Inside Asian Gaming speaks with BETER CEO Gal Ehrlich about the company’s impressive growth trajectory and its focus on fast-betting content to appeal to younger players.
Thanks for speaking with us Gal. For those who may not be familiar with BETER, can you tell us a bit about the history of the company and the services you provide?
I’d like to start by saying that it’s a great pleasure for BETER to take part in SiGMA Asia. For those not familiar with our company, we provide betting content and data for the next generation of players across BETER Sports, BETER Esports and BETER Live. The core audience for our content is those aged 35 years plus. These players are no longer satisfied with standard betting content and instead are seeking fast-paced experiences similar to those offered in the worlds of console gaming and esports.
At the core of our offering are tournaments, and we organize and run more than 40,000 sports and esports events each month. We provide our customers with live streaming, widgets, score boards, live data and on top of all of that, competitive odds for these events. We are especially proud of our ESportsBattle brand, which covers eFootball, eBasketball, eHockey, CS:GO, and Dota2, our Setka Cup brand for table tennis and the BSKT Cup for basketball with many more to come.
Our Live Casino, BETER Live, is now one of the most in-demand live content providers in the business with a portfolio of 18 live casino games including our proprietary Gravity series.
You’re a young company but have already been very active in getting the BETER name out into the market. Can you give us some insight into the company’s growth over the past few years?
We’ve been doing our thing for just six years now but already feel like an established company. In the last two years, we have made significant progress with our growth strategy and have quadrupled our content production via more locations and studios across the world. Over this time, we’ve partnered with the biggest names in the industry including the likes of bet365, Betsson, William Hill, Fortuna, Olimp, Stake and our sales pipeline today is stronger than ever. On the product side, we have taken our sports and esports offerings to the next level while BETER Live has built tremendous momentum since launching a little over 18 months ago with our content live at hundreds of brands across the globe.
How does BETER want to position itself in the market, and has its ambition changed since the earlier days?
We are focused on fast-betting content and developing products and experiences that appeal to the next generation of players. This has resulted in high demand for our content, as it not only meets but exceeds player expectations and allows our partners to drive incremental growth as a result of integrating BETER’s offering into their sportsbooks. With a product roadmap packed full of innovation, features and new experiences, we are confident of maintaining this market-leading position. Our ambition has always been to use the latest technologies to create content that players want to play, and that will always be the case.
I understand BETER has been actively establishing some new verticals to fuel the company’s growth. What have been the key focus areas and why were these identified as opportunities?
We invest heavily and continuously in order to strengthen our product offering and services across all of our divisions. This includes BETER Live’s Gravity series, consisting of Gravity Blackjack, Gravity Roulette and the just-launched Gravity Sic Bo. The Gravity series adds a selection of side bets and in-game multipliers to put players on the edge of their seats with each game round, while also adding more betting and big-win opportunities. This is unique content for our operator partners and is proven to engage players and keep them coming back for more.
In terms of BETER Esports, we keep adding new disciplines based on high player demand such as Volta eFootball, Dota2 tournaments and new disciplines we are working on right now. These are already being offered by many of our operator partners and those that have added them are already monetizing at scale.
We have been just as busy developing our BETER Sports offering and recently added the BSKT Cup to our line-up of tournaments, plus additional table tennis tournaments which we are running in parallel to our in-house tournaments. This is off the back of signing partnerships with leading professional table tennis tournament organizers and federations in Colombia and India allowing us to offer live streaming, data and odds for the national championships in these regions.
I couldn’t help but notice in preparing for this interview that BETER regularly uses the word “fast” – fast sports, fast betting and so on. Can you explain the significance of this and why it is such an important concept for your company
Fast gameplay is at the core of our offering and is in BETER’s DNA. Across our content portfolio, we deliver fast markets that can be settled within 30 seconds up to a few minutes. Players can get on the next table tennis serve or who will score next in eFootball, providing quick-fire action and bet settlement. This is the experience that next-generation players are seeking as it aligns with their desire for instant gratification. These players do not want to wait 90 minutes for a football game to finish to see if their bet is a winner or not – it’s more like 90 seconds. With BETER, the player is able to place tens of bets within that 90-minute time frame, increasing their overall turnover and spending more time actively engaged with the operator. Ultimately, this drives profits for our partners.
You’ve also been active in Asia recently. What are your plans for this region and how do you see the Asian market developing over the next few years?
A couple of years ago we took the strategic decision to go big in Asia. This was off the back of identifying that many Asian operators had limited access to fast-betting products and that with our portfolio of proven games, we could have a material impact on helping them to drive growth. Last year, we opened a local office in Asia and have built out a dedicated team responsible for commercial, account management and operations which in turn has helped us strike deals with more operators. Today, we work with some of the main players in Asia including KPlay, Zenith, Aplus and many more.
What are your thoughts on the Asian customer? What are their preferences and what does an operator or supplier need to do in order to capture their attention
Our Asian customers are incredibly creative and flexible. How they approach the experience offered to the end user is very different to other markets – unique, even. This is why as a supplier we need to find ways to supplement their creativeness to maximize the partnership between us. Asian customers really do know what they want and need in order to become successful and much of this is about how they are perceived by players. This is why operators tend to be very selective with the suppliers they partner with and based on how strong they are in specific markets.
At BETER, we listen to our partners and are flexible so that we can tailor our products and solutions to meet their individual needs based on the specific markets they are targeting.
Esports has always been central to BETER’s business. How do you view the development of the Esports industry in Asia as opposed to the rest of the world?
Asia has always been a hub for the esports industry. The landscape is now shifting towards mobile and especially in Southeast Asia. This is revolutionizing the region’s entertainment scene and this trend will continue. Given the popularity of esports across Asia, we believe that it will quickly become a significant betting market for sportsbooks across the region, second only to football – this will take much longer in other markets and might never happen given the popularity of traditional sports in markets such as Europe.
Another driver of this revolution is that local Asian operators are very open to exploring new products such as esports and esports betting, while those in other markets take a more conservative approach. But this will ultimately hinder their ability to leverage the huge demand for esports betting and the opportunities for growth it presents.
When we look at Esports betting we tend to see a younger customer with very specific interests. Do you see much crossover from this younger generation of Esports enthusiasts into traditional sports betting?
You’re right – younger players betting on esports have very specific interests and take a different approach to betting than traditional bettors. Esports customers are looking for totally different content and wagering experience, especially when it comes to the design of the user interface and how betting options are presented to them. There is cross-sell between traditional sports and esports, but it is very limited. Instead of looking to drive cross-sell, operators should focus on delivering the best possible esports betting product and experience to esports fans and cover different acquisition and retention mindsets. In short, develop a market-leading esports experience for esports bettors.
Finally, what can you tell us about BETER’s plans for the upcoming SiGMA Asia in Manila?
This is our second major event in Asia and I couldn’t be more excited to attend SiGMA Asia which I am confident will meet our high expectations for the show. We see this as an opportunity to meet with our existing partners across the region and to also have conversations with new operators and those that have registered their interest in the products that BETER offers across its divisions. I’m really looking forward to being able to showcase our content to delegates, and for them to experience the thrills and excitement they provide in person.
