South Korea’s 2020 Hana1Q K League 1 will be broadcast live across a record number of territories from tomorrow, 8 May, when the season kicks off. 

Sportradar is handling rights, after being appointed international broadcast rights distributor by the K League in December 2019. 

Television viewers in 17 countries, including Australia (Optus), Germany (Sportdigital), Hong Kong (TVB), and Malaysia & Brunei (ASTRO) will be able to watch matches live, with more territories still in negotiation. According to Sportradar, it is still in discussions with several broadcasters in Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, the USA, and Brazil. 

Sportdigital Fussball has acquired broadcasting rights for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, and will be showing all matches starting from the season opener tomorrow. Optus Sports will be broadcasting two K League 1 matches per round in Australia, while Serbia-based Arena TV Sports will be serving seven countries in the Balkans.

In addition to TV broadcasts, online platforms including Copa90 (UK) and Laola.tv (Austria) will be live streaming across Europe and the rest of the world, excluding Korea.

Discussing the news Sales Directors, Audiovisual at Sportradar, Dylan Chuan, said:

“Live sport is an integral part of daily life for many people around the world, especially in these difficult and unique times. With the K League season kicking off on Friday, we are delighted to have worked with our partners – media companies, broadcasters and OTT platforms to deliver great entertainment and pulsating football action to fans across the globe.”

This season K League will benefit from a new media centre, and will use a cloud server and in-house Off-Tube system for the 54 main matches scheduled to be broadcast overseas. International satellite broadcasts will also feature English commentary for the first time.

Tomorrow’s opening match between Jeonbuk Hyundai Motors and Suwon Samsung Bluewings will also be streamed live on both Twitter and YouTube. 

AYO.NEWS says:

The commencement of the K League season following the relaxing of social distancing regulations in South Korea will come as welcome news for sports betting operators everywhere, who are still struggling to provide sports betting opportunities for customers. 

Broadcasting matches so widely, and streaming the opening match on Twitter and YouTube, as well as providing English-language commentary is a shrewd move too, and likely to significantly boost the international popularity of the league in the longer term.

With the Bundesliga also set to kick-off again on 15 May, everyone will be hoping the much predicted second wave of COVID-19 doesn’t materialise and trigger new lockdowns. 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020

Wednesday’s decision by the German government to allow Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga to host football games behind closed doors from the middle of May is putting the spotlight on the German sports betting industry.

After the market almost come to a complete standstill in the past few weeks due to the heavy restrictions in most countries across the world, the local betting community is now set for a new boost – especially since the DFL (Deutsche Fußball Liga; German Football League association) has already announced that Bundesliga will be officially returning on May 15th. 

It’s a decision that is very likely to have a strong impact on the current betting offers on the German market. While many bookmakers have recently been focusing on e-sports, the attention will now switch back to football betting. “It’s highly possible that we will soon be seeing very attractive welcome offers from the bookmakers. All companies have been struggling and are now eager to get their business back on track again as fast as possible”, says sports betting expert Thomas Hahn from the German bookmaker bonus comparison portal MyWettbonus.de.

The current bonus offers – called Sportwetten Bonus in German – for new customers range from €10 free bets up to €250 deposit bonus offers. “A typical offer from many companies is a classic €100 deposit bonus with a factor of 100% that has to be converted 5 to 10 times”, Hahn explains. The expert anticipates some bookies will raise their offers over the upcoming weeks. “That’s at least what we have seen in the past when the Bundesliga season or the Champions League kicked off.”

Hahn also believes that existing clients will be offered attractive reload bonuses. “An example is the bookmaker Interwetten. From time to time they offer reload bonuses worth up to 400 Euros. We haven’t seen such an offer yet but I’m sure that some companies will announce special bonuses in the upcoming days”, Hahn continues. 

Meanwhile, the bookmakers already have actualized their odds for the potential outcome of this year’s Bundesliga season. German market leader Tipico sees Bayern Munich as the most likely champion, followed by Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig.

