First Sportsbook is out to break down the “monopoly” of tier-one sports betting operators according to the firm’s CEO, Tom Light.

Speaking to Jessie Sale, Senior Journalist for SBC News, Light detailed how First Sportsbook is aiming to “take the Shopify approach” – referencing the e-commerce companies model of providing a platform for “mom and pop” shops to sell their products and compete with giants such as Amazon.

“Our overall approach is to break this monopoly of the top tier B2C operators that are not letting anyone into the market,” said Light. “We want to be able to do the weapons, the tools and the ammo for operators who want to rely on B2B partners to compete with the leading operators.”

“We’re going to take a little bit of a Shopify approach. Beforehand, all these giant shops controlled the market and then Shopify came in and gave these local shops tools [and] CRMs to compete with the likes of Amazon. They’ve completely revolutionised the market and we’re going to do the same exact thing in sports betting.”

Leveraging odds as a unique marketing strategy

A tool in the arsenal of operators using First Sportsbook is its unique odds compiler, which allows operators to set unique odds without the need for their own extensive trading team.

“A lot of the time you’ll see operators using the same B2B providers and they’ll have the same odds, the same markets and the same risk management and liability,” explained Light.

“Essentially, they cannot compete with each other because they offer a vanilla solution and copy-paste odds. What we want to compile is odds per operator. We want to do the trading risk management per operator, giving a unique set of odds and set of trading for each one of our operators. 

“On top of that, for each one of our operators we set up their own trading team so they don’t need to have 100 or 200 live traders in-house. They can just have one person dictating the trading directives. We utilise odds as a marketing strategy.”

Gamification mechanics

Elsewhere during the interview, Light also outlined the success of First Sportsbook’s gamification mechanics which focuses on gameplay rather than relying on free bets and monetary rewards.

Light said: “We created the gamification engine based a little bit like Candy Crush. If you look at the statistics, the average player [of Candy Crush] is 35 years old and the highest revenue players are over-aged women.

“Why? Because these games have very specific gamification mechanics that drive even adults to play over and over again. We’ve created a one-of-a-kind loyalty system that is not monetary-based.

“When you try and use money, as soon as someone offers a dollar more, [there is] no more loyalty. Real loyalty is when money is not an issue and when you’re willing to spend more to stay loyal to the brand. So we enhance what’s important to the customer the most. We enhance the experience the more loyal you are and we’re not trying to buy loyalty with money.”

To hear Light detail First Sportsbook’s plans to disrupt the status quo and what it has in-store for 2025, click HERE to watch the full video.