Understanding the convergence of markets in online sports betting

Abstract

Betting on sports via online platforms has rapidly become a popular form of gambling in many countries. Despite the growing body of research investigating the psychosocial and individual psychological factors determining gambling behaviour, much less attention has been devoted to understanding the market characteristics of online sports betting and its intersection with products from adjacent industries. From an economic convergence perspective, the present paper explores the integration of online sports betting within the digital, sporting and gambling sectors, examining how data markets, eSports, virtual sports, social gaming, immersive reality tools, sports media, sport sponsorship, fantasy sports, in-venue and in-stadium betting, poker and trading are all converging around betting activity. Through this convergence process, it is argued that internet-based sports gambling is colonizing different forms of entertainment, and expanding marketing opportunities, as well as raising psychosocial concerns about the influence of such an integration process.

Keywords

convergence fantasy gamblification market media online gambling sport sports betting

Introduction

The online sports betting industry is a solid and rapidly growing sector of the global economy (Global Betting and Gaming Consultancy (GBGC), 2013). According to industry reports, online gambling in the European Union represents an annual business of €16.5bn (gaming gross win), and it is expected to reach €24.9bn by 2020, with online sports betting accounting for 37% of that market size (European Gaming & Betting Association, 2016). In Australia, sports betting constitutes the fastest growing online gambling activity, which represents 53% of the market in the country (Gainsbury, 2014). A similar evolution can be seen in less mature gambling markets like Spain, where sports betting accounts for 47% of the online gambling business and where the online sports betting volume in 2015 rose by 43% from 2014 (Dirección General de Ordenación del Juego (DGOJ), 2016). While most forms of gambling on sports have been stable or decreased over the last few years, online betting has increased its prevalence rate in the 2009–2014 period in Great Britain, from 1.9% to 3.3%, significantly so among those aged 18–34 years (7%) (Georgiu, 2015). Mobile betting, in particular, has become the preferred way of placing a bet among most types of sports gamblers. Betfair reported that over 70% of its sportsbook revenue came through mobile apps (Betfair, 2016). Similarly, it was 66% for William Hill (2016) and 75% for Paddy Power (2016).

Drawing on the wide influence of sport content in society and backed by nascent internet regulatory frameworks, bookmakers appear to have succeeded in normalizing the action of wagering money on the outcome of a sporting competition (Parke et al., 2014). Sports betting, especially in the context of soccer, has traditionally been an asynchronous experience wherein game watching served, among other things, as a verification of the outcome of a bet placed hours or days before the game. However, online betting via mobile phones incorporating in-play betting options has synchronized betting and watching activities, making them both happen simultaneously and hence allowing a larger degree of synergies between adjacent industries. The novelty of the online component has raised questions regarding the unseen implications of this recent form of gambling. Since the first exploratory studies (LaBrie et al., 2007; LaPlante et al., 2008; Woolley, 2003), the topic has gained momentum from the point of view of its detrimental effects – more specifically problem gambling (Hing et al., 2016) and match-fixing (Asser Institute, 2014) – as well as its economic impact (Paul and Weinbach, 2010).

In its transition to a primarily internet-based activity, sports betting has arguably been reconfigured as a consumption product. In the intersection of multiple adjacent industries, online gambling has been said to converge with digital media (King et al., 2010), social gaming (Cassidy, 2013) and social media (Gainsbury et al., 2014; King et al., 2014). However, beyond these partial convergences, the full extent of the map of industry intersections remains unknown, as well as the specific place that sports betting occupies in that map as a distinctive gambling form.

With that aim in mind, this paper examines the intersection of online sports betting and its neighbouring industries to explore the underlying convergences and provides an analytical tool to understand them as a comprehensive process. The paper categorizes the convergence into three groups: digital, sporting and gambling. The argument is illustrated by examples from professional elite sports across different continents, although the fundamental focus is on soccer-dominated European markets. The timeframe is limited to the last few years, as a result of the online gambling regulations implemented by most member states in the late 2000s and early 2010s (European Commission, 2012). Horse racing is often considered separately from sports betting in prevalence and volume reports in some jurisdictions like the UK, while in many others it has no bearing in the sport culture, therefore it has been excluded from the conceptualization of sports betting here.

