An Evaluation Of Australian Online Sports Betting Sites Using

Australia 9s $11 billion gambling industry, with only 90,000 Australians, or 0.6% of the population gambling on the internet in 1998/99 (Parliament, 2000).<br><br> Online gambling refers to two types of activity: (i) online gaming; and (ii) interactive wagering. 8Online gaming 9 is where the gambling event is based on a computer program and the outcome is determined by a random number generator. These activities involve no element of skill and include games such as blackjack, poker, lotteries and electronic gaming machines.<br><br> Interactive wagering 9 is where the gambling event takes place on a physical racetrack or playing field. The Internet merely provides a new mechanism for placing wagers (Parliament, 2000). The following table illustrates the breakdown of online gambling customers by gambling category.<br><br> Table I. Casino gamesBet on the races Sports bettingAll Internet gambling a Number playing in last 12 months 58 26617 73816 88189 787 Proportion of Australian adults (%) 0.410.120.12 0.64 b a This is less than the sum of the three types of Internet gambling because some Internet gamblers gambled on more than one form. b The unweighted proportion is 0.7 with a 95 per cent confidence interval of 0.4 to 1.0 per cent.<br><br> Source: PC National Gambling Survey, (Parliament, 2000) As shown in Table 1, betting on the Races and Sports betting accounted for a combined .24% of the Australian population which was 34,419 Australian adults. Currently the percentage of Australians gambling online is relatively small, however, all indications are that this is about to change as online gambling is beginning to grow rapidly. While United States legislators debate whether gambling online should be outlawed, it is gaining strength in Australia where it is regulated by the 1 To whom correspondence should be addressed ANZMAC 2000 Visionary Marketing for the 21 st Century: Facing the Challenge 991 different states and territories.<br><br> Australia is the only stable, first-world government to have legislated to allow online gaming. Some industry advocates suggests that online gambling, from a pure e-commerce perspective, will be a killer application and will be the e-commerce application that puts Australia on the global internet map (Cresswell,2000). Several others support this optimistic projection.<br><br> Bryant (1999) for one, suggests that internet gambling is expected to boom in Australia during the next 12 to 18 months, with Australia becoming a world leader in the industry, attracting many users and advertising dollars. So much so, that some industry analysts believe that in the next 12 months, Australian companies could capture 30% share of a global online gambling market turnover of a staggering $US10 billion (Howarth, 2000; Gee, 2000). Online Sports Betting If the projected growth of the online sports and events betting industry in the US and Europe (even with prohibition in many States of the U.S.) at a rate of 43% per annum through to 2004, is any indication, it seems that the optimism being expressed for this industry in Australia may not be unrealistic (Gee, 2000).<br><br> Interestingly, internet usage by Australian adults has grown over the last 12 months by almost the same percentage, 44% as the predicted annual growth for online gambling (43%) (ABS, 2000). There are currently thirteen Australian-licensed online sportsbetting sites in operation, see Table 2 . Some of these sites have been operating for a number of years and have experienced strong growth.<br><br> CanBet Pty. Ltd for one, had a turnover of $47million in 1998/1999 and expects that figure to almost double in 1999/2000. Centrebet another, with a turnover of $100million in 1998-99, receiving 20,000 to 100,000 internet hits daily (although 98 percent of these players are based in the United States) and is ranked in the world 9s top five Internet sites.<br><br> An Evaluation of Online Sports Betting sites In order to gain exploratory insights into some aspects of online sports betting and the websites behind it, research was conducted in the first half of 2000. In what follows below, some aspects of the research are discussed and presented. The Research Berthon, et.<br><br> al (1997) use correspondence analysis to evaluate how different Telecom companies on the web are relatively positioned with respect to key dimension of effective web sites. They suggest that this analysis technique could be extended to other types of Web sites. The Sample The following thirteen Australian licenced sites (see Table 2) were used as the sample for evaluation.