The Summer Olympic Games kick off today, bringing profitable opportunities for sports betting operators during the typically quiet post-UEFA Euro period. SOFTSWISS, a global tech expert with over 15 years of experience providing innovative iGaming solutions, shares valuable tips and strategies to help operators maximise their benefits during this major sporting event.

This year, the opening ceremony takes place outside traditional stadiums. The grand start of the 2024 Summer Olympic Games occurs on the Seine River, with 10,500 athletes from 206 countries floating down the river on boats. A notable feature of this year’s event that can attract a new audience is the debut of breaking (breakdancing) as a new competitive sport.

Targeting Specific Audiences

Operators have numerous opportunities for the Olympics beyond popular sports like football, basketball, and tennis. Athletes will compete in 45 disciplines, offering a strategy to attract niche sports fans. By offering diverse welcome bonuses, operators can expand their player base and introduce newcomers to their brand. 

Geo-targeting is another approach. By allowing players to bet on their compatriots, operators can engage old and new bettors without causing adverse reactions.

Alexander Kamenetskyi, Head of SOFTSWISS Sportsbook, shares: “The Olympic Games bring another unique opportunity to the table. This year, the Olympics follow the UEFA Euro, allowing operators to re-engage ‘dormant’ players who typically ‘awaken’ for major football events like the FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro.”

Diversifying Risks

The project’s stability increases with more sports bettors familiar with different sports. Therefore, operators are encouraged to aim to familiarise players with as many sports as possible. Traditionally, bettors tend to wager on team sports like football, which should attract around half of all bets. Other popular sports include basketball and tennis, which are expected to garner up to 40% of wagers, with swimming, archery, gymnastics, and track and field also drawing attention.

Alexander Kamenetskyi, Head of SOFTSWISS Sportsbook, adds: “The Olympic Games offer a wide range of attractive disciplines for wagering this year. Fans will undoubtedly follow the newly crowned European champions, the Spain national football team. Tennis, featuring familiar faces like reigning French Open champions Carlos Alcaraz and Iga Swiatek, and its iconic venue, Roland Garros, is another highlight. We recommend finding compelling stories and promoting them to the audience, using free bets or other bonuses to diversify betting interests.”

Reactivating Inactive Players

Events featuring national teams provide an excellent opportunity to reactivate inactive players through various marketing tools. The simplest method is launching an email newsletter. The SOFTSWISS Sportsbook team advises its partners to create country-specific offers with bonuses for bets on their national team.

Alexander Kamenetskyi, Head of SOFTSWISS Sportsbook, adds: “It’s important to consider the casino and sportsbook as one iGaming project. This strategy can easily be applied to reactivating former casino players.”

Earlier this year, SOFTSWISS introduced the Sportsbook Budget Calculator. This tool includes winning practices for launching a sportsbook, and the ready-to-use P&L calculator assists with budgeting.

About SOFTSWISS 

SOFTSWISS is an international tech company supplying software solutions for managing iGaming projects. The expert team, which counts over 2,000 employees, is based in Malta, Poland and Georgia. SOFTSWISS holds a number of gaming licences and provides one-stop-shop iGaming software solutions. The company has a vast product portfolio, including the Casino Platform, the Game Aggregator with thousands of casino games, the Affilka affiliate platform, the Sportsbook Platform, and the Jackpot Aggregator. In 2013, SOFTSWISS was the first in the world to introduce a Bitcoin-optimised online casino solution.

Premier League clubs have voluntarily agreed to ban front-of-shirt gambling sponsorships from the 2026/27 season, but that has done nothing to stop a raft of lucrative marketing deals being signed ahead of the forthcoming campaign.

This summer, many Premier League teams have actually doubled down on their partnership with gambling firms, securing a last hurrah with the industry as front-facing shirt sponsors.

At the latest tally, 11 Premier League teams have signed up with betting firms ahead of the new season – a 38% increase on the eight clubs from last year.

According to exclusive data from ClickOut Media brand Sportscasting, Premier League clubs had more betting and gaming sponsors than any other top five league in Europe last season.

That data shows that 85% of Premier League clubs boasted a betting partner in some capacity, while more than half (55%) signed a partnership with a crypto sponsor, with those figures almost certain to rise even higher in 2024/25.

The backlash has been as swift as it was inevitable, with campaigners lobbying for a further reduction of gambling sponsorships. The Guardian ran a story on “greed” after one gambling-harm reduction charity described the latest signings as “desperate deals for a few extra quid”.

However, ClickOut Media analyst Neil Roarty believes it’s a bit naive to expect businesses not to operate like, well, businesses.

He said: “For fans, football is a whole host of things: nostalgia, emotion, fun, a past-time, a passion. But for the clubs themselves, it’s all of that plus the livelihood of hundreds of people.

“Football, like all other professional sports, isn’t just a game – it’s a business. And like most businesses, they need to make money.

“While I can understand the concerns around gambling advertisers from supporters, many clubs have already taken steps to avoid the more harmful aspects – by leaving sponsorships off youth jerseys for example.

“Most football fans simply want the shirt to look great and the brand on the front of it is a secondary consideration.”

A new analysis of sports betting apps on the Google Play Store by app growth solutions company, SplitMetrics, has revealed that the UK betting market has experienced unprecedented growth during the Euro 2024 and Royal Ascot competitions.

Betting apps added 395k new Android users during the Euro 2024 competition, 7% more than the last major football competition, the World Cup 2022, which saw 367k new users.

The Paris Olympic Games is expected to propel the betting app market to even greater heights. The gambling industry has seen a strong start to the year with downloads up by approximately 30% compared to 2023. New users for the UK’s top 17 betting apps in 2024 currently stand at 2.3 million with over 20 million total lifetime downloads. With 66.7 million adults in the UK, it means that nearly one in three people now bet on Android apps.

If these trends continue the sector could add over 4 million for 2024 compared to the estimated 3 million in both 2023 and 2022. This would be a record-breaking year for the industry helped by major sporting and horse racing events. A previous survey found that The Grand National and Cheltenham led to download numbers increasing by an average of 64% in the week leading to the races. On average new download numbers in 2024 for the UK’s top 17 gambling apps on Android are 81k per week, however, the Grand National saw 124k, Royal Ascot 124k and Cheltenham 143k – the highest download weeks of the year by a considerable margin.

The top five sports gambling apps that added the most Android users as analysed through the App Radar by SplitMetrics platform are bet365, Paddy Power, Sky Bet, Betfair and William Hill.

The top five apps in terms of lifetime downloads are bet365, Sky Bet, Paddy Power, William Hill and Ladbrokes.

Thomas Kriebernegg, General Manager of SplitMetrics Agency, said: “The unprecedented growth of the betting app market is a clear indicator of the industry’s dynamic evolution. With major sporting events such as Euro 2024 and Royal Ascot driving significant user acquisition, we’ve witnessed a surge in app downloads and engagement that surpasses previous records. The fact that nearly one in three adults in the UK now bet on Android apps is a testament to the industry’s widespread appeal.

“Looking ahead to the Paris Olympics, we anticipate an even more explosive period of growth. The combination of global attention, competitive spirit, and the convenience of mobile betting creates a perfect storm for the industry.

“App marketers have a unique opportunity to capitalise on this momentum by developing highly targeted campaigns that resonate with sports fans and casual bettors alike. By leveraging data insights and innovative marketing strategies, betting apps can not only attract new users but also cultivate long-lasting customer loyalty.”