The present paper is, in essence, exploratory, and has no preconceived theoretical standpoint. However, due to its marketing and media-oriented perspective, and for clarity purposes, it follows Jenkins’ definition of convergence, by which he understands ‘the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences’ (Jenkins, 2006: 2). Implicit in this definition is the notion that convergence means the circulation of at least two elements, content and audiences, across two dimensions: platforms and industries. Also according to Jenkins’ view, convergence is a macro-process composed of five sub-processes: economic, technological, organic, global and cultural convergence (Jenkins, 2001). Economic convergence is specifically defined as the ‘horizontal integration of the entertainment industry’ (2001: 93). Consistent with this economic convergence approach, although inherently intertwined with cultural aspects, this paper explores the horizontal integration and collision of adjacent industry sectors into the online sports betting market, regarding sport as content or as a product, sports fans and bettors as consumers, and considering each integration as a business opportunity – although the consumption risks are also critically discussed in those cases where the integration can arguably lead to detrimental effects such as problem gambling. Integration and convergence are regarded as synonyms.

Online sports betting convergence

The present paper contends that online sports betting, as the name suggests, can be divided into three natural fields of economic convergence. In relation to its online component, sport betting can integrate with digital sector companies with whom they share a binary language and an internet-based business model. As for the sports component, betting operators are an integral part of the sports economy and build upon the popularity of sports content to boost their own business. In terms of betting, the integration with other gambling forms unrelated to sport offers new opportunities for companies to carefully expand the comfort zone of their customer base and introduce them to new gambling practices.

Figure 1 highlights the convergence of the online sports betting market by means of integration with digital, sporting and gambling sectors. In the figure, each column regarding integration must be read as the convergence of online sports betting across products from that specific sector. For instance, digital integration can occur when digital but non-sporting and non-gambling products are hitherto integrated into the online sports betting market via all or some of the digital elements that are present in those products. Arguably some of the items could be allocated in more than one column. For example, ‘fantasy sports’ was originally a sport pastime only, later becoming a real money sport gambling activity, and then a real money online sport gambling activity. Convergence is a process and, as such, columns try to reflect the sector where each process originated.

Figure 1.

Examples of convergence in online, sports and betting industries.

To further the argument, the digital, sports and gambling integrations have also been the consequence of two converging dynamics: the gamblification of sport and the sportification of gambling, as proposed by McMullan and Miller (2008). Gamblification is the process of converting and applying gambling logics to something that previously had no relation with it. By gamblificating sport, neighbouring industries have incorporated gambling opportunities into their business models and have connected their interests to those of the gambling operators. Correspondingly, sportification is the process of incorporating the logics of sport to non-sporting contexts. This can materialize in many ways but most commonly occurs when: (a) other industries capitalize on the positive attributes of sport (e.g. popularity, engagement or sanity and health inferences); and (b) non-sport fields try to increase the entertainment and playability of their products and their association with joy and excitement. The process of sportification has big similarities with the gamification or ludification process of applying game-design characteristics to non-game environments such as education (Deterding et al., 2011) or personalized health (McCallum, 2012). The synchronous sportification of gambling and gamblification of sport might have long-term implications in relation to the way society conceptualizes such activities, thinking of sport as a form of gambling and of gambling as a form of sport.

Additionally, a third dynamic, namely digitalization, is a logical consequence of the three-leg convergence of the online sports betting market. With digitalization, previously analogue products enter the online market and adopt some of its characteristics such as scalability, global reach and universal accessibility. Taken as a whole, Figure 1 can be interpreted as part of a stationary picture in which elements from each sector intersect and become part of a bigger logic, or act as a dynamic mechanism by virtue of which gambling, digital and sport industries penetrate adjacent markets and deliberately mutate the nature of some of their products.

Digital integration

Digitalization is the conversion of information to a binary and globally understandable language. Online sports betting interacts with other non-sport digital world dynamics to produce business opportunities to exploit. Four main integrations are discussed below: data, social gaming, eSports and immersive reality.

