Interactive ODDSLIFE The wide web of sports
How do you get online users to engage with your brand without committing to a huge marketing investment? The answer, according to social sports-betting company, Oddslife, is to forget about the brand entirely and concentrate instead on platform development, while at the same time letting select media partners take the player acquisition strain.
Still a relative start-up after launch in 2009, there’s actually very little that could be called ’traditional’ about Oddslife. Rather than look to prescribed funding routes, Oddslife chose not to seek investors for funding, as impatient for instant returns isn’t part of the company’s business strat- egy. “If you seek to create a real-money gaming environment from the outset, you’re looking at investing millions in player acquisitions, advertis- ing and brand-building,” outlines Oddslife founder, Rasmus Sojmark. `’The barrier to entry is just too high, so we chose a different route. We looked at opportunities in the market to launch a social platform, taking the examples of Facebook and Linkedin as a model for our expansion. Facebook gathered its users through a free social media model, which proved very popular. It pro- gressed to mobile, and became even more popular and it is now commercialising its model, having gathered those users relatively cheaply. ”
Oddslife looked to Europe to partner with media companies providing news and sports on a daily basis. Radio, Internet, newspaper and TV channels are all potential Oddslife partners, where the company is seeking to target specific traffic from their online sites. “We have approached media partners with whom we can build a user-base, utilising their media channels to tap into a traffic source,” explains Mr. Sojmark. “It’s not a global approach, but instead a very localised provision. We’re not looking to create an English-language solution and push it globally. Instead, we create a
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software that is both highly localised and very specific to each media channel and to each mar- ket that it serves. We begin by approaching a sin- gle partner in each local market and then we cre- ate software that is specific to them and their cus- tomers.”
In Spain, Oddslife has partnered with sports media giant, MARCA, launching a customised social sportsbook platform ‘MARCA EL GURU; in Denmark Oddslife has partnered with sports media firm,
Bold.dk; in Bulgaria with
Sportal.bg and in Greece with
Sport-FM.gr and
Novasports.gr, two of the most visited websites and tv / radio broadcasters in Greece. TV news, radio and sports-newspapers are all potential tar- gets and as such, Oddslife is presently in discus- sions with media clients in Portugal and Holland. “We find local media partners that are themselves specific in each country,” states Mr. Sojmark. “In the UK, for example, the Telegraph newspaper is devoted to the UK market, and does not cover the sports market in Spain. One partner in one coun- try, that’s the goal, as this eliminates any issues with competition between those partners.”
Crucially, Oddslife doesn’t offer a real money gaming solution, but rather F2P (free to play) soft- ware that allows Oddslife to position itself within every market, building its database and user-base with minimal external investment beyond its own internal software provision. “Our aim is to create a social sports-gaming network, using local enti-
Rasmus Sojmark Oddslife, Rasmus holds and MSc BA in International Marketing with focus on consumer behaviour research within the sports betting industry. From 2005 he was Commercial Director at odds comparison site
BetBrain.com before being part of the EveryMatrix founding team in 2009. He has picked up awards for best gaming affiliate 2008 & 2009, best sportsbook innovation 2010, sports betting rising star 2011 and special commendation for white label partner of the year 2011. In 2009 he founded social gaming technology company Oddslife and sports betting news and events community
SBCnews.co.uk.
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