The US sports betting space has been on an accelerating process of evolution and growth, something Alan Davis, Head of B2B Marketing at Spotlight Sports Group, placed a closer analysis upon as he spoke at the SBC Summit North America.

Reflecting on the firm’s second iteration of its BetTech Ecosystem report, Davis detailed some of the key findings, as he outlined they provide clarity over the scope of the markets. 

“We’ve got three key takeaways as we had in the first edition,” he said. “The second edition is obviously different – things have changed very quickly, especially in the North American market.   

“The first key takeaway is about what we know and still don’t know about North America. Obviously we’ve got regulation and legislation happening very quickly across different states. We’re starting to get a real picture of what we’re looking at. However, there’s still lots of questions around some of the bigger states.”   

Davis went on to detail the alluring prospects for the growth opportunities within the emerging LatAm market. 

He added: “Everyone knows that the scale of it presents a great new opportunity – an exciting opportunity,” he noted. “However, again, we don’t quite know how that’s going to play out.

“I think one of the key statistics in our report is about Brazil. We’ve focused on that purely because it’s probably the furthest ahead in its regulation. The key stat from takeaway two is that if Brazil regulated today, there would be more people able to bet than there are currently in North America. That gives it that succinct point around how big an opportunity LatAm is, and that is obviously just one country.”  

Sticking with LatAm, he added: “If we think about the other countries that form that region, you can understand why it’s starting to become quite an area of focus for suppliers and people within the wider betting ecosystem. We don’t touch on too many suppliers from that area because it really is about regulated markets at the moment.”

Davis’ third key takeaway from the report is the need for stakeholders to focus on retention, specifically in North America. “We called it ‘no retain no gain’. As we’ve seen since the (US) regulation has come in, it’s been a huge rush for acquisition – driving that acquisition for users as high as possible. 

“However, I think we’re getting to a point now where the market is starting to think about retention.  That’s where Spotlight Sports Group starts to come into our own. I think that’s a really important part of the ecosystem. It starts to show not only where Spotlight Sports Group has our strengths and unique elements, but it also shows how important that is going to be for this specific market.”