Anti-social gambling
Why the future of the sector depends on finding a way to make losing more fun
Gambling industry nerds sit in an odd spot at the moment, trying to work out where the sector is headed. We sort of know where we are going but we have no idea how we are going to get there.
Let’s start with our north star. The future of gambling is entertainment. That may not be your truth, you may be trying to revolutionise the way the industry works (good luck) but for the industry that exists and the businesses within it this is where we are at.
In a world led by Flutter, Entain, DraftKings and the rest the future is entertainment. The past, well that’s a different country and we don’t go there anymore. The present? Well to use an old British expression, f***ed if I know pal. And that, honestly, is a bit of a problem.
Because everyone is sort of hoping we can will this entertainment future into existence. Players with decades of experience of “something else” will come along for the ride as we almost imperceptibly and incrementally adjust the user experience. That might work in casino or poker, but in sports betting it’s more difficult.
Because…well…
Sports betting isn’t really that entertaining is it?
The trouble with betting
Sweating a bet is entertaining, working out what to bet on is, as is randomly picking a bunch of things to bet on. But in general sports betting is making a wild swing at a first scorer and bricking your bet after 10 minutes. The joy is fairly fleeting.
So how do you make it more entertaining?
One of the big ideas that just will not go away no matter how many times we collectively try and stamp on it is social betting. Sharing bets, tips and the sweat, making betting a communal and social experience. It sounds great doesn’t it?
Well….no
People really want sports betting to be a social activity. The images of Vegas sportsbooks packed with high-fiving dudes on a last second touchdown, lads in hoodies in a sitting room bear hugging after a last minute goal. But these are brief moments that represent the bare minority of the sports betting experience.
Most of the true sports betting experience is losses, drudgery and grind, and that’s just if you are good at it. If you are bad at it then it’s mostly losing, failing, and forgetting for long enough you can start the treadmill again and hit that occasional big win that sustains you through the weeks or months of firing blanks ahead.
So who exactly is going to build a sports betting business around these brief moments of celebratory joy? It’s like installing a retractable roof into your car based on a single day of sunshine every year. Nobody would be that…wait…they are? Are they insane?
Anti-social betting
All social sports betting models to-date have been based on the idea of celebrating wins or sharing in wins. But this isn’t how gambling works. This is the unique aspect of the gambling industry. It’s all about making losers happy.
People don’t need to be made to feel happy when they win. They do need a hand on the back when it all goes wrong. And that’s what operators do via bet boosts, free bets, and bet types that disguise just how f***ing terrible you really are at this.
Because we need losers. We need lots and lots of losers. This business doesn’t work without them. Somebody needs to pay to keep the lights on. The entire game from the operator side is making people forget about the times they did.
It has been interesting to see the Barstool model in the US begin to, by accident rather than design you sense, lean into this concept of losing as a team. Following in the big personalities and betting behind them, losing as way of feeling part of something bigger.
This “lose along with me” concept definitely has legs. It’s what bonds most of the betting friendship groups that exists far more than the occasional big wins we all celebrate. The trouble for betting brands is most of the things that facilitate this activity already exist really well.
The reason there isn’t a “whatsapp for betting” is because that is whatsapp. The discord of betting? That’s discord. You need to build something different, something better. So what can we do?
Can social betting work?
In my very limited view I think there are three areas social sports betting can and can’t work.
Where social sports betting can work
Creating a betting community - people want to talk about bets, find things to bet on and chat about betting with like minded souls.
Recommending bets - people are lazy, curious and generally interested in what someone else might know they don’t.
Betting behind - Follow the leader. Bet as a team and lose as a team. This isn’t new, and some large affiliates have had this model for a while. But it has more potential.
Where social sports betting can’t work
Genuine peer-to-peer - losing to someone else is a genuinely bad user experience. See online poker chat room logs for evidence.
Tracking and ranking - Most people lose most of the time. Nobody wants to pull their own pants down on social media constantly.
Truly social sharing - People share either for commiserations or congratulations. And both of those get really annoying quite quickly.
Where does social betting happen?
There is also a question of where this takes place. Is it on social networks? We’re already seeing some evidence it might across Twitch, tiktok, YouTube and to a lesser extent twitter. One who was brought to my attention, and I am deeply sorry for bringing him to yours, is @BookitWithTrent who focuses on the “I’m so bad just do the opposite to win” schtick.
Is that making losing fun? I don’t think so. But, maybe? And can operators pull that trick off? Well maybe as we’ve seen with Barstool. So could this take place on an operator app itself? Well…perhaps. But there is another sexier option yet still. Is it layered over original content or even embedded within it from the broadcasters?
We’ve seen some small experiments in this direction in the US market already and DAZN is betting big on this for its future growth also as noted in this recent story.
DAZN X will {…] aim to to allow customers to talk, share, shop and play with their friends and communities while live streaming premium sports content.
Shay Segev, DAZN co-CEO, said: “We are here to revolutionise the sports viewing experience by making it more exciting, more sociable and engaging.”
But there is a LOT to build here. None of this exists at the moment, none of it has even been proven to work yet, and there is no guarantee it ever will. That’s not to say it won’t be the next big thing, or the next big money bonfire. It could be either. It could be both. And we’re going to find out soon enough.
Can social gaming work?
Yes. Casino games are just that, games. They can much more easily lean into many of the existing social features, push towards both casual and strategic and are generally far more flexible. The social interaction also improves and expands the UX for lots of games.
There are some very social games such as craps, some quasi-social games such as roulette where you can, in theory, play along with your table mates although mostly they’re just an impediment to your play and some borderline anti-social games like blackjack where players “catch your card” and you want to stab them in the eye.
Some of these will work better than others, and live craps still feels like a breakthrough waiting to happen in the US market. And beyond this we have the gameshow phenomenon, which are already social in nature and still at the very beginning of their development.
The question the industry has to ask itself is what is that entertainment experience it’s trying to create, or lift up and extend for its players? Is it the thrill of winning or is it that weirdly unsatisfying buzz of losing? We all know about the near-miss drive in slots gaming but it doesn’t need to be that insidious.
Make losing great again
I have often said the gambling industry usually has a choice between being in the addiction business or the entertainment business. What is making those players come back? Is it because it was fun or is it because they feel compelled to?
Losing can be fun. Should be fun. But it needs to feel fair, needs to feel like you played an active part in it and needs to give you a run for your money. Players who come back just trying to recapture that winning feeling. That feels like it’s in a different wheelhouse to me.
Committing to gambling as entertainment also contains an implicit promise to act in the player’s best interests. Encouraging players into ever more reckless and larger bets isn’t entertaining for them, it’s potentially devastating and giving them maximum entertainment value for every dollar should be the aim. RG should be baked into the strategy, and that this doesn’t always or even often happen is a bug not a feature and needs to be squashed.
It is, apparently, controversial to say that sports betting is entertainment, or that gambling generally is entertainment. I’m not really sure what people want it to be instead, perhaps some combination of strategy, competition and self congratulation. But classing it as entertainment really seems to rub some people up the wrong way.
That’s unfortunate as the confluence of responsible gambling and mainstream growth can’t realistically take it anywhere else without ripping up the product and starting again. The alternative to an entertainment industry isn’t a serious strategic one as much as one driven by more insidious “compelling” drivers.
We’ve wasted most of a decade trying to make winning more fun, and it’s time to think differently. The big question the industry needs to ask itself is how do we make losing more fun? It’s a much more difficult one to answer than how to make winning more fun, but it’s going to be a lot more profitable and sustainable to find that answer.
Nice piece. Reddit communities are probably the prototype to model after.