Data

The influence of gambling was an essential part of the evolution of sports codes. Golf and cricket were codified in 1774 as a direct response to the requirements of bookmakers to operate under a consistent set of rules (Forrest and Simmons, 2003). The neighbouring industries that flourished around popular sports needed formal structures and predictable formats. The measurement of human dimensions previously regarded as qualitative facilitated the explosion of even more rational forms of quantification. Statistics and advanced metrics have pervaded other spheres of the sporting culture – such as talent recruitment and athlete performance optimization – and laid the foundations for a data-driven, technologically-enriched and truly quantifiable sport product that perfectly suited the needs of the gambling industry.

A solid, unbiased, and unquestionable numerical output is crucial for betting purposes. To bet upon events, sports competitions and betting partners must generate reliable and globally shared standards of measurement that cannot be challenged by customers or be open for discussion. Every bettable element must be operationally defined to ensure winners and losers are unequivocally identified at the end of the betting process. In this context, the burgeoning in-game market allows sports fans to bet on hundreds of easily measurable and verifiable variables. For instance, in-play football markets can include bets on the number of goals scored during a match, the number of corners conceded, the half-time score, the final score and the names of the goal scorers. However, betting operators (i.e. bookmakers) resist offering betting options on harder to quantify variables like goal assists or goalkeeper saves where a human being is needed to adjudge what constitutes an occurrence of such variables.

The standardization and quantification of sports action have resulted in the generation of ‘big data’. In fact, a prerequisite for betting is the conversion of sport performance into data. Data and big data industries in sport have blossomed over the last decade, and data-driven technologies have taken centre stage in the transmission of sports content (Millington, 2015). Data companies (such as the Perform Group) have signed long-terms deals with sport competitions worldwide to extract, analyse and deliver data content. These data are bought by sports betting operators to produce the bettable elements in the market. In 2013, sports data providers were able to deliver as many as 810 betting markets within a single football game (Foley-Train, 2014). In addition, media companies buy it to surface patterns, statistics, ephemerides, records and milestones that can enrich the narratives to engage their audiences. Similarly, sports organizations use the data to monitor the performance and customize the training of the athletes.

However, sports data do not only travel one way. The same digital technologies that enable ‘sports-to-fan’ knowledge transmission also exploit the reverse path of ‘fan-to-sport’. Teams have long been implementing body and facial recognition software in their stadiums (Whisenant, 2003). When joining sports events or platforms, fans leave behind a trail of social media interaction, website navigation and/or purchase behaviour that can be traded profitably. If popular teams and sportspeople get fans to register and download an app (something as simple as a keyboard personalization with the team colours), fans will be granting, in some cases, access to their personal contacts, device and app history, identity, device ID and call information, and media files, as well as installing in-app purchase functionalities. Kuper (2014) has entertained the possibility of sports organizations becoming data collecting companies like Google or Facebook. Sports fans differ from other consumers in that their engagement and lifelong loyalty to the brand makes for a richer and more profound sports-fan interaction, producing better quality user identification with real trading value in the data market.

Social gaming

Via social gaming, online betting has found a gateway for real money gambling. Most popular games include fantasy-like games, football managers and FIFA-like skill games. Top Eleven 2016 – Be a Football Manager (Nordeus, 2010) is the most played sports social game with over one million daily subscribers. With one of the world’s most successful soccer managers as the public face of the game (i.e. José Mourinho), it represents the social gaming evolution of the traditional football manager computer games. Likewise, FIFA Ultimate Team (EA Sports, 2015) substitutes money for virtual rewards and simulates the videogame atmospheres for mobile content and Facebook.

