losses in this tragic situation when the world is fighting the corona crisis?
With the fear that comes with the great uncertainty of the resumption date of all the leagues and gaming events, the UK bookmakers are willing to offer odds and future prediction of gaming event at a lower price. Bookmakers are forced to do so just to keep up with the competition from other emerging bookmakers in Asia and other parts of the world. Therefore, below are some remedies on how bookmakers use to cut losses and recover partially if not fully from this crisis.
Bookmakers are left with no option but to focus on online gaming events and E-sports. With the rising competition within online gaming events, many bookmakers have shifted their current attention to online gaming events and E-sports. The bookmakers now offer the best possible odds in different events and markets with Bet365 as one of the top bookmakers in UK offering variety of option with more than a thousand different events than its greatest competitor Unibet. Bet365 continues to top the list of E-sports bookmakers by covering most competitive games like league of legends, StarCraft, Overwatch among others.
Bookmakers also venture into new potential market to bet on as a way to cut loses during this pandemic. The focus has shifted from purely sports and gaming events, to other fields such as politics and natural phenomena such as weather prediction and even further to health matters prediction. With Paddypower venturing in more than six new markets, Bet365 has raised the bar to more than thirty new markets. This has enabled bet365 to be one of the best bookmakers to reach different markets and provide more events and odds than any other bookmaker.
This also makes it essential for punters to compare bookmakers. Of course, most of the big players in the market offer more niche sports and leagues than the smaller ones. Odds for popular leagues and matches often aren’t that different on popular sports betting platforms. But in niches like e.g. the widely unnoticed Belarus Leagues the odds tend to be far apart on different bookmakers, because experts calculating them are not as easy to find and the consensus between them therefor rather small. A bettor could miss way better odds if he places a bet on a match without having compared bookmaker odds before his decision.
Also bookmakers have changed their trend and focus on minor soccer events that were less popular. Amid the corona crisis, other countries like Belarus with minor soccer events continue to carry out their sporting activities as normal hence providing an opportunity for bookmakers to identify a business niche and capitalize on it. With bet365 as one of the popular bookmakers in UK offering a wide range of football market details, Betfair has since upped their game by allowing bettors to place their bets in pre-match or in-plays match. This allows bettors to choose odds on Belarus matches as one of the surviving events available.
Cutting cost has become one of the great strategies used by bookmarkers today. With the latest integration of cheaper payment options like the online currency, it has greatly reduced the amount one has to pay for processing card transaction. This offers more option for the bettors to either use bank-acquired cards or the online currency to bet. With bookmakers such as betonline they offer online currency such as the use of bitcoin to enables bettors to place bets.
Expansion by the bookmakers to new geographical location is one the best option used today. With the effect that has come with the corona virus, bookmakers impose incentives in order to attract more bettors from all over the world. They continue to offer better odds and free bonuses on their betting events in different market so as to boost bettor’s morale. Bookmakers such as Betway have expanded its wings to some of the African countries like Kenya and Nigeria to attract more bettors.
With the adaptation of these new trends like online gaming, Esports, the use of crypto-currency and even venturing into new betting markets like politics, is indeed the new way for many bookmakers use to cut their losses in this tragic moment. Since change is inevitable, then all the bookmakers should adapt to these trends.