Bookmaking in South Africa is in a very strange space, it’s growing at an incredible pace but is being held back by a few key factors. Bookmakers in South Africa have been fairly spoiled compared to the rest of the world. They face little to no competition from overseas operations due to regulations from our government and due to this they aren’t forced to grow or evolve at the same pace as those in the UK for example.
If you were to compare some of the best bookmakers in South Africa to those in Europe you’d find the local operations inferior and somewhat lackluster. Now before you direct any hate mail towards us we do understand the environments are very different as well as the amount of money overseas bookmakers have to throw around. Also to be fair there are one or two South African Bookmakers that are almost on par with their overseas counterparts, but lets face it, the majority are not.
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We’re going to address a few areas that most bookmakers in South Africa can improve on (realistically) as well as offer suggestions on how to implement said improvements, let’s get started.
Better Software
There are 2 Major software providers in South Africa, Bettech and TurfSport. They have what you could call a monopoly on the market but this is not necessarily their fault. There are simply not enough viable alternatives to choose from so most bookmakers will sign up with them. Yes there are other options available but they don’t have quite the punch or support that the big two have. Also migrating between providers can be a logistical nightmare if not done correctly (Betx I’m looking at you) which does discourage bookmakers from moving to new providers.
We’d like to see more variety as that would bring along more competition, forcing all providers to evolve in order to stay competitive. Things like profile/site customization, where you can adjust what markets you see and how you want the site displayed are employed overseas but we’re yet to see something similar here. Imagine logging into your favourite betting site and only seeing ladies beach volleyball, instead of U16 Ugandan soccer! These changes would make punters very involved and they could customize the site to be as user friendly (or unfriendly) as they like, basically tailoring it to their own needs!
Customer Support
This is a massive issue facing bookmakers in South Africa, there are so many bookmakers who have customer support so bad that they are literally losing clients due to it. There are bookmakers who have some fantastic service and really go the extra mile but for every one of those there are 10 who have customer support who couldn’t give two hoots about your problem. For example you are unfortunate enough to have your betting account limited, some bookmakers (Betway,WSB) have the foresight to contact you letting you know that you are limited.
This might not sound like a big deal but have you ever been unfortunate enough to deposit into your account only to find out that you are limited? We have, and trust us, you’ll have to wait for the money. By telling me that I’m limited I now know not to deposit there and go through the frustration of not being able to get my bet on and having to wait a week for my money.
Promotions and Sign up offers.
We’re not going to complain about the sign up offers we get from Bookmakers in South Africa as we feel we have a really good variety to choose from. What we are going to poke a stick at are the bookmakers who don’t have any promotions or sign up offers. It’s really not that hard to get them rolling and you as a business will benefit. Yes, there will be punters who abuse these offers but for every one of those there are 10 valuable customers that you are missing out on. Punters want sign on offers no matter how small they are, it makes them feel special and gives them more time to experience your website.
Bookmakers in South Africa are also wildly inconsistent with their promotions, some will have more promotions than you can wave a finger at while others won’t even give you a freebie after losing your house on a horse. There are some good loyalty programs with bookmakers like Sportingbet, Sunbet and WSB that do give a fair bit back to punters but our bigger problem is most of the promotions we get are the same old recycled junk. We’re sure you’ve seen the bore draw or first try scorer promo on many a site, we’re also sure you never gave it a second thought because who bets on first try scorers and correct scorelines? Not too many folk and if they are its for small stakes.
What we’d like to see is more topical and current promotions, like during Seven’s tournaments or Wimbledon. Let punters choose their favourite sports when registering and give them promotions centered around those choices. I don’t want to see horse racing promotions if I only bet on football, give me football promotions. Dangling that horse racing carrot in front of me is so 2000’s and trust me, I’m not biting. Imagine being an Arsenal fan, logging into your favourite bookmaker and having a promotion for the Arsenal game right there for you! You’d be over the moon as you’d feel the bookmaker understands you and what it is that you want.
Better Pricing and Odds
This one is a bit tricky as many of the bookmakers get their feed from one of the handful of software providers who in turn get their feed from an even smaller number of feed providers. This does limit bookmakers who don’t have a dedicated trading team as they are forced to take what is on offer, which is passed onto the punters. Now we are not asking for crazy prices but we’ve seen too many 8/10’s on two way markets for our liking. Give us consistent pricing in the 9/10 range and we’d be happy. We understand that bookmakers also need to make a profit but some of them are having their cake and eating it.
As mentioned this does tie in with the software providers and when one compares some of the local odds to those overseas you really do feel like you are getting ripped off. We’re not going to go into too much detail here as we have this article explaining the importance of getting the best odds.
More live streaming
With the price of DSTV it’s getting increasingly harder for punters to actually watch the games they are betting on. There are a few South African bookmakers who do have live streaming and we’d like to commend them on that.
The problem is that there are not enough following suite. We’re not sure if this is a licensing issue or perhaps a broadcasting one but if one or two bookmakers can do it then the rest would seriously look at implementing it too. Also why don’t we have any live streaming for the PSL? Sure there are rights etc that need to be bought but imagine the thousands of punters you’d attract by having PSL streaming. You wouldn’t have to stream all the matches but at least one or two a week.
More local in play and sports.
This has improved over the last few years and bookmakers in South Africa are finally waking up to the importance of having local events on offer. The problem is that there are still too many inconsistencies around local offerings.The EFC is one example, we have a max of 2-3 bookmakers (WSB, BETX, Supabets) that offer markets and the markets that are offered are generally very limited. Every single bookmaker should be promoting local sports on their site, even if they just copy the odds off the trendsetters.
Consistency is also a major headache and there is nothing worse than having a bet on a Darts league one week only to find that the same bookmaker is not offering odds the next week. If I know you’ll have what I need I’ll be betting with you more often as I know I won’t be disappointing.
We hope you enjoyed our piece on how bookmakers in South Africa can improve, we know we missed a few points as there are so many to cover. If there are any that you’d like to add then let us know in the comments below.