Minors who cannot legally gamble can train themselves in sports-like social games on Facebook, that act as de facto technological convergence platforms of monetary and non-monetary gambling practices, and can have potentially detrimental effects (Cassidy, 2013; Griffiths et al., 2014). The attraction of vulnerable groups through mild forms of gaming has been said to make gambling more ubiquitous and socially acceptable, even treating gambling as a family activity to perform together (King et al., 2010). Social gaming can familiarize the players with the rules, the atmospheres, the adrenaline rush, the strategic thinking and the group excitement of gambling products without the inconvenience and financial dangers of real money gambling. The internalization of these gambling-like experiences might predispose a minority of individuals to develop a gambling problem later in their lives (Griffiths, 2014).

eSports

Electronic sports (eSports) are a clear illustration of the results of the sportification dynamics. In its purest formulation, eSports involve people playing videogames, usually considered a non-sports activity. The professionalization of this entertainment form has brought sports-world elements to it: stadium-like facilities, cheering stands, sponsors, big rewards and competition. Instant replays, jumbotrons (i.e. super-huge television screens) and referees add to the sport dramatization. In some notorious cases, prizes have gone beyond the US$10m threshold in a packed arena housing 73,000 fans (Wingfield, 2014). It has been estimated that 134 million people watched (but did not participate in) in eSports worldwide in 2015 (SuperData, 2015) with an annual revenue of US$325m (Luke Graham, 2016). Real sports teams have started to move in. For instance, British soccer club Manchester City announced that an 18-year-old eSport FIFA player will be representing the club in international competitions (Wakefield, 2016).

This massive interest followed by a massive audience has led most major betting operators to include eSports in their daily gambling offer. However, the singularities of the eSports market pose new challenges that conventional online betting sites struggle to address. Suraj Gosai, co-founder of Blinkpool, an eSports dedicated betting platform, laid out two main problems: in-play betting limitations and odds algorithmic programming (Bracken, 2016). For in-play betting to be viable, companies need to get access to reliable, instantaneous and unambiguous data that can settle bets and separate winners from losers. Data companies like Perform do that in sport, and betting operators rely on their data to offer in-play action to gamblers. The problem in eSports is that actions are not as quantified and standardized as in real-life sports. To counteract that, Blinkpool created computer vision technology that extracts data from real-time action and promotes hyper-contextual opportunities, that is, 10- to 45-second in-play betting mini-markets concerning very specific developments in the narrative of the games.

Odds programming in sports betting is fundamentally based on historical data from hundreds of thousands of games, from which each factor (home advantage, table position, head-to-head, etc.) is weighted in order to determine the probability of an event occurring. In the fixed-odds betting market, the bookmaker makes available to bettors that probability plus a benefit margin. When betting, an individual places bets against the probability that the house has predicted. This is not yet feasible in eSports because the historical data are scarce and the modelling is complex. Companies are circumventing this problem by offering exchange betting rather than fixed-odds. This method comprises peer betting, that is, bettors do not bet against the house but between one another. This way, the house gets a commission from winning bets and operates a much less risky business (Bracken, 2016).

Immersive reality

The hyper-technologized sports terrain, particularly when it comes to elite sports, has been predicting the arrival of virtual and immersive technologies for over 10 years (Katz et al., 2006). The vantage position of sportspeople in the game was emulated by utilizing on-board cameras in cycling and motor sports. Multi-camera set-ups promised fans personalized viewing with angle and viewpoint selection in their hands, as well as 3D features created to revolutionize the sports experience (Grau et al., 2007). However, the public turned out to be far more conservative than anticipated about the best way to consume sports. Screens became bigger and ultra-defined, but immersive realities like 3D have – to date – failed to engage the spectator (Furness, 2014).

The next generation of virtual reality headsets (Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, PlayStation VR and Google Cardboard), not specifically designed for media sport consumption, might have in sports betting a way to penetrate the market. Applied to gambling, virtual reality could facilitate the transition from gambling to gaming accentuating the adventure and joy components. For its horse racing market, William Hill has experimented with a merge between GPS data and virtual reality. Bettors can watch an online simulacrum of the actual race, built by real world live data, in a virtual environment where fans can impersonate the jockey (Davies, 2015). Theoretically, strategies such as immersive realities could pose a threat for gamblers. A deeper immersion could augment the illusion of control of bettors as their betting experience switches from a passive to an active exercise, resulting in a bigger involvement with the events bet upon. This involvement could be interpreted by the bettor as playing a bigger role in the outcome of the race, emphasizing the correlation between skills and outcome (Tobias-Webb et al., 2016).

