Factors influencing bettors in brand owned online sports betting communities

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Factors influencing bettors

in brand owned online sports betting communities

Master thesis

MSc in Business Administration – Digital Business University of Amsterdam

Faculty of Economics and Business

Author: Vit Havlicek – 11677457

Email: vit.havlicek@gmail.com

Supervisor: Dr. Michael Etter

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Statement of originality

This document is written by Student Vit Havlicek who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

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2 Abstract

Online sports betting is a relatively unexplored topic from a business perspective. This gap is increasing even more today as social media and online communities come into the game. Bettors today often do not bet by themselves but imitate bets of their fellow bettors, who share them through online communities specialized on sports betting. These communities are often owned by the betting company and therefore are at the same time a brand owned media, which can help the betting company directs its marketing and other efforts to gain and maintain customers.

This paper studies factors that influence bettors to imitate bets in these brand owned online sports betting communities. An analysis has shown that there are important factors in play, which are relevant both for companies and bettors alike.

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Introduction

As Bobby Riggs, once a world-famous tennis player once said, “The second-worst thing in the world is betting on a golf game and losing. The worst is not betting at all.” (n.d.) For a long time, sports betting has been an inseparable part of many sports and cultures alike. From what started as simple wagers between two individuals, then through small shops, to the current internet-based giants without a physical address, sports betting has come a long way. Today, in the age of ever ongoing digital transformation, social network sites and ecommerce, access to betting is simpler than ever.

Sports betting, in general, is a simple wager between two people – the bettor and the bookmaker. A betting company, which employs the bookmaker, presents the wager, or the 'bet'. The bet has three major attributes: the subject of the bet (sports match result, goals scored, etc.), the odds set up by the bookmaker, and the money bet on those two. The odds are what drives the bettor to bet in first place. Any successful bet results in a win for the bettor, as their money bet is multiplied by the odds, resulting in a net increase in the bettor's cash.

In order to place a bet, the bettor must be able to contact the betting company. Up until several years ago, that was only possible through brick and mortar shops or, in some cases, a telephone. Typically, a bettor would go to the shop, look at the bets available and place those, which interest him. However, going to the shop often can be a bit cumbersome for one reason or another, and thus, internet betting has been introduced in the later 2000s. However, sports betting has always had a certain community appeal to it, where bettors within the same store would sometimes become friends and share some tips and tricks. That was not possible in the early days of online betting, as there was no platform yet.

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5 With the introduction of social networking sites, much has changed. As people of different interests could gather themselves in specialized groups online, bettors did not fall behind in creating their own groups. These communities would start off as such groups, where bettors, just like in the old days of brick and mortar shops, would share some tips and tricks. Soon after, specialized communities for bettors have emerged. That is when some betting companies saw the potential for creating their own community, to engage their bettors. That would in turn bring in more loyalty and, in turn, more revenue. You might ask, why would that increase revenue, if bettors share tips and tricks?

The reason for that is the following: as any other online social network, such a community can be used in many different ways to influence the users. In sports betting, that would mean giving bettors the ability to share their bets and coupons* to inspire others to follow the same or similar bets. Since a typical bettor on such a sports betting site would be able to see those shared bets, he would be inclined to explore them and either get inspired or copy them completely. This possibly leads to bettors betting even on matches that are outside of their knowledge scope, providing the betting company more revenue, as they would not bet on such a match without the use of the community. Thus, the relationship between bettors who share bets and bettors who get inspired or imitate them must be explored. To grasp deeper knowledge into this matter, a research question must be formulated. Unfortunately, literature covering online betting and its relationship to social media and online communities is unfortunately rather limited to this day. If the research is narrowed down to brand-owned social and community media, sports betting business is close to unexplored. Most of the available literature to this

*_{A coupon in sports betting is a the basic containment for individual bets, i.e. one coupons holds all the} bets within one instance. Usually, bettor's win is determined whether the entire coupon is successful.

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6 date either deals with other areas of online sports betting or choose to approach it from different than a business perspective. Therefore, literature from different but related areas should prove useful for examination of online sports betting. These areas of research are online communities and influence of individuals within them, trust and ‘social trading’.

The two most prevalent approaches to sports betting studies are either from an economical, business and marketing point of view, or from a psychological point of view.

Social media in the betting business can be looked at from two sides – interactions engaged by the customer, or by the operator. For this topic, engagements by the customer are the significant ones. As one of the world’s leading social networks, Twitter is a champion in short, informative posts that go to a potentially very broad audience – to anybody who is interested. It is thus, according to Lopez-Gonzalez and Tulloch (2015), a strong tool for influencers, both related to betting or simply sport experts, to show their opinion on upcoming matches.

However, Feddersen, et al. (2017) argue through the measure of Facebook likes, that not only are social sites an instrument for customers but also for the operators. (2017) Based on a proven customer’s betting bias towards teams with high numbers of Facebook likes, they concluded that such bias is apparent also for the operators’ bookmakers, who in turn adjust the individual odds to match the higher demand based on the customer-side bias. (Feddersen, et al., 2017)

Although the impact of Twitter and other social networks is not the topic of this research, researcher’s findings regarding the influence of individuals – influencers – is be relevant to how these influencers impact their followers.

