Gamification in betting — is it a thing?
How many times in the last few months have you been in a meeting where gamification was brought up? In the UK the term gamification has become increasingly more popular in the last few years, so it is safe to say that gamification within gambling will only be getting more and more popular too.
Why would betting companies want to gamify an already entertaining experience? The answer is simple — games get us more engaged with the product, they keep us interested and coming for more. However, a lot of companies use very shallow gamification mechanics, which merely include trophies, leaderboards, and badges. There is so much more to gamification, and trophies and badges are far from being the key to a successful gamified experience. So what are other ways to gamify a betting experience? I am going to use the Octalysis framework created by Yu-Kai Chou as a foundation for all the examples in this article.
First things first, gambling already has a massive gamification element within in, the key reason why people keep playing and staking — unpredictability (if we look at Oclalysis framework) — and betting is no exception. In this article I want to look at all the ways betting companies go beyond that and gamify their products.
Quick introduction (or recap for some of you) of what Octalysis is — it’s a framework that suggests that there are 8 core drivers that make up a gamified experience. They can be divided into extrinsic and intrinsic motivators, or you can split them into white hat and black hat mechanics. And while black hat does not mean it’s always bad (unlike dark UX), used without any white hat counterparts it can lead to a negatively addictive experience. As we could have guessed, gambling is primarily within black hat area, with 1–2 core drivers fully developed (unpredictability and avoidance).
Social Influence
Can you guess which of the drivers is gaining more and more popularity in the gambling industry recently? If you said social influence, you are correct. Social betting is becoming a bigger and bigger trend, and there can be multiple reasons behind that, but what we can say for sure is that often communities are key to keep people loyal to the brand. Also, it is a white hat mechanic, which is always a good one to have up your sleeve. In the past going to the bookies was a social experience on its own. However, the digital world is not trying to catch up, but rather create a more modern, global version of that, where you can connect with your friends or like-minded individuals from anywhere in the world.
BetVictor’s head of sportsbook product, Eoin Ryan, agrees that this socialisation of betting is likely to be a big growth area. He believes that the focus will be on building features and functionality that make it possible for customers to share their betting successes and achievements within their private social group.
Social betting app operators aim to build up large betting communities with the best social betting apps such as BetBull, Bookee.co.uk and OLBG are working hard to create a vibrant social community within their products.
But different companies approach this differently, and we can see very different examples.
As mentioned, BetBull has a very strong social side , which they promote and amplify in their blog and ads— by placing bets, you can become an influencer and gain followers, thus, having your profile up there, distinguished from the crowd. By becoming more popular you also get a feeling of accomplishment, which is manifested through visual status symbols — in this case number of followers, a red badge and position in leaderboards.
Another social experience that BetBull offers is a chat for the people who have placed the same bet — these people already have something in common, which makes it easier to start a dialogue and relate, at the same time it creates a feeling of belonging to a community, which is very important for retaining users even when they are on a losing streak.
Sky Bet has Sky Bet Club, with the name suggesting that by joining it, you will become a part of a wider community of people with similar interests — the idea is very good, but in its current implementation it lacks the essence of the social experience. Sky Bet’s Crowd-Boosted Accumulator product, on the other hand, harnesses the power of ‘social’ but in a way where every single participant can feel the benefit.
Paddy Power leverages social influence in a very particular way — by having a very particular brand voice and personality; simply choosing the brand makes you part of their community, community of people who enjoy tongue-in-cheek humour and a bit of sports. Paddy’s quirky ads as well as in-app design with animations and emojis all contribute to that feeling. They also use Twitter and Facebook beautifully to engage with people and keep the community feel going.
On the other side of it is Bet Fair Exchange, which is a community in its most direct sense — they took the bookie out of betting and made it all about the people, which creates an experience similar but at the same time very distinct from regular bookies. Bet Fair Exchange is a first choice for a very specific type of customer, which provides the brand with an edge and a big competitive advantage.
Cross-products are emerging too, like Bet Snap, with its tagline ‘social media meets sports betting’ and calls to join the game, but time is yet to tell how successful that combination would be and whether social influence is enough on its own.
Development and accomplishment
We’ve lightly touched on the accomplishment motivator, are there any other examples of that within betting?
Most often we can see accomplishments manifested through promotions, where you need to take certain steps to get to the reward — take Sky Bet Club or pretty much any promotion and you will see progress bars of all sorts, which reinforce the feeling that you have reached something upon their completion.
Bet365 makes you feel more accomplished by their covert reward mechanic, where you might be getting a better personalised offer than you friend. It does have an element of unpredictability too, leaving people feeling special and good about themselves; like they earned this opportunity.
We can see more of development and accomplishment in Poker-based apps, like GG where you can progress all the way up to a shark or whale or PokerStars with different levels of chests — in both cases visual symbols such as colour-coded levels, prizes and reward points are key to highlight your accomplishment.
Ownership and Possession
This smoothly transitions into ownership, because off the back of promotions you can come into owning stuff, like free bets or bonus points. Even cash out can be considered part of ownership; it also reinforces empowerment, by giving people a way to be in control of their money. Furthermore, paying close attention to something, like an in-play bet, increases the feel of ownership, thus getting users to engage with stats, in-play bets and cash out even more.
Bet Bull with its heavy gamification has paired unpredictability with ownership, where you get chests and crystals simply for logging in or spinning a wheel upon placing a bet for a chance of getting a reward.
Empowerment of creating and feedback
Empowerment, as Yu-Kai Chou describes it, is about having freedom to do things in various ways, using creativity to get to solutions. It is most crucial for existing customers who know your basic offering well enough and need to be able to do things in their own way.
A lot of the time betting is about thinking you know something, and translating that edge into a bet, personal to you. And while accumulators — multiple bets on different games — are hands down the most popular form of ‘creative expression’ within betting, features like bet builder take it a step further, allowing users to be creative and making them feel more empowered and in control of their choices. Bookies from Sky Bet and William Hill to Bet365 and Coral have their own version of the feature, and while some people take up pre-made bets, quite a few come back only for that one specific option of creating one of their own. Even the name of the feature incorporates words like ‘build’ or ‘create’, which puts more stress on the importance of the process.
Favouriting sports or choosing a reward are also examples of bringing more empowerment to the user.
Other examples of empowerment are boosters, which are quite a popular technique used by a few including BetBull and William Hill. The difference is that William Hill allows you to apply a boost to any bet you choose, once a day; while BetBull adds unpredictability and curiosity to the mix, making it another gamble.
Scarcity and Impatience & Loss and Avoidance
As you might have guessed, these can be quite easily implemented within betting. Scarcity is a black hat mechanic that a lot of sites are abusing now (a certain hotel booking website being a key example with their numerous labels of ‘Hurry,only 2 left!’) Once again, promotions and offers are usual manifestations of that, they all have an expiration date and a countdown, prompting people to take part. Some promotions only run for the first X people, so you feel the urge to take it ASAP, others only allow you to stake a certain maximum, again making you think like you need to stake max then. In-play rapid-fire markets with their evasiveness are another example.
Takeaways
There is no right or wrong way of introducing gamification into products, there are multiple paths you can take. The questions to ask yourself if you are working on a gambling product are more ethics-related, along the lines of to what extent users need to be engaged with the product before it is too much. White hat techniques are a great direction to look at as well as always staying transparent and honest with the users. Just keep in mind that abusing gamification techniques can take advantage of customers, pushing them to make spur-of-the-moment decisions, which paired with some gamblers being in a hot state can lead to negative consequences and overspending.
