Location, Location, Location

Written by SBC Director on January 8, 2012. Posted in NEWS, SOCIAL GAMING

As another year unfolds, I am often asked by clients, friends and peers what will be the next big innovation in the i-gaming and gambling industry.

Shall it be a continuation of the current years’ trends such as social gaming, social media and engagement or shall we see the rise of newer version of the existing social networks in a sort of web 3.0 scenario or indeed will the behemoth Facebook crumble and be usurped by Google+ and ‘likes’ and ‘friends’ replaced by how many ‘circles’ you have to create your group in order to post and share content.

I believe it will be pretty much business as usual as brands and marketers continue get to grips with the whole social and digital biosphere that their consumers inhabit.One area that I do consider shall further come into its own is that of location-based marketing and services.

Why you may ask, well Smart Phones sales continue their unprecedented growth with Google recently reporting that they have activated some 200 million Android devices, which equates to some 550,000 activations per day.

Google looks set to eclipse Apple, which according to sources has some 250 million devices around the world and dominate the US and Global Smart phone market.

It is this continued growth in Smartphone’s that allows a number of opportunities for brands and marketers to engage customers based on their physical location. Location based marketing allows you to target geographically selected messages and also use the location information to better understand the behaviour and needs of that customer for future marketing campaigns and development of services.

There are already an abundance of location based services out there, such as Google Places, as the majority of Smartphone’s come with Google Maps pre-installed. This particular service allows the user to seek directions and search for locally based services that they require. Other services include the recently launched Facebook deals and Foursquare, are location-based social networks accessed by mobile apps, in which it allows retailers, bars, restaurants and supermarkets to encourage footfall into the physical store locations with incentives such as money-off vouchers and unique or time sensitive special promotions. With the continued usage of Smartphone’s, pre and downloaded mobile apps and a veracious demand by consumers for deals in a depressed economy and localization offers can only contain to drive the distribution potential.

So if retailers and social networks are already using the mobile network for deployment of location based services and marketing, while hasn’t the gaming and gambling industry? Well the truth of the matter is location based gaming is already here and forecast for rapid growth and could be labelled the next big thing.

Location enabled gaming allows the user to engage in game play via their Smartphone touch screen with other players based on the same or nearby location. With further development of other location based technologies such as Near Field Communication and embedded mobile apps can further explode the market place for multi-player location based games development and deployment.

Are these games successful, hell yes, the Finish company Rovio Mobile’s Angry Birds game which has sold over 12 million copies, will be introducing more location based gaming elements. Popular location based scavenger hunt games such as Tourality and Parallel Kingdom has over 750,000 players and growing – so the market potential is huge.

Now let us consider the i-gaming market for location based services and marketing. On the location side, major offline or land based groups such as Ladbrokes, William Hills with a large high street presence, can use location based marketing to drive existing punters into the betting shops with specific event driven sports betting offers or more causal customers that may only bet once or twice a year on such events as the Grand National.

Consider further, the possibilities at large outdoor sporting events, like this years’ European Football Championships or Olympic games in which location based promotions could also assist the large retail betting chains of which some have outlets or franchises within the majority of football stadiums around the country, to alert audiences of 50,000 plus- the in-stadium football fans as to where their nearest betting kiosk or betting outlet is situated in order to place or indeed collect bet winnings from to further drive betting demand.

Land based casinos and bingo halls could and should use location based strategies to drive patronage to their premises especially when there are large jackpots on offer on gaming machines, poker schools are taking place or indeed specific poker tournaments and this would allow for furthering the real and virtual worlds of gaming and gambling.

Location based content, such information betting services could also be a possibility to drive betting adoption and placement, by being shared and exchanged by gamblers at all points in the betting spectrum and likewise social betting games in-situ could further drive brand awareness, engagement and new customer acquisition.

With more and more of brands potential new and existing customers spending the vast majority of their time out-of-home and on the move, mobile and location based services and marketing affords more opportunities to deliver the marketing message and drive revenue growth.

Mark McGuinness

Content & Social Director

Sports Betting Community