There’s some welcome news for bookies as the German football season looks set to resume this month, after being given the green light by the government. 

If the planned resumption goes ahead, it means the Bundesliga and 2. Bundesliga will be the first major European leagues to go live again since most football across the continent was suspended in March as the COVID-19 crisis took hold. 

Though the specific dates haven’t been confirmed by the German Football League (DFL) yet, it is expected to be either 15 or 22 May. 

Under current DFL plans, only 300 people will be allowed in stadiums, and extensive virus testing will continue in order to minimise risks to players and staff. So far, out of around 1,700 tests just 10 positives have been declared. 

Germany is currently in the process of easing its lockdown, allowing schools and shops to re-open in a controlled way, with social distancing measures remaining in place. In total Germany has seen around 7,000 deaths in this first wave of COVID-19. 

AYO.NEWS says:

So far things are going exactly as we predicted, with individual countries starting to ease lockdown restrictions, and some sporting events slated to return, albeit without live spectators. 

Of course, right now it is critical to realise we are not in the clear. Numerous experts have warned that a second wave is almost certain to come over the next few months, and it will very likely be much bigger and of a different strain of the virus. In the last few days the World Health Organisation (WHO) has explicitly warned that countries should be prepared for more lockdowns as more waves hit. 

On the flip side, as we’ve previously discussed, if lockdowns are lifted and there are no new waves, questions will undoubtedly arise as to whether the lockdowns were even needed in the first place – especially now that evidence suggests the virus was circulating in Europe as early as December 2019, without causing any undue concern. In that case many will be looking to hold politicians and public officials accountable for the destruction of their businesses and livelihoods. 

So, although the tentative return of German football is undoubtedly welcome news for the embattled sports betting industry, it is far too early to count our chickens. Fingers crossed…

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020

UK-based gambling giant GVC is strengthening its existing partnership with LeanConvert, the customer conversion and campaign optimisation specialist. 

After working with LeanConvert for a couple of years, during which time the optimisation company became a key stakeholder in GVC’s post-Ladbrokes Coral acquisition marketing strategy, the firms will now enhance cooperation.

Specifically, LeanConvert will collaborate with GVC’s central product team, supporting onsite optimisation, customer personalisation and variance testing for all core brands, while specialists will also be deployed to Roar Digital, the joint GVC-MGM Resorts US wagering venture. 

Discussing the news Head of Customer Experience for GVC Holdings, Stefan Kalcher, said:

“We’ve seen that LeanConvert’s approach to actionable testing is indisputable proof in creating a better customer experience and improved conversion across the board. They have an extremely effective and contagious culture of experimentation that we’re now beginning to propagate and enable internally, with their guidance.”

While LeanConvert Founder and Managing Director, Tim Axon, added:

“In working together, we’ve developed the LeanConvert Framework, optimisation toolkit and workflow to deliver within GVC’s existing teams. While our managed service delivers immediate results and ROI, the in-housing programme we’re building with GVC will support them in setting the stage for scalable growth at an unparalleled velocity.”

LeanConvert was founded by former Oracle EMEA and Maxymiser executive Tim Axon in 2016, and uses customer-centric modelling combined with value-led testing, to help large digital businesses understand their customers. 

The company is also partnered with Adobe Target, Boxever, ContentsSquare, dynamic yield, Google Partners, monetate, Optimizely, and Oracle Maxymiser. 

AYO.NEWS says:

There are plenty of companies out there making bold claims about conversion and optimisation, but GVC’s decision to extend and strengthen its partnership with LeanConvert seems to be a pretty big vote of confidence, and suggests they are doing something that really works. 

Staying with GVC, yesterday we reported that the group’s board of directors and members of its executive committee had agreed to take a 20% salary cut and forfeit bonuses, in response to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis. 

Meanwhile, in the United States, GVC’s partner MGM Resorts has thanked the support shown by many of its well-known resident entertainment partners during the crisis. With casinos closed due to the pandemic, many of the celebrities have made significant donations to the MGM Resorts Employee Emergency Grant Fund. 

