Reflections on the community and how it might evolve

[SteveWhit58]

I have been part of Unibet’s community for 3 weeks now (according to my profile information) and I have been thinking about how it is working and how it might evolve.

I confess that I was sceptical when I initially signed up about how a betting website might engage its customers… it strikes me that usually the enjoyment from sports betting comes from thinking you’ve got a winning ticket that gives added anticipation to a match or a result; rather than from sharing your thoughts with other gamblers. However, I have got a lot more out of the community than I expected to – I have even introduced my Dad to it! Why do I keep coming back?

Well I love my football and the Euros are giving us football in bucket-loads! The money-back treble promotion is clever – it keeps my betting interest going even if my first match loses so that mechanic really works. I found myself visiting the community part of the site every day to make a claim for a failed treble or to post a new one. I then get given a ‘badge’ for various log-ins and contributions; and all of a sudden I am chasing a free bet for reaching level 8.

Now the competitive part of me has kicked in. I like the idea of accumulating more badges and moving towards the top of the tree. I am returning to the site on a regular basis, and I find myself reading more comments etc …. to the stage where here I am, writing my own post. Enough people participate and you find you have the basis of a unique betting community. Congratulations Unibet - you have thought this through really well; and importantly you are making the theory work by managing the website well and trying to stimulate more activity from your customers. … but how will the community evolve?

Who is ‘the community’? I was surprised when I saw the breadth of the customer base. I have travelled a fair bit across Europe and have never come across the ‘bookies’ (betting shops) that you see in the UK so I expected the website to be predominantly British. But no, it is very pan-European (I’m impressed that everyone participates in English, by the way – hats off to all of you!)

We are all ‘glued together’ at the moment by the Euros but what happens after this? Will we still be a community when this intense period of football stops? Will there be a lull before the football season starts again? Do people mainly follow their own leagues; or are Premiership, La Liga or the Champions and Europa leagues the common interest? Time will tell. And until then?

Personally I enjoy tennis and golf so with Wimbledon and the British Open round the corner I am spoilt; but do ‘niche’ sports such as these have the critical mass of participants to keep us together as community members in the way that that daily Euro football does? Will we all drift away? It will be interesting to see if there is a lull before the new football season; and whether we/the community managers can keep us all engaged. Is it promotional betting opportunities that pull some of us regularly back to the website; or it the extra engagement we get from it? Either way we need common interests in a sport/betting opportunity to keep us coming back. Perhaps a profiling survey from the community managers in a couple of weeks would help them better understand our profile interests?

That of course only looks at existing members. I don’t know how many people have signed up to the community and how many of these are active; but probably the biggest challenge for the future is critical mass of members and growth. While member-get-member recruitment is a nice idea, it is perhaps a slow process (and how many people will actually tell their friends and family to join a betting community?). The links on the Unibet site are quite low profile. Does the parent website (or its database manager) need to do more to recruit new members based on their betting patterns?

I'm sure the community managers have thought all this through – they seem very switched on. I will be interested to see how things move forward; and wish the managers of the community well. They are doing loads of things right and I would love to see it thrive. I hope that this post generates a discussion. I'm sure I'm wrong on more than one point and would be interested to hear other views.

[Git]

Best post on the site ❤️

[BigAl]

Great post Steven (I'd best come clean about my bias though - I'm his Dad)

[desinere]

Hope that all members remember answer to Community Survey in community, that way we can give important information to developers of Unibet sites!

[jonny2192]

Nice post.

The football section may get a bit quieter with the euro over but sections like the poker section will be busy all the time as poker doesnt really have a season, plus a lot of the people currently posting in poker have been involved in the twitch community unibet started on there streaming poker channel and this site give us a chance to catch up with each other when the streams are not running.

 

[Apoxxy91]

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@jonny2192 wrote:

Nice post.

poker doesnt really have a season

 

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i disagree, WSOP time and  holidays = player pool are much smaller

[jonny2192]

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@Apoxxy91 wrote:

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@jonny2192 wrote:

Nice post.

poker doesnt really have a season

 

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i disagree, WSOP time and  holidays = player pool are much smaller

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Poker may have a quieter time but doesnt really come to a complete stop and from watching twitch there are a group of people who have never missed a stream and I think them same people will get involved with the community just as much.

[Valkyrie]

I was one of those who were here from the very beginning and I didn't know what to expect when I joined either, but I'm really pleasantly surprised to see how much this community has grown in only a few weeks. And let's not forget that Unibet is more than just football, there are plenty of people who come here to talk about other sports, betting, poker, casino, bingo and off topic stuff as well. So I think we will evolve together and find new topics to discuss all across the board even when the Euros are over. :smileyhappy:

[JillianP]

Yes, the community has grown so much already, and I think will continue to grow more steadily from now on.

There will always be new people coming along with new questions and things to say, I don't think there will be more than a slight hiatus at times.

Personally I'm only interested in poker, and thought that betting and casino boards were pointless. What is there to discuss about them after all?
How wrong was I!! Lots of people engaged in lots of posts.

Thing is, we will all tend to view the community from our own perspective. It will grow to be different things to different people at different times, but I'm sure it will always be interesting :catlol:

[BonusPater]

Excellent post, !

Reading your thoughts and feedback made me genuinely happy :)

Growing a community takes a lot of time - usually years - and it's no secret that we're very far from being where we want to be, in terms of the level of activity. However, I feel we've gotten off to a great start, and considering we launched the site less than a month ago, I'm very pleased with the activity and general positivity. 

