Mobile is king in World Cup betting

The betting bonanza flowing from the currently running FIFA World Cup football has highlighted the major role that mobile devices are playing in the placement of wagers, with a new study from payments company Secure Trading claiming that during the England vs. Costa Rica game 70 percent of the wagers were coming in from mobile devices.

The payments company has seen a massive surge in mobile gaming since the World Cup kicked off on June 12, says Jens Bader, Secure Trading’s commercial director, who opines that heavy advertising campaigns coupled with the rise of second screening has triggered a betting bonanza for operators.

“These major events offer a significant mobile opportunity for operators but they must be equipped for the scenario,” Bader said. “Keeping users engaged while making the player journey a smooth one is paramount.

“For example, a quick and easy player identification solution and a simple sign-up process for first-time customers is essential.

“Invest in a robust and efficient payment area in order to process large surges of transactions, as well as having the responsiveness to deal with peaks in demand during important matches.”

The conclusions reached by Secure Trading have been echoed by mobile sports betting platform Betfuze, which reports that 65 percent of its punters used mobile devices to place their bets and keep up to date with World Cup developments.

The mobile division of Coral also reports soaring use of mobile devices, predicting that upwards of a billion pounds sterling in wagers will have been placed by the end of the tournament, and in Coral’s case more than 66 percent of its gamblers will use mobile devices, with 70 percent of their action flowing from in-play betting….up 750 percent on the group’s experience at the last World Cup in South Africa back in 2010.

Social media will be a critically important element in this year’s World Cup, with observers predicting that between 70 and 75 percent of gamblers will use social media whilst watching a game, split roughly 45 percent Facebook and 35 percent Twitter.

Offline, the tournament buzz has taken hold, too as punters stream to their favourite pubs to watch games and place bets on their mobiles, all the while consuming millions of pints of their favoured brews.