‘AYO.NEWS says’ features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited or its affiliates or associates. 

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020

The Italians are known for their traditions and this extends also to their sports betting culture. In fact, betting has been around in Italy for decades with its origins in 1946 when the first bets on football were legalized by the State.

We had to wait until 2002 before a new decree allowed bookmakers to accept bets via telephone or the web. Up until this moment, the Italian punters needed to visit their local brick and mortar shop to place their bet slips – a tradition that is still very much cultivated today in these modern times. 

According to data (provided by Eurispes), 3 out of 10 Italians play for cash prizes of which 18.3% do so exclusively on an offline basis. The online betting community is much smaller with only 2% exclusively betting on online platforms while 7.9% confirmed that they are actively using both options. This is clear evidence that even though the betting industry is well established in Italy when it comes to online betting, we are still in the early stages. 

Nonetheless, we have seen a clear shift in tide with more and more Italians now adapting their traditions and starting to open online betting accounts and utilise its benefits. To underline this point, we don’t need to look any further than comparing the total spend across all online gambling verticals in January 2020 with the corresponding month of 2019 (€153m to €197.5m). A distinctive increase of 29%. 

The trend has not gone unnoticed by CEO of Leadstar Media Eskil Kvarnström, who intends to shape and guide the blooming online betting market with their affiliate site BookmakerBonus.it. Eskil Kvarnström stated:

“We always knew the potential of the Italian market and wanted to help shape this trend by providing our customers with helpful guides and detailed comparisons of the best online betting sites in Italy.”

The trend of online betting on mobile

Eskil also shared with us that the majority of their traffic comes from users on their mobile devices. As a matter of fact, around 80% of Italians prefer using their mobile phone to visit their affiliate site and one can deduct that this percentage is most likely also to be represented when placing their bets on online platforms.

Therefore it is a key factor to operate a website that is optimized to deliver a great UI to all of the mobile traffic without neglecting the desktop traffic. 

What is the plus side of online betting?

What online betting cannot replace are the social factors of going to the conventional brick and mortar shops and discuss the outcomes of your bets but there are a lot of other positive factors in choosing to do your betting on online platforms rather than the local shops across the whole country. 

A big plus is the ability to follow the game on the site with which you have a bet running by watching the live stream provided by the bookmaker. Several betting sites have added this feature to many of their markets and the success is visible. 

An additional positive factor is a certain function called cashout, which is not yet a standard feature among the Italian bookmakers when comparing them with the rest of Europe. This function was supposed to be implemented by most bookies on a trial basis but unfortunately it never concretely happened, with Giovanni Tria having been forced out of the government last September.

Nevertheless, bookmakers offering an exchange platform can provide the cashout function to their customers. You can find a detailed guide on which these betting sites are and how it works on BookmakerBonus.it.

In response to the ongoing COVID-19 crisis GVC executives have agreed to take a 20% pay cut.

The company says that its board of directors and members of its executive committee have agreed to take a 20% cut to their basic salary and fees for at least three months, effective immediately. They have also agreed to forfeit their bonuses for the year.

GVC originally estimated the COVID-19 crisis would reduce EBITDA by GBP £100m per month, but since rolling out an extensive plan to mitigate the impact, the company has reduced that estimate to £50m, and said its financial position remains strong.

AYO.NEWS says:

At a time when so many staff and customers are feeling the pinch, with all-time record unemployment forecast to hit Europe and North America over the next few months, it’s good to see executives are also sharing the pain.

With many experts and politicians now warning that this crisis could drag on for many months or even years, and that the “new normal” may involve continued long-term disruption, especially to international travel, the prospect of the sports industry recovering any time soon looks increasingly distant, so we think its safe to say bookies have only just begun to feel the pain.

AYO.NEWS says features the opinion of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Pentagon Digital Limited.

All original content featured on this site is © Pentagon Digital Limited, 2020.