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7 When sports betting and marketing is considered from a psychological standpoint, studies mostly address the issues that come with gambling and its promotion through various media, including social media. (Deans, et al., 2017; Lopez-Gonzalez, et al., 2013) Both in fact argue that marketing, social media, sports and sports betting have converged or are converging into one large colossus, at which it is going to be difficult to differentiate where one team’s marketing starts and one betting company’s ends. (Deans, et al., 2017; Lopez-Gonzalez, et al., 2013)

Such a convergence of the above-mentioned fields is a sign that incorporation of a brand owned community is one of the possible steps towards a more interested bettor, who is also more loyal to his preferred betting operator. Away from online sports betting literature, many other aspects of similar community designs have been researched in various other fields. Most notably, we need to see the impact of influencers in social media and communities as a whole. Other part of relevant literature deals with social trading, which is easily comparable to betting through the aid of a community.

Numerous articles deal with the influence of relative strangers on individuals through reviews, references or suggestions, found on social sites, online communities and forums (Lim & Van Der Heide, 2015; Zhou et al., 2013; Bapna, R., & Umyarov, A. 2015; Arenas-Márquez, et al., 2014) For instance, Bapna & Umyarov (2015) show that references by our friends on social media make us pay more to certain brands. On the other hand, Lim & Van Der Heide (2015) found that even complete strangers, who post reviews to Yelp.com (and applicably other similarly styled websites) influence how, what and for what cost we purchase products and services. Furthermore, as Fournier & Lee (2009) explain, communities serve not only as a tool for businesses to engage their customers but also as a significant bearer of customer power and customer relationships.

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While there is much more literature to be explored in the field of influence of individuals, which will be vital for this research, it can be agreed that people are influenced by even complete strangers to spend money for items or services reviewed or proposed by the influencers. That alone suggests that communities in an online betting business can be an incredibly powerful tool for betting companies.

However, as that does not exactly show its relationship to a business perspective, we must consider a specific set of online sports betting communities. There are communities owned and governed by individual companies, who also happen to be operators in the sports betting market. In these communities, there are influencers, who willingly share their bets to others, in order to provide an inspiration to the potential bettor. Looking at such a community as a form of ‘owned media’ can prove an interesting research. (Lovett & Staelin, 2016) If this potential tool, an operator owned community site, can be used properly for marketing purposes, its impact should be studied, specifically from the perspective of a bettor and the influencer’s impact on him and what makes the bettor be influenced. This narrower study is likely to be useful in order to differentiate itself between broader studies of sports betting and social media, and the studies As testing the influence of communities would be a too broad of a research topic, narrowing it down is necessary to a more specific field of study and business. As has been stated above, imitation plays a major role in such communities in the online betting markets. Therefore, factors which influence bettors to imitate bets will be focused on.

Based on these claims, I formulate the following research question is:

Which factors influence bettors to imitate bets in brand owned online sports betting communities?

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9 This study will provide a number of theoretical and managerial contributions. First, it will expand the theoretical knowledge of influence of people through specialized online communities, showing the impact of influencers on the influenced. It will also expand the knowledge of imitation and its occurrence in these online communities. Furthermore, this study will also briefly link the research of social trading and online sports betting communities, showing many similarities among each of these respective fields. This will provide future researchers with a baseline for studying either of these two fields and making it possible to link various aspects of each to the other.

As for managerial implications, the study will be helpful for any companies using or those willing to use a brand owned online community as a channel of communication. By showing which factors are important to an imitator in such a community, the company can focus on the important parts, highlighting them and in turn, not pay unnecessary attention to those found not as important. Furthermore, an online sports betting company can look into some of the strategies used by bettors-imitators, using them as a base for new marketing and/or business strategies.

The study will be structured in the following manner after this part. First, literature related to imitation, influence in communities will be explored, in order to grasp a deeper understanding of the topic. It will be followed by a discussion of research design and research method, the results of which will then be analysed and a conclusion will be drawn. In the last part of this study, the results and conclusions will be discussed, managerial and theoretical implications will be introduced, and limitations of this research will be drawn in order to suggest studies for future researchers.

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Literature review

Community

While online communities are the basis of this research, a regular community must first be explored. As defined by Gordon et al. (2015), “A community is a social unit of any size that commonly share conditions such as values, intent, beliefs, resources, preferences, needs, risks and consumption experiences that influence the identity and degree of cohesiveness of participants.” Such a community has several core features, which are diversity, social ties, joint action, sharing and locus (MacQueen et al., 2001).

