Better Collective will use its experience from Europe to lay the foundation for its US market expansion, Mark Pedersen – VP of Business Development, M&A and US – told SBC News.

In this month’s Better Collective Spotlight, Pedersen discusses how the sports media publisher plans to drive acquisition and retention to its partners stateside, before shining a light on some of the key challenges facing affiliates.

SBC: The US market has boomed since PASPA was repealed. What are your plans for this market in 2022? 

MP: We have great plans for the US. This is a market that is expected to grow very much over the next few years as the various states open up and start issuing licenses to online bookmakers. 

Better Collective helps bookmakers get customers through our engaging sports content including betting lines, sports information and statistics. Content that sports fans from all over the US already get from us every day. So we plan to grow our position within existing as well as new states. 

SBC: How has the acquisition of Action Network helped Better Collective to reach and engage with new audiences? 

MP: The Action Network is the largest pure sports betting media in the US and has significant appeal and engagement with sports bettors throughout the country. 

With the automatic betting tracking system, betsync, we further have the best user engaging tool, helping users to map and measure their profits and losses, as well as finding best options to have an even more entertaining experience. This supports BC’s ambition of providing a transparent and entertaining betting experience. 

SBC: In your opinion, what is the long-term vision for affiliates in the US market? 

MP: Drive acquisition and retention to our partners by providing the best experience and information for our users. We believe it is essential for our users to get transparent and unbiased information and that getting this information will increase their sports experience, and subsequently drive further engagement with our partner books. 

The demand for quality sports content will increase as more US states open up for online betting so I see great potential in sports media as an affiliate. 

SBC: What do you anticipate as being the key challenges that affiliates might come up against? 

MP: Regulation, relevancy and technology. As an affiliate you need to stay relevant to the bettors and to the bookmakers. We believe that our ambition to build the world’s biggest sport betting media group will increasingly make us relevant for more and more sports fans. At the same time we need to be able to work with various regulations across borders. We believe that the best way to avoid too much regulation is to be fair and balanced in our marketing. 

We have a lot of experience from Europe that we are using in the US to ensure we find the right balance. Finally, we see a technical challenge in the US where some operators have challenges reporting the traffic from the affiliates. 

Ultimately, operators can lose traffic from affiliates and marketeers as a consequence of this, as we are highly dependent on fast and accurate reporting.