<br><br> The sample was taken from the Australian Gaming Book 9s (Gee, 2000) list of online gambling sites. Table 2 3 The Sample Operator State URL Canbet ACTwww.canbet.com.au Centrebet NTwww.centrebet.com.au City Index SportsACTwww.cityindex.com.au Davidson SportsNSWwww.sportsbetting.aust.com International all SportsNTwww.betthe.net Mega$portsACTwww.megasports.com.au TAB (WA)WAwww.ozbet.com.au Sports OddsNSWwww.sportodds.com.au TAB (QLD)QLDwww.nettab.com.au TAB (SA)SAwww.satab.com.au TAB (VIC)VICwww.sportstab.com.au TABCorpVICwww.tab.com.au Consolidated Gaming CorpNTwww.sportsbet.com.au ANZMAC 2000 Visionary Marketing for the 21 st Century: Facing the Challenge 992 Dimensions of Web Site Evaluation Table 3 3 Web Site Evaluation Criteria Attribute Scoring Definition & Notes Coverage 1 to 25Range of coverage, i.e. The total number of different types of sports offered on the site (both local and internationally).<br><br> Web LinksTotal number of linksThe number of links to other gaming or sports related sites. Provides an indication of the dvalue added d attributes of each site. Speed3 = Fast (~50 kB/s 2 = Average(~28.8kB/s) 1 = Slow (~14.4 kB/s) Speed is the average amount of time it takes to display a page from a particular site.<br><br> The speed rating indicates a site 9s effective transfer rate measured in kilobits/second. Speed is measured during Alexa 9s periodic crawls of the internet. ReadabilityGrade level scoreHow easy it is for people to read and understand the text on the site.<br><br> Based on Readability Statistics using the Flesch- Kincaid Grade Level. Several paragraphs were assessed from each site 9s Rules and Regulations or Questions and Answers. Freshness5 = less than 1 week old 4 = less than 3 months old 3 = less than 6 months old 2 = less than 24 months old 1 = more than 24 months old Freshness is an indication of how often the site is updated.<br><br> Rating determined by analysing the modification dates of pages found during Alexa 9s periodic Web crawls. Freshness is the average age of the top pages of a site. TrafficA score out of 5, where 5 is high and 1 low 5 = among Top 100 sites 4 = among Top 1000 sites 3 = among Top 10,000 sites 2 = among Top 100,000 sites 1 = less than Top 100,000 sites This rating indicates how a site ranks against other major sites in terms of traffic.<br><br> Traffic data is based on a count of the total number of visits by Alexa users to the site over the last six months. This ranking gives an indication of the sites popularity to Alexa users. % SharePercentage scoreThe hitwise.com.au %share score ( in terms of % share of total traffic) of the 84 Australian online gambling sites (including online gaming) as at 3 June 2000.<br><br> hitwise.com.au monitor the sites and supply daily reports. Provides an indication of the market share of the site. SizeTotal number of pages cPages d is the number of Web pages on the site.<br><br> Page data is based on Alexa 9s periodic internet crawls. Correspondence Analysis Correspondence analysis is a multivariate analysis technique that can be used to analyse and interpret cross- tabulations of categorical data. More specifically it can be used to determine the nature and dependency between the r-1 rows and the c-1 columns of the contingency table resulting from the cross-tabulation.<br><br> The main output from a correspondence analysis is a graphical display that is a simultaneous plot of the rows with similar profiles are plotted 8close 9 together; similarly for columns with similar profiles. (Berthon, et. al.,1997) ANZMAC 2000 Visionary Marketing for the 21 st Century: Facing the Challenge 993 Correspondence Analysis of Online Sports Betting Web sites: Results The following data in table 4 below were used as input to the correspondence analysis.<br><br> Table 4 - Sports Betting Sites and Attributes Site Coverage Web Links Speed Readability % share Size Traffic Freshness canbet217210.60.061323 centrebet100211.11.963124 sportsbetting10128.30.02515 betthe.net253210.83.1213024 sportodds19027.33.661314 ozbet3028.40.388114 nettab.208212.02.9114025 satab34210.36.32714 sportstab1067212.010.8810415 tab71212.014.693325 Fig. 1 3 Correspondence Analysis -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 betthenet canbet centrebet nettab ozbet satab sportodds sportsbetting sportstab tab %share Coverage freshness readability size traffic weblinks -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 .0 .5 1.0 1.5 c2 The data was analysed using the correspondence analysis routines in JMP (SAS Institute 1998). The perceptual map in Figure 1 resulted from this procedure.