Consumption Community

A special type of community applying to this research is a ‘consumption community’. As the name suggests, consumption community has one notable thing as its commonality – consumption (Boorstin, 1973 as cited in Gordon at al., 2015). As a part of consumption communities, one can also find brand communities. As introduced and defined by Muniz and O’Guinn (2001) “A brand community is a specialized, non-geographically bound community, based on a structured set of social relations among admirers of a brand.“ Based on these definitions, we can safely assume that brand owned betting community in question is a consumption community, with features of a brand community.

Online Community

As defined in Dictionary of Information Science and Technology (2013), an online community is a “a group of people {who} interact with each other through digital platforms“. In our case, such people interacting within the group are individual bettors, and the digital platform is an online betting site.

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11 As we are looking into interactions among members of the community, we must explore the relationships between community members and influences they face. First, we must take a look into the first part of the variable interaction – the sharer. As Jobber et al. (2004) state in their study, the sharers are more prone to share when they are incentivized to do so. They categorize the incentives into two parts: monetary and non-monetary. Monetary incentives offer the sharer a money when he performs required actions. While effective for quantitative reasons, monetary incentives suffer from two major problem. First, they show diminishing returns – while they quickly rake up numbers of sharers, their loyalty drops much faster than when non-monetary incentives are in place. Second, and more importantly for this study, the readers, or in our case bettors, are aware of such monetary incentives and, as a result, show much less trust towards the sharers. (Gneezy et al., 2011)

Trust is an often-spelled word in the field of communities. As most people in them are strangers to each other, knowing others potentially only by anonymous aliases, it is important to see why someone would trust strangers with their choices. Lim & Van Der Heide (2015) have found out, in their study about online restaurant reviews, that there are several factors that makes the reader trust the review. Generally, a reader looks for reviewers that have shown large “expertise”, or in other words, they have posted a large number of reviews in the past. Also, they generally tend to look for positive reviews when there is an intent of going into that restaurant before looking up the reviews. Similar story is also told by other researchers, such as Bapna & Umyarov (2015), who found similar factors in play. However, food reviews and betting are quite different things altogether.

There have always been betting communities, while the brick and mortar shops were at the height of popularity. Gordon et al. (2015) say that there has been community

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12 influence on bettors ever then, although the bettor had been acquainted before, or have befriended each other in the process. They also say that in each shop, there were several major influencers, who had enough influence to make other bet the same bets as they did. For these situations, they found two major factors in play: perceived success rate and charisma. As charisma is not relevant in terms of online communities, perceived success must be further explored. Perceived benefit or risk, as told by Kim et al. (2008), are subjective metrics used gauge intentions. In an online community, such a metric could be used even easier, as there are often certain ratings in place, visible freely for anyone interested. These ratings can be compared to the ratings used in forums or review sites mentioned earlier.

Social Trading

As Wolgemuth, et al. define, “Social trading is a new form of online community in which investors can automatically, simultaneously, and unconditionally copy the investments of other traders whom they trust.” (2016) If we look at investment in stock markets, it resembles sports betting quite closely, as even sports betting is a form of investment and operators could be considered as brokers. Researchers in this field show investment communities as a vessel, through which the possibly less experienced amateur investors can follow the investments of those, who are more experienced in the field, while experience is measured by historical success (or failure) of that person’s investments. (Wolgemuth, et al., 2016) That experience is shown through a ranking and statistical system of that given community. (EToro, n.d.) Furthermore, Berger, et al. (2017) show that such imitation is in fact a valid strategy in investing. This strategy is apparently more often used in periods or phases of the investors uncertainty, which indicates the influencers impact on an undecided investor. (Pan et al., 2012)

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13 As has been mentioned above, social trading is a phenomenon, which is similar to sports betting through a community. Especially, literature about the use of imitation and its either positive or negative results is strongly relevant for finding out the drivers for the bettors to imitate and whether one of their incentives to follow a community influencer is the vision of a greater and easier win.

As has been inclined in the above, social trading can be compared to online sports betting with the use of communities in many ways. Therefore, I will make several analogies to link these two in published literature.

In most cases, the main driver of a social trader (or an investor) is profit. Thus, to earn more profit, less experienced investors often reach out to others for advice. In the case of social trading, this advice is provided in the form of a community and other investors. The investors who provide help are the ones who share their portfolios and trades, in order for them to be followed by the others. . (Wolgemuth, et al., 2016). However, as in other communities, there are some necessary factors for the follower to follow influencer’s decisions. One of these factors, again, is trust. Trust in social trading is earned by the look at the trading history of the potential influencer and their past profits. If the influencer’s profits, experience and investment strategy align with the follower’s desired ones, the follower then subscribes to the influencer and follows the same trades and strategies and imitates them.

The probability of the follower to imitate the influencer is further enhanced by provided analyses, which give more perceived expertise to the influencer. (Shiller, 2005) In interactions such as these analyses, Shiller (2005) argues that investor sentiment plays a vital role in creation of price bubbles. Amman & Schaub (2016) further expand on this with their evidence of the power of enthusiasm in such interactions. According to them,

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14 positive words and enthusiasm strongly influences potential investors, who are more likely to invest while under such positive influence from others, even though they do not necessarily correlate with the trading strategy performance.