Sporting integration

Sport media

As fans have become more familiar with sport competitions, their involvement with sport (and sports betting) has grown accordingly. The development of the telecommunication technologies and the reduced cost of transmitting sports events worldwide have brought competitions and fans together in unprecedented ways. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that sport is frequently among the most viewed television programmes in every country and among every age group (TV Sports Markets, 2013). As Griffiths (2012) has noted, betting operators have been wise enough to capitalize on the massive amount of televised sport available to the consumers. Television has made spectators integrate sports into their everyday life experiences, and enhance their knowledge, awareness, loyalty, team identification and belonging. Over the last couple of decades, the progressive transformation of sport into a commodity would not have been possible without the fundamental contribution of mass-mediated sport (Moor, 2007; Sewart, 1987). Given this context, online sports betting is arguably a predictable ramification of the complex commodification process traversing sport today.

The media reassure the relationship built on trust between betting bookmakers and bettors. Since their inception, sports media and gambling have had parallel trajectories. The honour of being the first sports-based media outlet in history is commonly attributed to the Boston Gazette of 1733. The magazine included racing fixture tables so readers could bet money on horses (Boyle, 2006: 31). In an era when information did not travel as quickly and as reliably as today, gamblers needed assurances about the facts they were betting on. The true outcome of a game or a race happening miles away required an uninterested third party to objectively deliver the information needed. The trust between bookmakers and consumers evolved toward more sophisticated ways as the transmission platforms became more capable of presenting the spectators with vivid and often live proof of the contests.

A number of examples illustrate the extent of the normalization of betting in everyday sports media. First, media sports websites are big affiliate partners of betting operators. Affiliation in online marketing means that if a reader is redirected by a banner from a sports site to a betting site, and later this fan places a bet there, the sports site gets a proportion of the Net Gaming Revenue (NGR) generated in the betting activity. Although no concrete figures are available as to the extent of this affiliation market between sports and betting, two proxy figures may shed some light. More specifically, the proliferation of betting banners placed in online sports outlets (and in illegal live streaming feeds) make a compelling argument concerning the existence and volume of affiliate traffic. Furthermore, back in 2012, gambling websites (sport and non-sport) were believed to attract 50% of their clients through affiliate marketing (H2 Gambling Capital, 2013). If this were the case for online sports betting, then it would be safe to assume that a large proportion of that 50% must come from sites producing sports content and targeting sports fans (i.e. sports journalism).

Second, on a subtler narrative level, betting odds increasingly feature in news themselves. For instance, in 2016, British football club Leicester City were the unexpected Premier League football champions. The story of a team overcoming the budget obstacles and winning the Premiership title was consistently emphasized using a betting narrative. The angle selected by many outlets was not the underdog defeating the Goliaths of English football but focused on the 5000-1 odds that Leicester City were given at the start of the 2015–2016 season to win the league. Bettors who wagered money before the season began (and under such disadvantageous circumstances) were portrayed as true fans. Bookmakers, with estimated losses in the region of £25m (Rayner and Brown, 2016), did not wait to capitalize on the event and promoted themselves as a business that delivered big money to fans.

Third, and still on a narrative level, the fact that data companies deliver information to both media outlets and betting companies makes it more probable that the kind of news that is published is at the same time conveniently shaped for betting purposes. Statistics and ephemerides (also superstitious numerical coincidences) identify patterns in past confrontations between two teams and project them for the build-up of the next game, manufacturing the narrative of a probable outcome without explicitly encouraging a bet on it.

Fourth, sport media has been very successful in helping journalists in the transition from sport experts to betting experts. In a recent study conducted in Spain, researchers cross-checked a list of the top 10 sport so-called journalists in the country with the most Twitter followers to see if they had any sort of relationship with the betting industry. The results showed that all of the 10 sports journalists had current or past endorsement deals with betting companies, with some even launching their own online betting platform (Lopez-Gonzalez and Tulloch, 2015). These journalists are regarded as knowledgeable experts who can provide followers with inside information (i.e. ‘good’ tips) about the status of the teams and sportspeople. Some of these journalists, managing accounts with over one million followers, function as influencers, promoting and normalizing the use of betting sites to adults and minors alike.

