How affluence scores can help operators build a winning strategy around Cheltenham Festival

Harry Cott, CEO at beBettor, explores how operators can leverage customer wealth data to identify high potential and super affluent punters before, during and after Cheltenham Festival.

Cheltenham Festival is the crown jewel of the horse racing calendar, drawing punters from all walks of life for four action-packed days of high-stakes betting. The National Hunt event attracts millions of fans every year and is considered one of the most lucrative and exciting betting events in the UK, with figures indicating more than £500 million is set to be wagered this year.

For gambling operators, it presents a golden opportunity to attract new players and boost profits, often serving as a bellwether for the rest of the year. Promotions, free bets, and expensive campaigns flood the market, competing to attract the swarms of punters over the four days. By harnessing player wealth data, operators can not only capitalise on the festival’s immediate excitement, but nurture these newly acquired players into loyal customers that stick around for both Jumps and Flat season.

Gaining a strategic advantage ahead of the Festival

In the weeks before Cheltenham, eager punters will be signing up for new accounts with a variety of operators and researching the best offers available. This presents a chance for brands to leverage the simple, powerful data point of player wealth, to identify the most valuable player segments among the festival crowd.

Through beBettor’s platform, its operator partners can rank customers by wealth, immediately upon sign up. A score of 10 means the player is in the top 10% wealth bracket in GB, while a player with a score of 1 is in the bottom 10% wealth bracket. Additionally, operators can discover their top 1% super-affluent customers. Armed with this data ahead of the event, operators can optimise promotions and exclusive content more strategically, targeting both occasional punters and high net worth individuals in a highly-personalised way.

For example, by using beBettor’s platform one client discovered that 71% of their ‘super-affluent’ audience (those in the top 1% GB wealth bracket) were actually dormant. Equipped with this data ahead of the event, operators can work to reactivate these highly valuable customers with household wealth of at least £3.6m via targeted campaigns to place bets in the week of the event and beyond.

Identifying high-value punters during Festival week

With the customer wealth insights garnered from beBettor, operators can engage high-wealth punters in real-time during the week of Cheltenham Festival. For example, by identifying the relative wealth profile of their customers they can create ‘day zero’ strategies for different wealth segments and track how players are placing bets during live events. For affluent punters, personalised engagement can help drive up ROI across all four days of the festival in the run up to the Gold Cup.

Remaining a front-runner for the rest of the year

Data-driven decision making is already at the heart of betting and gaming marketing strategies, but customer wealth data has the power to reveal a new realm of intelligence for commercial and marketing teams. During major racing events, such as Cheltenham Festival and the Grand National, segmenting their player base by wealth can help ensure marketing efforts reach bettors in a more targeted way.