Trust

While trust is one of the key subjects of our everyday lives, it is a concept not that easily defined. For example, Whitener et al. (1998) j argue that trust has three features. “First, trust reflects expectation or conviction about the counterpart’s anticipated action in good will. Second, counterparts cannot force or control this conviction (in other words, they must accept the risk of expectation being unfulfilled. Third, one’s performance depends on the actions of the counterpart (thus, the principle of reciprocity).“ (Yoon, 2002) Speaking of risk, McKnight et al. (2002) say that in order to aid consumers to overcome insecurity and risk, trust can have a vital role. Furthermore, according to Yoon (2002), many authors conceptualize trust as a causal link between customer loyalty and retention and relationships between a buyer and a seller. He further argues that in marketing, trust is vital for customer relationship induction.

In Figure 1, the theoretical model about trust by Kim et al. (2008) can be seen. This model combines the variables of Perceived Risk, Consumer Trust, Perceived Benefit and Intention of Purchase in order to show which factors are in play when a consumer

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Figure 1. Theoretical framework by Kim et al. 2008

Imitation

As defined by the Oxford English Dictionary (n.d.), imitation is “The action of using someone or something as a model.” Strictly based on that definition, copying betting intentions, habits, individual bets or entire coupons can be considered imitation. However, how does imitation work?

Imitation is a widely spelled term in economics and business, where they mostly work with ‘resources’ or the based studies. (Berger et al., 2017) As this resource-based view works mostly with resources in a company setting, extracting only pieces of theory is important. In this case, researchers often mention the barriers to imitation, which are the other side of the coin to imitation itself. (Berger et al,. 2017, King & Zeithaml, 2001, Jonsson & Regner, 2009, etc.) For instance, King and Zeithaml (2001) have found that when resources are complexly embedded, imitators are often not able to understand their above-average returns generation. Different barriers are mentioned by Jonsson and Regnér (2009), who say that potential imitators might not be willing to imitate because of reasons such as professional codes or norms that would discourage them to do so.

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Conceptual Framework

Adapted from the framework developed by Kim et al. (2008) to imitation betting in an online sports betting community, combining the elements of internet purchase behaviour and ‘buying a coupon’. As both risk and potential profit are both the vital parts of the bet, they lead into the intention of betting – when perceived benefit is larger than perceived risk, bettor creates the intention of betting. However, a bettor can avoid some risk from his potential inexperience by trusting a different bettor and accepting to imitate his bet(s).

Figure 2. Conceptual Framework

Research Method

In this part of the study, I will provide the method of research. First, I will introduce the case study, through which the research has been done. Second, I will explain the research design used and sampling method chosen for this study.

Case Study

As this study will deal with a brand owned community, I have chosen the largest sports betting company operating on the Czech market, called Tipsport a.s. (hereinafter

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17 “Tipsport”). (Svatoš, 2017) As a part of its online betting operations, Tipsport has a feature called Tiket Arena, which is an opt-in community for bettors to share their betting coupons, analyses and engage in a discussion through the forum. As I analyse the factors that influence the individual bettors to imitate a stranger’s betting coupon, I look for individuals, who often engage in the community and have experience with Tiket Arena as imitators. In short, the unit of analysis in this case study is Tipsport's community, Tiket Arena with the individual bettors being the embedded cases.

By studying bettors within Tiket Arena, I will be able to grasp their motivations and insights on bet imitation. It is going to be an explanatory case study, as I am looking to explain the actions in real-life settings and attempting to find possible links, based on theoretical literature. (Yin, 2009) As a theoretical background for this study has been provided by other literature and a conceptual model has been developed, this study is deductive in nature. (Yin, 2009) Furthermore, as I have used only one qualitative method of research – interviews within a case study – this is a mono-method study. Analysis of the case study will be done with help of computer software ATLAS.ti 8, which was designed to aid qualitative researchers and helps with coding and organization of all necessary data from interviews.

Sampling

This sampling for this study was done through finding Czech users of Tiket Arena, who were frequent users of the features within it. As this study looked into one specific subgroup of online sports bettors, homogenous sampling was done to collect interviewees. (Saunders et al., 2015) These interviewees were contacted through specialized Facebook groups and Tipsport Forum, sufficient potential interviewees can be found. The number of interviewees was chosen according to the Guest et al. (2017), who say that 12 interviews is a sufficient number for data saturation within a fairly

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18 homogenous group, which this community was. This sample will likely be limited by the demographical features of the interviewees, who will likely be aged between 20-40 and are very likely to be males (information received from Tipsport), as these are the main traits of a typical bettor who engages in Tiket Arena.