Sponsorship and endorsement

In 2013, the European Sponsorship Association characterized the gambling industry as ‘a significant source of sponsorship funding for sport organizations’ (Foley-Train, 2014: 30). According to this report, gambling (in general) ranked seventh of all business sectors in terms of sponsorship deals. In Europe, gambling companies sponsoring professional sports team jerseys grew from one in 2002/2003 to 26 in 2010/2011 (Foley-Train, 2014). The ubiquity of gambling sponsorship in sport has become apparent for anyone watching elite football. In the 2015/2016 season of the English Premier League, seven out of 20 shirt deals involved gambling operators (Betway, Dafabet, Bet365, TLC Bet, 138.com and Mansion, twice) plus an online trading exchange company, GWFX. In addition, all 20 teams had an official betting partner for the season (Smith, 2016). Gillooly (2015) noted that none of the seven sponsorship deals included alliances with the top Premiership clubs and that the average gambling sponsorship of these clubs amounted to £3.9m a year whereas the average sponsorship deal for clubs in the Premier League was £11.2m.

In relation to endorsement, active players signing deals with sports betting operators is rare, at least in the premier European football market. In a few cases, when a team-gambling partnership has been in place, operators have set up promotional videos with some players using semi-advertising formulas such as informal ‘hitting-the-crossbar’ competitions in which a betting operator gathers a number of footballers from a team and makes them test their accuracy trying to hit the crossbar of a goal (Betfair, bwin and Kirolbet have used such a formula). In these instances, no features of the betting product are presented and the gambling–sportsman connection is weak, typically involving a fixed banner in the background of the pitch. Instead, gambling companies have favoured two distinct strategies: signing retired sportspeople and coaches (e.g. Matt Le Tissier, Stuart Pearce, Fernando Morientes, Luis Figo); or, looking for active sportsmen to endorse gambling forms other than sports betting (e.g. Neymar, Rafael Nadal or Cristiano Ronaldo in poker, José Mourinho in Top Eleven Football Manager).

The integration of betting with sports competitions has magnified the scope of gambling stimuli that sports fans are regularly exposed to. An ‘environmental scan’ commissioned by Gambling Research Australia (Sproston et al., 2015) on the most followed sports in the country found that six betting companies had spent AUD 12m in 10 weeks producing a total of 13,000 ‘advertisement events’ in that period. The events in the scan included television, radio and print advertising, as well as social media messages and other digital strategies. In addition, the researchers visited sport venues where they took photographs of betting promotions from dynamic and fixed banners, and hanging billboards, as well as from less obvious places such as press rooms, volunteers’ vests, front facing steps on public staircases and toilets. The implications are that betting stimuli are – in Lopez-Gonzalez and Tulloch’s (2015) words – environmental or ecological. That is, sports gambling is embedded in everyday routines and objects, irrespective of the individual platforms employed each time, and that it requires a holistic approach to tackle potentially detrimental aspects in their entirety.

Virtual and fantasy sports

The triangular convergence of digital technologies, sport and the gambling industry has multiplied the possible combinations of products that, having originated in one field, have evolved into something different. For instance, fantasy leagues and videogames existed in the pre-internet era, but it was not until the internet’s arrival that their convergence with gambling materialized. All things considered, the integration of sports-themed products becomes easier as their digitalization process continues, blurring the lines between formerly distinctive markets. Consequently, sport bettors can now bet on the: (a) sport-themed videogame they are playing; (b) sport-themed videogame somebody else is playing; (c) sport-themed videogame that a computer is generating (virtual sports); (d) non-sport videogame somebody else is playing (eSports); (e) real-world-based virtual team management competitions (fantasy sport); and (f) real-world games (traditional sports betting). Immersive virtual reality promises even greater integration between platforms in the near future, and potentially enhances the playability and entertainment factors of the betting experience.

