Will Hill tops in UK mobile betting

A recent study by the independent UK research company Onavo has produced some interesting data on the British UK mobile gambling market, reports The Guardian newspaper. However, the data appears to be focused on the iOS platform, leaving room for adjustment.

The numbers show that betting group William Hill is the most used by active Brit mobile punters using iPhone, with around 4.3 percent of them using at least one sports betting app.

38 percent of those iPhone gamblers prefer the William Hill app, with Paddy Power’s offering next at 32 percent, and bet365’s product third with 24 percent.

However, Onavo chief exec Guy Rosen qualifies that assessment by noting that punters may use several apps.

“There’s a lot of overlap: people are using a bunch of these apps rather than just sticking with one,” he told the newspaper.

“If you look at the users of bet365, 17 percent of them are also using Betfred, and 10 percent are also using Paddy Power. Or if you look at William Hill, 10 percent are also using bet365. There’s a lot of interplay between these.”

Rosen says his company analysed data from usage of its Onavo Count and Extend apps, which help people monitor their data usage.

It found that bet365 is the most engaging sports betting app in the UK, with people using it on an average of 5.6 days every month, compared to 4.1 days for William Hill and 3.3 days for Paddy Power.

The Guardian reports that at the beginning of the year comScore estimated there were 8.65 million active iPhone users in the UK. If that figure has stayed constant, based on Onavo’s 4.3 percent figure, it would mean around 372,000 Brits are using sports betting apps regularly on their iPhones.

The UK mobile gambling market is one of the most established in the world, and Rosen believes that other nations are monitoring its progress to better inform their own efforts in the field, especially in the US should legal and political obstacles be lifted.

Onavo’s Insights service has been developed to help developers and brands understand which apps are being actively used on iOS and Android, rather than just downloaded.

“It’s all about the active users,” Rosen says. “That’s the key thing that has become the metric that matters, and the industry is waking up to the fact that downloads don’t matter. They’re a vanity metric where you can fake your way in. What’s important is what apps are really sticking around.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2013/jun/19/uk-iphone-gambling-apps