Research Design

The research for this study was done through a series of interviews with the above-mentioned bettors. These interviews were based on the developed conceptual framework. (Miles, & Huberman, 1994) I have aimed for semi-structured interviews, as I was looking for both a clear set of answers, which could be comparable to each other and any potential insights the interviewees might have towards the topic. Therefore, I have allowed the conversation to flow freely, using the interview design as a framework and a guideline for leading that interview. The base question, around which the interviews revolved was “What were your reasons and motivations for imitating someone's bet?”. By asking different variations of this question and splicing it into different nuances and individual factors, I was able to grasp the information and data necessary for the case analysis. Aim of this research was to interview 12 bettors, as that is a sufficient number for a rigorous study and a larger number would not likely yield vastly different results. (Guest et al., 2017) The interviews have been designed to last from 30 minutes to one hour, as that should be enough time to gather all the necessary insights and not be lengthy and boring to the interviewee. Unfortunately, all interviewees live in the Czech Republic and, thus, it was not possible to do the interviews face to face. Therefore, I used VoIP calls, i.e. as Skype, Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. The interviews have been performed, recorded and transcribed in their original language – Czech, however, select quotes have been translated in a way that their meaning in captured in the best possible manner.

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19 Furthermore, as per Yin (2009), a database was created in order to keep track of all the used data. Storing the used data is vital not only to keep the study credible but also an important point of inspection, should it happen. Reliability of the research will be ensured through creating a protocol of the case study, as well as a case study database. (Yin, 2009) These steps ensure that the study is reproducible through a set of similar or same research means. Construct validity was achieved by following scientific literature and theories and empirical evidence within. (Yin, 2009) However, there is a risk of a limited approach to literature, as there has not been much developed yet and most of the theoretical contribution, while applicable for this research, has been made in different fields. As it is a single case study, the theory from literature will also be used to ensure external validity. (Yin, 2009) Affirming Internal validity will be done through explanations of behavioural data, which will also be compared to other, potentially conflicting explanations. (Yin, 2009)

Results

In this chapter, I will present the results of the qualitative data analysis. First, I will provide an overview of the interviewees, who took part in this study. Second, I will show significant quotes and statements which reflect their views on some of the key concepts, which were presented in the literature review part. Should these answers not relate to the presented theories and concepts, suggestions for future research about these findings will be made in a later part of this study.

Sample

There were in total 12 interviews, all of which had been done through the use of either Skype or Messenger VoIP services, as well as recorded and transcribed. The average age of the respondent was 28.4 years and the median age was 24 years. The lowest age

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20 was 20, while the highest was 43. This aligns with information from Tipsport, who have stated that the population ranges between 20-40 years of age. Consent has been given in all cases but one to the use of first names for the sake of this analysis, these are:

- Dominik, 20, M - Filip, 26, M - Leos, 37, M - Klara, 25, F - Jakub, 24, M - Michal, 27, F - Martin (fictious), 34, M - Miroslav, 31, M - Radim, 26, M - Tomas, 24, M - Vaclav, 43, M - Simon, 24, M

The education background of the interviewees was varying, as there were: 9 cases of high school graduates, 3 of which are currently university students, 2 cases of university graduates and one high school drop-out. 11 out of the 12 interviewees were males and 1 was a female. As this sample should be representative, it shows us that men are the driving force of the betting business and the communities within. Therefore, it can be assumed that the distribution within the group is fairly balanced and can be applied to the real world.

Interview design

The interviews followed key themes risk, profit and trust. As they were semi-structured interviews, there were several areas of questions – introduction, betting experience, community experience, imitation and inspiration and extras. The all were constructed into a coherent body, as can be seen in Appendix 1, the interview protocol. Some of the interviews were rather unique because of the nature of semi-structured interviews and adaption of different approaches based on the interviewee.

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21 Data Analysis

In this section, I will go through the data gathered from the interviews. In order to structure this section, I will follow the order of the basic questions from the interview protocol, which can be found in Appendix 1.

Introduction

The most reoccurring attribute of the bettors within this part of the interview was that they mostly like to bet for pleasure or for the fun it brings with it. All 12 mentioned that fun and thrill are the key drivers for them betting, however, 3 of them mentioned that they have affliction towards potential profits from betting, however, only 1 has said that he might be winning in the long term. Interesting distribution occurred among their frequency of betting, where 7 of them bet seasonally, according to their favourite sports, while the other 5 place at least one coupon per day. As all bettors are different ages, they bet for different amounts of time, however, except Vaclav, they have been betting since their 18 years of age, which is the legal minimum age for betting in the Czech Republic.

Large disparity appeared among the size of the average coupon values, as can be seen in Table 1. While the values may seem insignificant in terms of importance at this point in the study, they will later be linked to bettor behaviour.

Bettor Avg coupon value (EUR)

Bettor Avg coupon value (EUR) Dominik 4 Martin 1-40 Filip 4-40 Miroslav 40-80 Leos 4-40 Radim 80 Klara 8-20 Tomas 2 Jakub 20-80 Vaclav 20 Michal 40 Simon 2

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Table 1. Average coupon values. (1EUR=~25CZK) Companies and Communities

As it was one of the features of the sample, all of the interviewees use Tipsport as their main betting company. While 4 of them use other companies for betting too, they only use them for the benefit of potentially greater odds, which might mean higher profit from specific bets. This implies that the group is very homogenous and Tipsport users are not very keen on going elsewhere for their bets.

