Just before Finland’s debut in the European football championship, Spiffbet joined forces with Metric Gaming to launch a sportsbook for Finnish flagship casino SuperNopea and Swedish casino TurboVegas. 

The timing was almost perfect, said Metric Gaming CEO Jim Supple and Spiffbet Head of Casino Operations Maria Boelius, who combined to discuss the summer of 2021 for sports betting with SBC News.

This summer was unique in the sense that two major events postponed from 2020 due to the pandemic finally took place. Sensing the opportunity, Boelius and her team reached out to Metric Gaming to launch a sportsbook on Spiffbet’s SuperNopea and TurboVegas. 

“We were excited to be able to launch a sportsbook so quickly with Metric Gaming’s multi-tenant platform,” she said. “Technically it was easy for us to set it up and the performance has been flawless.”

SuperNopea, launched just days ahead of Euro 2020, joined fellow Spiffbet casino TurboVegas on the Metric sportsbook platform. 

The more established brand, TurboVegas, accounted for 69% of the group’s tournament turnover, yet both operated with similar trading strategies primarily aimed at acquisition. 

We learned that Metric’s efficient pricing allowed margin to be kept aggressively low on the three key pre-match football markets: Match Winner, Total Goals, and Both Teams to Score. 

The result of this aggressive pricing strategy was that two-thirds of new players placed their first bets on these three promoted markets, and subsequently half of those then migrated to higher-margin products for future bets.

Supple shared his satisfaction with the launch and the initial results: “Metric Gaming is delighted to have Spiffbet as a client,” he said. “The summer of 2021 was remarkable from a sports perspective with both the Euro and the Olympics. All of our clients have seen a surge in betting revenues, and Spiffbet is no exception.”

Despite the relatively early tournament exit of both Finland and Sweden, acquisition numbers remained strong throughout, with both brands recording significantly higher daily active players as the tournament progressed.

One of Metric Gaming’s key strengths is market availability. It targets 97%+ uptime for live football. On average, SuperNopea and TurboVegas were live, with a full set of markets, within nine seconds of a goal being scored – of which there were 149 in the tournament.

Spiffbet stressed that Metric’s drive for market uptime paired with its in-play personalisation engine remove blockers for all players are key reasons why it has enjoyed high sportsbook retention rates across their customer base.

However, Boelius did admit that the launch, while timely in that it was finalised before the start of the tournament, would have been even more powerful with more time for marketing.

“In hindsight, we should have launched the sportsbook much earlier so that we would have had sufficient time to ramp up marketing properly. All the other more traditional sports betting sites had a lead over us. Despite the lack of time, our sportsbook got a lot of attention, and I am convinced that we made the right decision to launch before the Euros.”

Supple agreed but added: “Metric provides the tools for betting, but we also need to work closely with the operators to ensure that the player gets the best experience possible. Importantly this is not just about the Euros, we see this as a long-term partnership.”

Finally, we asked both Supple and Boelius about how the post-covid normalisation will affect the future for Metric and Spiffbet, particularly as traditional offline casinos and local betting offices open up again after the pandemic

“We were doing great business before the pandemic, and we will continue to do so,” said Supple. “We at Metric are seeing that the traditional casino operators, in order to compete in an increasingly competitive market, are adding a sportsbook to their casino games and slots. In addition, our market is growing year after year and new territories are opening up. We have a very positive outlook.”

Boelius concluded with a smile: “I guess we are following the trend Jim describes as we move from 100% casino to also providing a sportsbook. Currently, we are offering sports betting on three of our brands and we are looking into the possibilities of adding a sportsbook to some of our other casino brands. 

“In general, we share Metric’s positive outlook. We have just recruited a senior sportsbook manager to spearhead our expansion in the betting space.”