It is indeed going to be a challenge to keep the activity going when there's no football, but we feel that we're well prepared with some interesting initiatives for Tour de France, the Olympics and our other products (poker, casino etc.). The number of active customers on Unibet will decrease significantly, as soon the final has been played, and this will without doubt affect the community. We're confident that we can keep the conversation going till the new football season start, but we will see less activity for sure - at least in the sport and betting sections.

In the coming months and years, we'll gradually integrate the community more and more with the site. I'd love to hear, how you all think the two platforms could be linked together or maybe even almost merged into one platform!

We replaced the daily refund campaign two days ago. Hope you like the new one as well.

Lastly I just want to encourage everyone to submit their feedback in this thread or the suggestions for the community board. We're always very keen on hearing how you think we can improve the community experience :)

[polarbear]

"The number of active customers on Unibet will decrease significantly, as soon the final has been played, and this will without doubt affect the community."

 

i cant be agree with this from some reasons : 

from what i observed so far are more poker players active in this community as any other unibet section.and they also are part of sportsbook or casino ( some of them ).

lets give a shot of the OP : he was posting a great stuff BUT , we have a problem here : what he did or what he was involved during this time in this community forum? he is having almost 40 posts since he was created his account.OK not the post could matter , quality is what matters .

not fotball matches make forum more valuable or any kind of sports .....all what make forum more valuable is all about people .when you post a great stuff but is impossible to include yourslef in your words , we may have a problem. this is my only and my own opinion .

[BonusPater]

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@polarbear wrote:

"The number of active customers on Unibet will decrease significantly, as soon the final has been played, and this will without doubt affect the community."

i cant be agree with this from some reasons : 

from what i observed so far are more poker players active in this community as any other unibet section.and they also are part of sportsbook or casino ( some of them ).

lets give a shot of the OP : he was posting a great stuff BUT , we have a problem here : what he did or what he was involved during this time in this community forum? he is having almost 40 posts since he was created his account.OK not the post could matter , quality is what matters .

not fotball matches make forum more valuable or any kind of sports .....all what make forum more valuable is all about people .when you post a great stuff but is impossible to include yourslef in your words , we may have a problem. this is my only and my own opinion .

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I'm talking about the site as a whole, and not just poker :)

Can you try and rephrase the last part of your post? I'm not really sure I get what you mean.

[polarbear]

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@Stubbe-Unibet wrote:

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@polarbear wrote:

"The number of active customers on Unibet will decrease significantly, as soon the final has been played, and this will without doubt affect the community."

i cant be agree with this from some reasons : 

from what i observed so far are more poker players active in this community as any other unibet section.and they also are part of sportsbook or casino ( some of them ).

lets give a shot of the OP : he was posting a great stuff BUT , we have a problem here : what he did or what he was involved during this time in this community forum? he is having almost 40 posts since he was created his account.OK not the post could matter , quality is what matters .

not fotball matches make forum more valuable or any kind of sports .....all what make forum more valuable is all about people .when you post a great stuff but is impossible to include yourslef in your words , we may have a problem. this is my only and my own opinion .

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I'm talking about the site as a whole, and not just poker :)

Can you try and rephrase the last part of your post? I'm not really sure I get what you mean.

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i am saying that he was composed a good stuff about acitivty during european championship and trying to give an alert about that after european championship will finish and that might activity will decrease , but he is having 35 posts and almost 30 he is in daily refound section.

composing a stuff to keep alert that might be a problem with activity after european championship will end , and you as a person you have activity only in daily refound section is a problem for me.

as i said is my only opinion

 

if you want to keep alive activity you dont need promotions for that , you need only good people

[SteveWhit58]

Hi polarbear

Thanks for expressing your views. My response ….

In my original post, I explained that I joined the community unsure of what I was signing up to; and I noted that the cleverly designed daily refunds and the badges maintained my interest in the early days, encouraging me to return to the site in my early stages of community membership. Having got to that stage, I now visit the site on a daily basis and now place more bets with Unibet than I previously did (which is presumably what they really want from me).

Although I don’t always post when I visit the site, I find various threads and articles interesting; and when I think I have something to add to a discussion or debate, I will do. I see the daily refunds as a bit of fun based around a here-and-now sporting event. I like them, I enjoy reading some of comments that are posted with the bet slips and I will continue to participate in them (for which I have to post, so in my case there will inevitably be a weighting in my postings to promotions.)

I wrote my post because I want to see the community that I am now part of succeed as much as you do. Unibet have invested considerably in the website, the staff that manage it and the promotions that bring (some) members back to the site. To date, only 1000 members have the “Welcome” badge; and whereas after only 4 weeks, this is impressive growth, a) not all members will be active and b) 1000 members must be some way from a level at which the community is commercially viable.

I have no idea what the stats are but I’m sure that there is a huge spike in betting around the Euros; and that there will be a tailing off of betting activity after this. We will need more members and I thought it worthwhile putting my thoughts down partly to give positive feedback to the community managers who are doing such a good job of developing the site; to let them know what one member was thinking about going forward; and to hopefully prompt a reaction of other ideas and thoughts.

I must say I was encouraged to read the responses, especially from the poker players. I agree wholeheartedly with you that the foundation of the long-term success is good people who collectively form the community and by the way it is managed. It is unique and I think it will succeed as long as members support the management as they try to get the membership to a critical mass.

I'm now (unashamedly) off to place a bet on the Daily Refund promotion

Regards

Steve