Similar to above, the interviewees all use Tiket Arena. When they were asked about the use of any other online sports betting communities, 6 of them answered yes, with the same answer, that they use Czech Facebook communities, such as “Sazkarsky Gang” and/or comments below Tipsport’s Facebook page. On that page, Tipsport itself shares various coupons or analyses from its users (must be part of Tiket Arena), in order to expand its reach on users on the internet. However, 5 of these 6 have stated that they only lurk on those Facebook pages and do not find them inspiring.

When the 8 bettors who have only used Tipsport and Tiket Arena so far were asked whether they would consider switching to a different betting company if they had an online community such as Tiket Arena, 6 of them have answered that they wouldn’t because of “loyalty” and the inconvenience of change itself. Of the 2 others, Klara would be welcome to try a new one and see how it is, while Vaclav has stated:

“Ehmm… I don’t know, I mean, the community would have to be so much better than Tiket Arena, I mean, have so many more options and users and stuff, otherwise no, I do not think so, (...)”

Therefore, we can assume that these users are mostly loyal to Tipsport as a company and a brand and they would not switch.

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Tiket Arena

While every interviewee uses Tiket Arena, they do not use them the same way. While everyone looks into the coupons in Tiket Arena and read the analyses, only 4 of the bettors use it for sharing their coupons and only 1 writes analyses on a frequent basis. When asked about the sharing, Vaclav said:

“Look, I share every coupon I submit I guess.. and do you know why I do it? (…) You know, pretty much every time I post it there, some people just catch on and basically, when you get like enough inspirations, you get some like cash to use there. So yeah, that is pretty much why I do it, to get the Nets*. It’s quite a nice motivation, if it just costs me like 10 crowns.”

The other 3 had similar approach, 2 of them did it because of the incentive bonuses while Radim did it “just because, why not?”. Martin was the only one to write analyses and share them. His reasoning was quite different from what the other sharers have said: “umm… I do it for the Nets as well but I try to look at it form a little different perspective you know. I don’t know whether I haven’t said this already but, basically, I play quite some golf and there is not many other bettors who follow it if you know what I mean, so I sort of try to help them expand their views to see golf too, maybe even as a sport and such. (…) Well, because it’s such a great sport to bet on.”

However, the important part of this study are the ones who imitate, not the ones who share. As has been mentioned above, each of these bettors have imitated bets or coupons and followed analyses. However, their reasons for both imitation and following of the analyses are quite different.

*_{Nets are a pseudo monetary incentive for bettors to share their coupons and analyses, which second as} betting money.

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24 First and most important question is why do they use Tiket Arena? Compared to the question on why they bet, this one showed very different results. While 7 have said they use Tiket Arena and its components for increasing their potential profits from sports betting, only 4 use it out of interest and 1 uses it just because “why not?”. When asked about the perceived benefit, they mostly mentioned

Starting with the bet and coupon imitation, there are many parts that their reasons diverge. While everyone imitates bets, only Simon imitates entire coupons without hesitation. He does that because:

“(…) I like ice hockey and I really like to bet on NHL. And you know, a friend told me, check this guy out, he’s pretty good with NHL. And what he does is that he puts goal scorers from like, so many matches and I really don’t know how but he has a really high success rate for this type of bet and not too many inspirations, so I figured I might try that just for the ‘lulz’. So I did it once and it immediately worked out, like a casino would (laughs). So I keep doing this every now and then and I just put like 5 crowns (CZK) on it and see what happens. (…) It’s just a coupon I would never think of so I don’t change it, right, just to screw it up, I just kind of trust the guy to do the right bet.”

On the other hand, the rest of the bettors only copy parts of the coupons and then remove bets they think that are not as good as they would like them to be, as they mostly believe that they can do better than the bettor, or in case of Leos, he wants to have something of his own on the coupon.

How do they choose the coupons or bets to imitate though? Similar to Simon, they look for coupons that are unconventional. Through this, they can find bets which they would not otherwise think of. These can be different sports than they follow or specialty bets for match conditions etc. For instance, Miroslav likes to look into high inspiration

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25 tickets from a ‘reputable’ sharer and chooses alternatives to bets he would otherwise choose:

“(…) He just puts there stuff that I don’t currently think about and say to myself, hmm, so he has a good amount of inspirations, maybe an analysis with good trust rating too, so I just imitate it but it’s not like I straight up copy coupons. (…) It can be like a bet with weirdly high odds or on the other hand a more risky bet, but not unreal, like you know, interesting.”

This for instance shows the value he puts on several different factors: coupon inspirations, sharer inspirations or analysis rating. If we look at both Simon’s and Miroslav’s quotes, the mention the keyword trust. Trust is a widely used term across the interviews and they mostly refer to the same thing. Whether they trust the sharer to make the right bet. However, when asked whether trusting the sharer or coupon affects the perceived risk of the bet and in turn makes them bet more, 6 have answered that they do not think so, 3 that they do not know and 3 that maybe.

