sportsbook apps have turned into bloody arcades haven't they

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Scott1baird

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right so opened bet365 this morning to check the odds for this weekend and there's now a whole section for daily missions. collect tokens. spin a wheel. win a free bet if you complete 3 accas in a week. when did any of this happen
not complaining about the free stuff exactly but i went on to check the football markets and ended up clicking through some prize draw thing for 5 minutes before i even found the match listings. felt like i'd accidentally opened candy crush
is this recent or have i just not been paying attention
 
I've been tracking this shift for a while. UK operators moved budget from acquisition to retention after the advertising restrictions tightened in 2023. Cost of keeping an existing player is roughly 1/7th of acquiring a new one at current traffic prices - so the missions, daily challenges, token systems are essentially the cheapest way to maintain daily active user numbers.
Bet365 are actually behind the curve here. PaddyPower and SkyBet had gamified dashboards at least 18 months ahead of them. What you're seeing now is the laggards catching up.
 
what you on about mate, i open bet365 check what city are at and close it again. never seen any missions or wheels or any of that. is this a phone thing only or
 
more interested if anyone caught the toon last night. had gordon to score and 3+ goals at just over 5/1 and the lads absolutely ran riot in the second half. gordon nicked one in the 73rd which completed it nicely. one of those bet builders where you know its coming about 20 minutes in
re the app stuff yeah paddypower has had that wheel thing for ages. got a few free spins off it once and then forgot about it completely
 
chapman said:
what you on about mate, i open bet365 check what city are at and close it again. never seen any missions or wheels or any of that. is this a phone thing only or
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it's definitely the app. my bf has been spending more time collecting daily tokens on paddypower than actually watching the football he's supposedly betting on. i was genuinely worried for a second he'd turned into a slot person
 
noticed this on unibet of all places. unibet used to be so boring and normal. now there's a jackpot ticker running at the top of the screen and a weekly competition where biggest winning odds wins something.
never won any of it obviously. looked at who wins these jackpots a few times and it's always the same handful of accounts. probably people with 40 or 50 bets running at any given moment. either that or the algorithm is very friendly to certain users
 
smart business from the operators though. keeps players in the app longer, more touchpoints, more bets placed incidentally. they wouldn't be doing it if it didn't move the numbers. so real question is whether it actually changes bettin behavior or just layers cosmetic stuff on top of what people would do anyway. probably a bit of both depending on the person.
 
shadow123 said:
real question is whether it actually changes bettin behavior
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it changes it quite significantly. the daily mission mechanic specifically creates habitual check-ins regardless of whether there's any value in the market that day. you're not opening the app because you have an edge on a specific game. you're opening it because you have a streak to maintain
that's a meaningful shift in motivation and it has real EV implications for recreational bettors. more sessions, lower quality decisions per session
 
i don't see the issue honestly?? betting on sport is entertainment, the app being entertainin is just the product doing its job. the free bets from misions are real money right? user is gettin something back
sounds like you guys want sportsbooks to be deliberately boring lol
 
this is exactly what casino products have been doing for years - the convergence was always coming once operators realised they're competing for the same wallet and the same hours in the day. the casino side had a decade head start on retention mechanics.
the spin wheel on a sportsbook is psychologicaly identical to the bonus wheel on a slot. variable reward, anticipation buildup, same design principles entirely. worth noting it runs the other direction too - modern slotsare borrowing sports betting mechanics now. leaderboards, weekly tournaments, cashback ladders. the boundary between the two products has basically dissolved from the operator's side even if most players still think of them as separate things
 
slotking said:
slotsare borrowing sports betting mechanics now. leaderboards, weekly tournaments, cashback ladders
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hadn't thought about it going the other way. makes sense though. my local casino had a leaderboard screen for the slot players when i was in last month which struck me as a bit odd at the time.
anyway checked back on the bet365 missions - apparently rolled out to uk accounts sometime in march. 20 tokens for an acca, 10 for a bet builder, spin at 50 tokens. wheel gave me a £2 free bet. fine. still feels odd to call it a "mission" when its literally juist "place a bet"
 
anyway arsenal sunday. anyone got a bet builder angle worth considering. thinking gordon to assist and over 2.5 at around 9/2 if you actually believe the toon can go there and perform. arsenal have been leaking goals at home in the last three games if you watch from the start rather than just checking the scoreline at half time
 
geordiecolin said:
anyway arsenal sunday. anyone got a bet builder angle worth considering. thinking gordon to assist and over 2.5 at around 9/2 if you actually believe the toon can go there and perform. arsenal have been leaking goals at home in the last three games if you watch from the start rather than just checking the scoreline at half time
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You and your eternal bet builders 😄
Eze to score and newcastle to lose at 14/1, that's my counter suggestion
I've got Haaland anytime for the city wednesday game. Man hasn't scored in five which apparently means he's "due" according to every single newspaper that has ever been printed
 
going for a big toon win are we. wolves need arsenal to drop points like i need another relegation scare which is to say absolutely not at all thank you 😂 also can someone explain what a mission is on a sportsbook. am i old
 
Gamification layer over the standard product calling it a mission reframes placing a bet as completing an objective rather than spending money. Same reason mobile games call purchases "gems" instead of pounds. language is doing meaningful work on how you perceive the transaction.
@TheAddict the Haaland pick - City have been slow to start in their last four over 45 minute first scorer might be worth layering on alongside it...
 
bet365 have had some version of this for years actually. what's changed is how prominent they're making it. used to be buried three tabs deep in promotions. now it's basically the loading screen.
man utd winning the league at 900/1 probably still counts as an acca mission completion. just a thought
 
I'll be slightly less relaxed about this than the "free spins" brigade. A sportsbook competing on odds quality and margin is competing on value for the customer. A sportsbook competing on daily engagement metrics is competing on something rather different. Those are genuinely different businesses and the customer's interests only truly align with the first model.
The daily mission exists specifically to give you a reason to open theapp on days when you have no real reason to be there. Nobody puts that in the terms and conditions but that is precisely what it's for.
Arsenal winning the league, incidentally. This is not an opinion. This is arithmetic.
 
dunover said:
I'll be slightly less relaxed about this than the "free spins" brigade. A sportsbook competing on odds quality and margin is competing on value for the customer. A sportsbook competing on daily engagement metrics is competing on something rather different. Those are genuinely different businesses and the customer's interests only truly align with the first model.
The daily mission exists specifically to give you a reason to open theapp on days when you have no real reason to be there. Nobody puts that in the terms and conditions but that is precisely what it's for.
Arsenal winning the league, incidentally. This is not an opinion. This is arithmetic.
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this is the actual point. industry data from last quarter shows daily active user count has overtaken deposit volume as the headline KPI for most uk operators. that tells you everything about which direction the product is heading. pinnacle still competing on price and margin. everyone else competing on stickiness
 
morgan_c said:
this is the actual point. industry data from last quarter shows daily active user count has overtaken deposit volume as the headline KPI for most uk operators. that tells you everything about which direction the product is heading. pinnacle still competing on price and margin. everyone else competing on stickiness
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that's actually a bit unsettling when you spell it out like that. they want you there every day regardless of whether you have a bet you want to make. i've always treated betting as something you do when there's a game you care about. if the product is designed to get me in on random tuesdays through a spin wheel that's a meaningfully different thing
 
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