relevance versus overload. Te main function a casual fan wants is to find and watch a great game, so curation is the feature, and it’s the best way to convert new users.
How should operators think about feature-design so that the experience remains engaging but doesn’t overwhelm the user?
I have non-sports friends who know about breaking news before I do, because they follow DraftKings on Instagram. Why? Te account is compelling, authentic, and engaging.
If I were the head of a sportsbook, I'd be thinking about how to mimic that story-driven experience. You engage people by hooking them with stories - exciting upcoming games, off-field news - not by just showing them a spreadsheet of numbers. It’s about building an experience people want to come back to, not one they have to use.
As the US sports-media and betting ecosystems continue to converge, what do you see as the key shifts in the US media landscape in the next 2-3 years (e.g., rights fragmentation, micro-platforms, streaming and betting)?
Rights fragmentation is the major shift. I steal from Game of Trones often on this topic: “fragmentation is a ladder”.
Fans are frustrated trying to find games to watch, and it's only going to get harder. Our tech excels at cutting through the madness. We find a great game in real-time and get the fan tuned in, whether it's on cable, a streamer, or over-the-air. Te teams and leagues that aren’t actively working to ease Discovery are going to struggle. If fans can’t watch, they can’t connect with the team. If they can’t connect, they won’t remain a fan.
From MetaBet’s vantage point, what opportunities exist for affiliates and media companies in the US that perhaps are under-leveraged today?
Post-AI, the acquisition model has changed. Just attacking search engine rankings can't be depended on the way it was, because the top of the funnel is getting thinner. Affiliates and Media Companies have to reinvest in the middle of the funnel: retention. You can't expect to be a high-ranking site that people stumble upon. You need to give people a reason to come back.
We're big believers in thoughtful, personalised notifications—not spam, but alerts that bring a user back when something they actually care about is happening. Sites have to evolve from being a temporary
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destination into a permanent, trusted source.
How should operators and content-partners prepare for the next wave of US growth in betting in terms of media strategy, content-to- bet integration, partnerships?
First, shift strategy from pure SEO acquisition to retention. Build that Fingerprint of Fandom through smart alerts for users. Second, integration must be seamless. Stop making users hunt through thousands of bets and put the relevant bet in the content.
And finally, partnerships need to be smarter and not just about betting. With rights fragmentation, the real opportunity is at the intersection of curation, discovery, and monetisation. You’ve argued that AI should be used as a tool rather than a destination. Could you expand on how you think operators and affiliates should practically implement AI (e.g., in journey-mapping, curation, personalisation) without losing sight of the user context?
It’s rare to go a week without a new startup launching with .ai in their domain and place all over their pitch deck. Generative AI still feels magical, seemingly pulling fresh content out of thin air. But creation without curation is suffocating.
Too often, operators and affiliates are drowning their customers in choice. I often don’t need one million articles about my favourite team - I just need the right one.
Te micro-bet category continues to boom, but is there a point of saturation where more bets don’t automatically equal more engagement. How do you believe operators should personalise micro-bets, limit saturation and make them more exciting and relevant to individual players?
I think we’ve already hit a saturation point!
I've never been a big fan of micro-betting–no first-time bettor has ever said, “I've been thinking about placing a bet, but there just aren't enough options.” And fair or not, the average American sports fan is tying the recent sports integrity investigations directly to props and microbets.
Te bar for operators should be “Does this bet elicit some sort of emotion in the average sports fan?” Ball/Strike markets exist purely for betting, and flooding the UI with them smothers casual bettors with choice. Context matters, and keeping the markets that are anchored in the joy of sports front and centre is step one.
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