Bettor Trust reduces risk Bettor Trust reduces risk

Dominik Don’t know Martin Maybe

Filip Probably not Miroslav Probably not

Leos Maybe Radim Maybe

Klara Don’t know Tomas Probably not

Jakub Probably not Vaclav Don’t know

Michal Probably not Simon Probably not

Table 2. Does trust reduce perceived risk?

Therefore, we can assume that while trust is indeed an important keyword in imitating bets and coupons themselves, they mostly do not believe that it does not reduce the perceived risk of betting.

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26 Imitating coupons are one thing, however, analyses must be take into consideration too. As has been mentioned above, all 12 bettors read analyses on a regular basis. Not only do they read them, they also imitate the bets featured in these analyses. For instance, Michal says that he uses analyses:

“(…) because of time management issues, I keep track of my own life. I can’t check all the leagues in the world and tennis tournaments with my job. So when someone puts there something for tennis or say, football, I like to read through that as it’s interesting, eh? And then, If it’s really interesting, maybe with some nice odds, I copy the bet in the analysis.”

While 8 interviewees look into analyses for new bets to use and imitate, 4 use them mostly for inspiration, however, under certain circumstances, they imitate them too. Martin mentioned his circumstances as quite “set” and that they include “(…)odds around two and have high trustworthiness”. However, everyone mostly uses them for time saving purposes, as they say that they have no time to follow many sports thoroughly, so they leave it up to others.

There is also the option of live bets. While 2 bettors focus on live bets, 7 use them as a bonus feature for fun when they have time and the other 4 do not bet on live bets at all. Of the 9 that use the option of live bets, only 4 follow the forums. However, of these 4, 3 use it mostly for comedic purposes where they lurk around the forums and “have a laugh at frustrated people”, says Michal, joined by similar statements form Jakub and Klara. On the other hand, Martin and Michal use it for finding out some insider information, which apparently occurs there sometimes, “from lower divisions and such”, adds Michal.

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27 When individual factors of trust in this setting are considered, the following things are found. The key factors for someone trusting a bet or coupon are:

Factor n-high n-low

Coupon inspirations 11 0

Coupon complexity 4 1

Coupon monetary size 6 0

Sharer total inspirations 8 0

Sharer success rate 10 1

Sharer followers 4 4

Analysis inspirations 11 1

Analysis trustworthiness 7 0

Table 3. Factors of bet/coupon trust.

As Table 3 shows, the sample group has been quite homogenous in their answers, where high numbers of coupon inspirations, sharer total inspirations, sharer success rate, analysis inspirations and analysis trustworthiness have played large roles while imitating coupons or analyses for most of them.

Extras / Final Remarks

Questions in this part were mostly focus on money management, strategy and its relationship to Tiket Arena, as well as comparisons to a real-life community. First, money management played a large role for bettor’s strategies and money put into bets. For instance, Leos uses different value of bets and a different strategy depending on the time of the month, whether he is about to receive his wage or whether he has more money at the moment. While this is not true for all the interviewees, 6 have admitted that they bet according to the amount of money they currently possess and that their strategies change accordingly. Interestingly, they split 3 to 3 on how their strategies change when they have less money – 3 bet more risky, 3 bet safer. Furthermore, 5 of these six use Tiket Arena more when they have less money, especially the analyses

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28 feature, where they attempt to at least gather some research before they place their bets, be it with low or high odds.

When asked to compare Tiket Arena and an offline community which would exist in a brick and mortar shop, 7 have argued that they do not believe that it can be sufficiently engaging to completely replace those offline communities. The other 5 were not sure about the future of the two types of communities but were open to the option that one day, there may be no offline community left in shops. For example, as Martin said: “it is quite nice to be able to go into the shop and all but today, it’s just old people who do that, so I don’t think it’s very engaging for you know, people like us. (…) And with some more care, this might be quite good {online community}.”

Last part of the interview was usually dedicated to friends in real life. 4 of the interviewees have friends with who they talk about betting on a frequent basis. When asked whether it is a difference, to trust a tip from a friend than an analysis on Tiket Arena, they all agreed that yes. The reason for that is that they know what to expect from their friend and that even while he might be a bad bettor, they trust him and while they might not follow his bet, they will consider it much more than a random coupon on Tiket Arena.

Discussion

In this final part of this study, the results of the earlier stated results will be discussed. Their implications will be drawn both in theoretical and managerial level. Furthermore, limitations of this study will be presented, and based on these limitations, research will be proposed for future researchers of a similar topic or area.

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29 General Discussion

Trust has been established as a vital part of sports betting in online communities. It is a major factor which affects bettors and their intentions to both bet and imitate other bettors. Several major underlying factors of trust leading to imitation have been identified through the interviews, mostly relying on the information presented by the betting company. These are mostly inspirations in various areas, such as coupons, sharer’s total inspirations and inspiration of an analysis. Other notable ones have been sharer’s success rate and trustworthiness of an analysis. Even though this information come from users, they are compiled and presented by the betting company. Therefore, it can be assumed that the bettors mostly work with information that is presented to them in a clear and easy manner and do not take further steps to do deeper analyses of the data not seen at first glance.

