Watching football is an activity that brings people together. Having noted this, the question occurred to us: what about placing bets? Does betting on sport also bring people together?
We’ve been conditioned to think of betting as an activity that people pursue alone — perhaps even as competitive and therefore a loner activity, by nature. But is this really the case? Perhaps people actually want to discuss bets with friends, other football fans, and real professionals?
We surveyed 225 people who consider themselves football fans and who are also interested in betting. We didn’t collect any personal data other than age. An absolute majority (> 90 %) were between the age of 18 and 36.
Our first question was how often people watch football and what leagues they prefer.
It turns out that a majority of respondents watch football regularly.
The most popular league worldwide, according to our respondents, is the UEFA Champions League, and the most popular national league is the Premier League. But viewers like other European leagues, as well. Quite a few respondents watch only the matches in which their home team is playing.
We used a multiple choice approach to determine the most popular championships.
Then we asked how often respondents place bets.
Nearly half (44 %) place bets more than once a week. Some of those surveyed (around 10 %) don’t bet at all, though do consider themselves interested in betting.
When and how do fans decide how much to bet?
First, we asked when fans place a bet — whether they place a bet in advance or during the match, when they can already estimate a team’s training level and which side of the field luck seems to be falling on a given day.
In a question aimed at determining where users prefer to discuss bets, respondents were able to choose between several answers or provide their own response.
We learned that most bettors discuss bets in chats and with friends (some also added this as their own response). Users also answered by saying things like “I discuss my bets with colleagues” or “I just study analytics, and don’t discuss my bets”.
What and who can influence your bet?
It turned out that most respondents do look at odds and statistics. Many listen to bloggers’ opinions, advice from friends, and advice from other fans and bettors.
More than a third prefer to place bets during the match, coming to their own conclusions during the process of the game. Only a tenth of respondents are committed to a single team and bet on that team every time.
We asked whether fans watch matches in betting apps or prefer to watch in other ways. It turned out that almost all fans (85,3 %) watch football on a betting app.
What about features that most apps don’t yet provide?
We asked whether users want to communicate with other bettors at the same time that they are placing bets, and learned that a majority do desire such communication (30,5 + 33,2 %).
33,2 % of respondents added that they want those with whom they are discussing their bet to be well informed about both betting and football.
Almost half (44,6 %) of our respondents are ready to try copying the bets of other bettors, if given the chance, though may not have previously considered this approach.
Almost a third (29 %) claim that they would never simply copy the bets of others, and another third (26,3 %) already understand the essence of such a practice and are ready to copy others’ bets.
So perhaps this is all well worth considering if you want to develop your betting app? Maybe, after all, the time has come to improve your betting app by integrating social media features?
