The Market Make-up series returns to SBC News in partnership with Gaming&Co, providing a detailed eye on the intricacies and dynamic strategies deployed by online bookmakers to engage European audiences. Matt Howard of Orbital Bet dissects how France’s leading books adopt ultra-aggressive tactics on pre-match markets and fend off competition from new challengers and unregulated sites.
Gaming&Co is delighted to once again partner with Matt Howard of Orbital Bet and publish analysis of online bookmakers’ offerings during major sporting events. We restart the project by looking at French online sportsbooks’ offerings during last week’s UEFA Champions League round of 16 matches that took place on 11-12 March.
Starting with the most important pre-match markets, Matt looked at French operators’ margins and the factors that affect their pricing strategies.
Pre-match main markets
The chart below shows the range of overrounds applied to markets across markets that are given prominence on all the French sportsbooks surveyed: match result, total goals, both teams to score and double chance.
- ‘Double chance’ markets enable players to choose Home/Draw, Home/Away, Draw/Away (sometimes displayed as 1X, 12, X2), enabling them to choose two outcomes from the match result. The odds reflect those probabilities, which explains why the margins on those products are so high.
Pre-match takeaways
Overall uniformity: all the operators are fairly aggressive on the main markets. For a 3-way market (home/draw/away), match result (in blue) is particularly low margin. On those markets, Betclic and Winamax have the lowest overround at 104%, while bwin has the highest at ~106%.
- Hard competition: These are the key markets, so it’s no surprise that operators are competing hard for customers.
- Illegal influence: In addition, there is likely to be an acknowledgement that offshore operators targeting the same players will be offering similar margins.
- Betclic is the most aggressive across this group of main markets, with total goals (in red) and both teams to score (in light blue) at 107-108% and double chance at ~215%, with Winamax not far behind. The two market leaders stand out as actively competing on margin.
- At the other end of the scale, bwin and Netbet are most often highest margin. Given the tax implications in France this may just show that those brands can not be as aggressive on price.
In-play main markets
The chart below shows the range of overrounds applied to in-play markets for match result, total goals, both teams to score and double chance.
In-play takeaways
- Live markets push margins: Once again we see a degree of uniformity, but the margins themselves have been pushed out for in-play.
- Tactical change: Betclic and Winamax, the two most aggressive on margin in pre-match, are no longer the most aggressive on in-play match result markets.
- That title now goes to bwin, the Entain brand was the least aggressive on pre-match, but is now on its own with a sub-107% margin on in-play match results.
- Betclic is the most aggressive on total goals and both teams to score, giving customers the most attractive odds on these more immediate markets.
- Netbet once again is the least aggressive on in-play and is joined by VBet. Again, this is likely to be to try and hold more of their margin given the tax levels placed on French operators.
Leaders vs Challengers
Leading trio: When it comes to market share, France can be split into two groups of operators: market leaders made up of Betclic, Winamax and Parions Sport (FDJ)-Unibet; and challengers: all the other brands.
- High volumes offset low margins: The dominance of the ‘big boys’ in such a highly regulated and taxed market means they can be more aggressive on their trading strategies thanks to their large turnovers, which enable them to offset lower margins with high volumes. In addition, Betclic and Winamax do not have the support of Parions Sport/FDJ’s lottery monopoly and retail outlets.
- It’s also interesting to see how aggressive Betclic and Winamax are on the main markets in the highest-profile events. We would speculate this is, at least in part, due to an acknowledgement of the large unregulated market which is known to exist for French customers.
- A similar strategy would of course be a lot riskier for the challenger brands, who do not have that back-up customer base to push up their margins.
- Operating free of the high taxation of their regulated counterparts, unregulated sportsbooks offer much lower margins to French customers, thus putting them downward pressure on their margins for the most visible events.
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