Virtual sports are computer-generated games whose outcome and development are decided by an algorithm. The programming of the algorithm factors in the skills of each contender (i.e. not every team is weighted equally, the same as in real life) but adds randomness that makes it difficult to predict the result. Virtual sports differ from eSports in that the former are virtual representations of sport contests, while the latter have no explicit relationship with sport beyond the metaphorical ‘sport as competition’ connection. In eSports, active videogame players compete in non-sports games, whereas in virtual sports a passive audience observes a computer-generated sport game being played. As the technology for virtual reality develops, the user experience is likely to improve in an industry estimated to be worth AUD 9bn a year (Totally Gaming, 2015). Betting-wise, a major feature of virtual sports is the duration. Games typically last two to three minutes and can be as brief as 90 seconds. With such short cycles, the betting frequency increases, and with it the speed at which gamblers can lose potential control over their behaviour (because problem gambling is associated with high event frequency activities (Griffiths and Auer, 2013). Another crucial feature is the availability. Virtual sports are not hampered or restricted by time zones, injuries, event cancellations, weather conditions or sport calendars, representing the ultimate evolution of the always-available sports betting culture.

Fantasy sports consist of drafting a team of real-world players and being rewarded according to their real-world performance over a period of one to seven days (daily fantasy) or a season (conventional fantasy league). While videogames and virtual sports offer the digital equivalent of the player perspective, the traditional role of the manager has, in fantasy leagues, a digital fulfilment. Fantasy sports have been found to boost sport consumption over mobile, television and print media (Drayer et al., 2010). Fantasy leagues have grown into a multi-billion-dollar industry in the US, arguably because of their controversial legal status as a skill game, contrary to the chance-based games of online sports betting, illegal in most of the jurisdictions. The enhanced participatory role that digital products such as fantasy games introduce could facilitate the illusion of control as they perform actions, making bettors overestimate the importance of skills and knowledge for the outcome of the competitions (Thomas et al., 2015).

Gambling integration

In-venue and in-stadium online betting

Also prompted by digitalization, online sport betting has integrated into other existing gambling environments. Betting shops have traditionally offered the possibility of wagering while watching sporting events on television (e.g. horse racing). Intuitively, it might be assumed that online and in-venue gambling are mutually exclusive, and that the emergence of internet-based betting options would lead to a decrease in offline equivalents. However, in-venue betting operators have pro-actively reacted to such technological innovation by expanding their online betting functionalities. Suren Khachatryan (CEO, BetConstruct) asserts that offline gaming operators that offer online betting opportunities can now integrate the benefits of digital gambling technologies with two fundamental characteristics of offline gambling: a familiar retail setting where bettors can feel comfortable and, most importantly, an environment in which a game can be enjoyed while accompanied by others (Pageant Gaming Media, 2014).

Likewise, the in-stadium gambling experience has also gone digital. The halftime queues to place a bet in the stadium bookmaker have been substituted for in-venue companion apps that allow ticket holders to wager, order food, upgrade the seat, check the parking slots and/or follow in-game statistics. In one of the most notable examples of this gambling integration, Glasgow’s Celtic Football Club signed a deal with the Unibet gambling company to provide their stadium with a high-density free wi-fi system that enables fans to bet online while watching the game (Sports Revolution, 2014). A free app is required to access the wi-fi and, through it, Unibet promotes its in-play odds and special offers.

Poker

A plethora of former sportspeople have transitioned from sport to promoting gambling including Ronaldo Nazario, Alberto Tomba, Andriy Shevchenko, Shane Warne, Thomas Brolin, Boris Becker and Teddy Sheringham. As noted above, active sportspeople rarely endorse betting sites and prefer to migrate to other gambling forms such as poker, with unknown reasons for such behaviour. Footballers like Neymar and Cristiano Ronaldo and the tennis player Rafael Nadal are examples of this. Research carried out in the 1990s in the USA showed that college athletes faced ‘unique temptations to gamble because of their subculture’ (Curry and Jiobu, 1995: 33), with competitive motivations that might act as generalizable personality traits. Weiss and Loubier (2010) have also entertained the idea that a competitive nature might be nurtured through the life of young athletes as a trait of their socialization process. Another finding in their study suggested that former athletes gambled more extensively on poker games than current athletes and non-athletes, further indicating a competitive spirit idea.

