The suspension of football activities indicates the weakness of sportsbook operators particularly in Africa where solely football betting and virtual sports games are the two-sector where the majority of the operators in the region channel they marketing strategy into.
Operators in Africa are in a desperate situation to keep their business afloat due to the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic across the globe. No doubt Sports is quite popular in the continent predominately football betting is popular among the youths, in which football is the livelihood of sports betting business in Africa. Though as the lockdown of movement intensify in Africa, operators are doing everything immensely to offer different products to keep punters engage as people quarantined in their homes.
What Operators Could Learn
The eSports is quite popular and rapidly growing very fast within the short space of time of the pandemic, particularly in Europe, Asia and the North America regions, especially among punters that are sports enthusiastic. The industry is reported to worth billions of dollars today. In contrast, switching punters to eSports betting is quite easy as a substantial amount of players in this continent understand the eSports betting. However, eSports would have been a perfect alternative for punters in Africa. But still, few punters in this category do not follow the trend of eSport betting. For example, according to recent one-on-one research out of 20 people interviewed 1 out of 20 people that were asked about the eSport do not understand the term eSports.
Some of the questions include how to bet on eSports games, betting market options, how do they come up with the result among others. These indicate aspect that the majority of the sportsbook operators in the region neglected that elements of the sector. Perhaps it would have been much more comfortable for bettors to adapt to these products if sportsbook operators have got their marketing hat right with eSports through theses. It is a wake-up call for sportsbook operators in Africa to know that they shouldn’t rely solely on football betting and virtual betting rather than neglecting other game products offers such as the eSports sector. No doubt, the young population is passionate about football in Africa.
Therefore eSports games will have to be a perfect replacement for football betting as it will bring a different dimension for punters to stake on rather than stimulating virtual games, which some sections of bettors criticize to be programmed. Not like the real-life event, eSports is closed to real-life because a team of professionals plays it, the same way the real-life football event that is represented by the professional’s footballers. According to the adage that says “we shouldn’t lay our eggs in one basket”.
As it might take time for punters to adapt to a new range of games sportsbook operators are introducing to bettors. Perhaps some bettors are still hoping football will be back soon. Yet, as it stands nobody knows the next cause of actions from football authorities, the league season could be declared null and void, and as stated above all international football competitions postponed till 2021.
