Phone-Centric Identity: A VIP Lane to Onboard Sports Betting Customers and Boost Revenue

Sports betting handle has exceeded expectations in recent months, highlighted by New York reporting a whopping $2 billion in sports bets in its first 30 days. However, despite this success, the operators’ valuations have been severely hit since the final months of 2021. This is because operators must overcome the enormous cost of marketing their brands, securing expensive sponsorships, and offering attractive customer bonuses while paying heavily for market access to operate in the legal states. Add escalating fees to leagues for data rights and increasingly high taxes (highlighted again by New York and its staggering 51% tax rate), and the full “cost of doing business” reveals itself. These factors have seen a stock sell-off as investors wonder who, how, and when these brands will turn a profit.

With an independent state-by-state rollout plan (19 have already launched), significant technology challenges have arisen. As each state regulates sports betting, sportsbook operators rush to release a new geo-located app in pursuit of capturing the day one demand. As a result, product development and enhancement have slowed. And there is always another state ready to launch. 

One of the most frustrating stats to a CMO in any business is the high drop-off on registration: Despite significant dollars having been committed to brand campaigns and performance marketing, customers arrive but then abandon the process without commitment. Digital sports betting and iGaming are not only not immune to this but have one of the highest drop-off rates of any registration flow in any industry. This has been the case in mature markets like the UK, and it has been duplicated in the USA by product teams using similar registration techniques. 

In the USA, where registration drop-off generally hovers around 50–60%, one or two operators have experienced drop-off rates of 80%! Even if half of that is simply due to low intent, turning the dial in favor of conversion is a massive bonus to the digital gambling industry. As the market matures, sportsbook operators will concentrate on product refinement and techniques to convert and keep the customers they are spending so much to attract.

Prove Pre-Fill™ can reverse the trend of sky-high customer abandonment in the digital gambling industry, with proven results in similar industries. In other use cases, Prove has resulted in an incredible 80% reduction in keystrokes necessary to fill out a form by auto-filling applications with bank-grade data from authoritative sources. 

Already popular in the banking, insurance, and crypto industries, Prove Pre-Fill has modernized consumer onboarding. In traditional onboarding flows, the consumer manually fills out forms, and then the system verifies the information using an authoritative source. Unfortunately, this leads to data entry errors and fraud attempts, both costly for the operator and making it more onerous for today’s instant-gratification digital consumers who want to sign up as quickly as possible. 

Prove Pre-Fill harnesses the power of phone-centric technology to auto-fill forms with authenticated data. The result is a faster, more convenient consumer experience that provides strong identity verification and fraud prevention for the digital gaming operator. 

A customer signing up for a mobile sports betting service could simply enter the last four digits of their social security number, and the rest of the fields would be auto-filled, including first and last name, date of birth, address, and critically, the full nine-digit SSN.

Now all the customers must do is confirm the data. Prove Pre-fill decreased the number of keystrokes necessary for a customer to onboard by 80% in one use case. In recent cases, a customer can open an account in just 5 keystrokes and under 10 seconds. 

This new and improved flow is a natural fit for the digital sports betting industry plagued by abandonment and looking to capitalize on immense demand. By making onboarding simple and fast, digital gaming operators will see a greater return on marketing dollars, leading to valuable revenue boosts.

Reach out to learn how we can help you leverage phone-centric identity to level up your sports betting app through the form below.