Poker operators, which are sometimes owned by the same mother companies as betting sites, might be allegedly building on this competitive spirit to equate betting and poker playing in the minds of sports fans. The shared elements between sport and gambling of sensation seeking and risk-taking (Straub, 1982) might assist to produce the illusion of a coherence in the transition from betting to poker, ostensibly emphasized by the strategic airing of poker advertisements at the end of televised sporting events.

Trading

Some functionalities of sports betting platforms can be seen as a primitive form of online trading. For instance, ‘cash outs’ are instances where bettors can withdraw a bet made before the final result is known. In this scenario, the bettor is not gambling on a specific outcome per se but on the possibility that the face value of the bet would increase. The ‘exchange’ also presents trading features. For instance, when exchanging, bettor A decides upon the odds of any bet but cannot place it until a bettor B has matched the odds, covering for each other’s winnings. This strategy very much resembles that of trading on the stock market.

In recent years, the sponsorship deals between European elite teams and high-risk financial online trading companies have flourished. Online brokerages, including binary options and forex (FX or foreign exchange) are visible partners, in some cases becoming main shirt sponsors (Plus500 and Atletico Madrid, HP Autonomy and Tottenham Hotspur, and GWFX and Swansea City). Since 2010, a large number of top football and motor brands have deals with one or more trading firms: IronFX (FC Barcelona), Alpari FX (West Ham United, New York Knicks), Swissquote (Manchester United), Gain Capital (Manchester City), FXPrimus (Manchester City), Swiss FX (Mercedes F1 Team), FXDD (Red Bull Racing Team, Malta national football team, Virgin Formula 1, BMW Sauwer), CWMFX (Chelsea), Markets.com (Arsenal), Optionweb (Paris Saint Germain), and 24option (Juventus). Some of these trading companies have faced judiciary as well as liquidity problems, terminating the contracts sooner than expected with potential damage to the brand equity of the team sponsored (Siddiqui, 2015).

Final remarks

Responding to the growth of sports betting worldwide, the increased number of betting opportunities via a myriad of channels, devices and platforms, and the increasingly difficult distinction between sports betting and sports betting-like markets, this paper has attempted to offer a comprehensive picture of the forces driving the convergence of markets around betting activity. It explored this from the analytical perspective of economic convergence by means of mapping the gradual integration of the digital, sporting and gambling sectors, and argued that the convergence corresponds to three dynamic processes that traverse it: digitalization, sportification and gamblification.

These convergences reach beyond the realm of sports betting and open the possibility for a radically new way of consuming mediated sport. Virtual sports and eSports alter sport viewing and substitute sport events for a simulacrum. The traditional passive role of audiences can be challenged by more active, immersive experiences. The transformation of sport content into sport data might anticipate the acceleration of its cross-platform circulation- its adaptability to be instantly and simultaneously turned into reading, watching, discussing or betting material. The huge audience and media attention, combined with positive attributes attached to it, arguably make sport an appealing recipient of converging processes, as seen in the cases of stock market trading or poker.

The convergence process can be interpreted as an opportunity from the point of view of sport and gambling industries, although conversely it might turn into a source of social discomfort and alarm, especially when involving vulnerable groups. Sports betting has dramatically altered its essence from a discontinuous to a continuous form of gambling, with progressively increased availability, accessibility, frequency and betting options. The convergence processes discussed here have contributed to such alteration and any consequences (positive or negative), given the short period of time elapsed since their materialization, are yet to be investigated. As advertising and marketing strategies have become integral parts of the business, bookmakers are developing innovative and state-of-the-art tactics to cross-promote and converge separate markets, targeting new gamblers or discouraging the discontinuation of gambling. In this context, sport is arguably a uniquely positioned delivery vehicle for such promotion strategies due to its wide penetration and intergenerational social acceptance. The widespread interest by children and teenagers in sports and their exposure to sport-related promotions also raises further concerns about the adequacy of the current legal limits of betting advertising and demands an unambiguous stance on the matter from sport competitions, teams and personalities.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The first author is supported by a postdoctoral fellowship from the Department of Education of the Basque Government, reference number POS_2015_1_0062

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