<br><br> In the interests of brevity, the full statistical analysis behind the map has been omitted. Discussion and Conclusion For dimension 1, analysis of the sports betting site co-ordinates reveals two clear groups. The first cluster, centrebet, sportodds and sportsbetting all have relatively large positive co-ordinates and therefore form a distinct group.<br><br> The second cluster has smaller positive co-ordinates and forms another distinct group comprising ozbet, betthenet, canbet, and nettab sites. In respect to the attributes mapping onto dimension only 1 group is evident. ANZMAC 2000 Visionary Marketing for the 21 st Century: Facing the Challenge 994 This group comprises the attributes of coverage, traffic, freshness and readability all with significantly positive co-ordinates.<br><br> For dimension 2, analysis of the sports betting site co-ordinates has revealed sportsbetting, sportsodds, satab, and canbet all with large positive co-ordinates forming one group. A second group of negative co-ordinates on dimension 2 comprises the ozbet, betthenet and nettab sites. In respect to the attribute mapping onto dimension 2, one distinct group emerges, with relatively high positive scores, these are coverage, traffic, freshness readability and %share, i.e.<br><br> five out of the total of seven attributes. When the two dimensions are combined (see Figure 1) further patterns are revealed. Sports betting sites that are positioned in close proximity have similar profiles with respect to the seven attributes.<br><br> The plot illustrates that sportsbetting, sportodds, centrebet and canbet are clustered together and form a distinct group and ozbet, betthenet and nettab, another group. Three sites, tab, satab and sportstab have less in common with the other sites, particularly the latter, sportstab, positioned on the plot a significant distance from the other sites. As with most perceptual mapping techniques used in marketing, managers can use maps such as those in Figure 1 to think about strategy, particularly in terms of positioning (for a full explication of these issues see Morris, Pitt and Berthon, 1999).<br><br> For example, a manager of a less than effective site can use the map to identify the attributes that more successful sites possess, and then determine ways of attaining better performance on these attributes. Furthermore, managers can use the map to determine unique opportunities or positions to occupy - that is, where is there a gap in the map in which opportunities exist? One of the many positive aspects of online marketing is that so much of the data is objective, rather than based on opinions and attitudes of customers (which although valuable and insightful can be misleading at times, and expensive to obtain).<br><br> Hopefully this brief note demonstrates some of the advantages and insights to be gained by using simple maps to position websites in multidimensional space. References ABS ( 2000) , Catalogue No. 8147.0.<br><br> cUse of the Internet by Householders, Australia d Australian Bureau of Statistics Report, November, 1999. Morris, M.H., Berthon, P.R., and Pitt, L.F. (1999) Assessing the Structure of Industrial Buying Centers with Multivariate Tools, Industrial Marketing Management, 25, 3 (May), 263-276.<br><br> Berthon, P., Pitt, L.F., Berthon, J-P., Crowther, C., Bruwer, L., Lyall, P., and Money, A.H. (1997) cMapping the Marketspace: Evaluating Industry Web Sites Using Correspondence Analysis d. Journal of Strategic Marketing, 5, 4 (December), 233-242.<br><br> Bryant, G. (1999) cGambling: Online seems a sure bet for some d, B.R.W. June, 18, Vol.<br><br> 21, No. 23. Bryant, G.<br><br> (1999) cOnline ignorance is no defence d, B.R.W. March, 15. Vol.<br><br> 21, No. 9. Cresswell, E.<br><br> (2000) cGaming the best bet d, Internet Gambling, Australian Financial Review. Gee, R. (2000), Australian Gambling Book, CIBC World Markets Australia Limited, March, 2000, 1 st edition, pp.<br><br> 10 3 19. Howarth, B. (2000) cGambling: Australians deal themselves in d, BRW, February 25, Vol.<br><br> 22. No. 7.<br><br> Mitchell, S. & W. Maher (1999) cA Sure bet? d, B.R.W.<br><br> January 10. Parliament of Australia, (2000) cNetbets: A review of online gambling in Australia d, Senate Information Technologies Committee, March 16, 2000. (www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/it_cte/gambling) Surry, M.<br><br> (1998) cRoll of the dice d, Asian Business, August, Vol. 34, No. 8 pp.<br><br> 52-56. w.w.w.consult.com.au

less