It has been stated above that average money bet will be put into perspective in this part of the study. Interestingly enough, some of the bettors use Tiket Arena mostly as a feature for fun, where they enter a fraction of their average amount of money bet, a miniature amount of money (0.2€) into their imitated coupons. So while they provide results in the category of imitators and bettors who trust tickets of sharer’s, it can be assumed they do not put any actual trust into those imitated coupons, as such an amount of money holds no value to them. Therefore, the risk perception is heavily skewed in these cases.

Based on the literature review, a conceptual framework was proposed in this study. The individual relationships in this framework have been analysed in the research above. Based on the results, it can be said a bettors intention of imitation is indeed dependent on the relationship between perceived risk (odds) and perceived benefit (potential profit) and that bettor’s trust of the sharer plays a role in that final decision to imitate a

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30 bet. However, while it has been proposed that this trust would potentially lower the perceived risk, it has not been found that such a relationship exists. Bettors would be either indifferent to such a claim or would deny it entirely. Therefore, the main role of trust in an online sports betting community is directed towards the decision-making whether to imitate the bet. In Figure 3, a resulting and revised conceptual framework can be seen.

Figure 3. Conceptual Framework result

Moreover, it has been found that a brand owned community is a beneficial construct for the owning company, as it institutes, according to the bettors, a form of loyalty to the brand and reduces the potential movements between competing companies within the same field.

Implications

Theoretical Contribution

This study contributes to the research previously done on imitation and trust in online communities. It applies the research already performed onto a new field, that being online sports betting. With knowledge from online sports betting, new findings have

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31 been made about factors, which make members of community imitate others and factors, which make them trust unknown people from these communities.

Moreover, it expands upon the research in sports betting and gambling. Researchers in these fields have not yet ventured deep into the community aspects. This study provides some basic links and may prove useful to researchers attempting two connect the dots between these areas.

Managerial Contribution

This study contributes to managerial knowledge in its research of imitation, trust and their relationship to a bettor’s intentions to imitate bets in an online brand owned sports betting community. Thanks to the findings, managers and marketers can focus on the correct values and features, which promote imitation of bets and as a result, higher revenues. Furthermore, managers can do the contrary and reduce attention paid to features, that might not be very interesting for the company and bettors alike. Managers can also take a look at social trading communities, to gather inspiration for further ventures and new features.

Limitations

Limitations of this study lie in its relative narrow field of research. As the studied sample of bettors only come from one community and from one country, results in different settings can be marginally different. Furthermore, this study looks mostly on the phenomenon of trust and the factors underlying. As this study only works with a single method, other researchers might achieve different results with different or combined methods, both qualitative and quantitative.

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32 Future Research

As this study has only been done with Czech bettors from one online community, comparisons across different settings can prove to be an interesting field of study. Furthermore, future studies can be made in non-brand owned online communities, as there are many of these on the internet, which focus on different aspects of betting, as well as different aspects of a community.

Further comparisons can be made with social trading, where a full-fledged research would be beneficiary for both fields. There is a lot of area to explore among these two fields, as they are approachable from many different angles and different ways of research can be used to study them.

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33

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Appendix 1

Interview protocol (translated into English)

Thank you for taking part in this study. My name is Vit Havlicek and I am a student at University of Amsterdam. You have been selected for this interview as a user

of Tipsport’s Tiket Arena. This interview is a research part of my MSc. thesis, the research question of which is “Which factors influence bettors to imitate bets in a brand owned online community?“ Please note that this interview will be used for research purposes only. Do you agree with me recording this interview for later use and analysis?

________ Thank you.

1. Introduction

a. Could you please introduce yourself?

b. How long have you been betting on sports for? c. How often do you place bets?

d. What is your average money spent per coupon? e. Why do you bet on sports? (pleasure/profit) 2. Companies and Communities

a. Which betting companies do you use?

b. Which online sports betting communities do you use? c. Do you use Tiket Arena?

i. Why do you use it?

ii. Which features do you use? (imitation/analyses/live forums) 3. Tiket Arena (following questions apply to each of the used features

of Tiket Arena)

a. How do you use this feature? (receive/share) b. Why do you use this feature?

i. Are there any specific traits you are looking for when you use it? ii. Do you expect profit?

iii. What makes you trust this feature? 4. Extras / Final Remarks

a. Do you ever bet with 'real life' friends?

i. Do you trust them more than random bettors? 1. Even if they were in ticket arena? b. (If he uses any other communities)

i. Make comparisons to Tiket Arena

c. Tell me something about your money management

i. How do you bet when you have more/less money? ii. Does money affect the way you use Tiket Arena? 5. Thank you for your time.

Factors influencing bettors in brand owned online sports betting communities