Ahead of Super Bowl LVII Genius Sports has unveiled a new suite of marketing products with data-driven tools it says are intended to help its commercial partners streamline content needs.
The fan engagement platform, which the company has dubbed the Genius Marketing Suite, will serve as a one-stop shop for sportsbooks, professional sports leagues, brands, and sponsors when encountering challenges in retaining customers, according to the company. One of the world’s leading sports betting data providers, Genius Sports rolled out the platform at this week’s 2023 ICE London conference.
“The suite of products combines a sports-centric media buying service, that provides marketing teams access to millions of fans worldwide, with a dynamic creative solution that makes it easy to design, automate and distribute personalized video and display adverts at scale,” Genius Sports said in a statement.
We've launched the Genius Marketing Suite, an all-in-one fan engagement engine to connect brands, leagues, teams & betting operators with sports audiences worldwide.@GeniusSports is uniquely positioned to engage the right fan, with the right message at the right time. (1/2) pic.twitter.com/7ENzKBRIfn
— Mark Locke (@marklocke) February 7, 2023
Genius Sports is the gatekeeper of the NFL’s live sports betting data feed. In April 2021, Genius landed a historic multi-year deal that granted the London-headquartered company exclusivity on the distribution of the NFL’s official sports betting data to U.S. sportsbooks.
Marrying disparate businesses
While Genius won the NFL contract over archrival Sportradar, the Switzerland-headquartered data provider exacted a measure of revenge by securing a multi-year deal with the NBA in November 2021. The two companies maintain a virtual duopoly on the market through partnerships with a large percentage of the world’s top professional sports leagues. Besides the NFL, Genius has partnerships with the English Premier League, NASCAR, the NCAA, FIBA, and Liga MX.
On the brand side, Genius has partnered with non-sports betting companies such as Heineken, Buffalo Wild Wings, Jersey Mike’s, Pringles, Pizza Hut, and Hennessy over the last 12 months. Genius has also maintained partnerships with CBS, NBC, ESPN, and MSN among networks and media sites.
To illustrate the company’s ability to bring together league and advertising partners, Genius designed a Pringles ad making use of a soccer player. Within the ad, the player’s hand is jammed down a Pringles can, a difficulty Pringles customers have dealt with for years. Underneath, the banner reads: “Now’s the time to really dig deep.” The ad serves as a customer engagement tool for soccer viewers.
With the new suite of marketing products, Genius aims to combine creative ideas in advertising with a variety of gamification solutions. To that end, the Genius Marketing Suite features data-driven solutions in a single-product offering, according to the company. The suite incorporates the following traits:
- Genius Media Buying: A sports-focused media buying service that helps advertisers find, convert, and retain sports fans through highly targeted and efficient campaigns.
- Genius Creative: A one-stop shop to create, automate, and optimize personalized dynamic video, display and CTV adverts.
- Genius Games: Made-to-measure gamification solutions, including fantasy, trivia, and predictor games, to engage fans and capture first-party data.
- Genius Data & Content: Interactive and immersive media tools including easily integrated widgets, rich data visualizations, and sports data APIs.
Increasingly making use of A.I.
In an intense competitive environment, companies such as Genius and Sportradar strive to develop creative solutions as a way of differentiating themselves. Last week, Sportradar launched a new artificial intelligence platform it says will help sportsbook operators optimize the performance of their risk management, trading, and marketing functions.
Top sports betting data suppliers use sophisticated algorithms to provide sportsbook partners with raw probabilities that aid the operators in constructing in-game betting lines. Consequently, data providers are a clear beneficiary of the shift from pre-game to in-game betting across the country.
Another leading sports betting company, Kambi Group plc, rolled out an in-game function to complement its Bet Builder product on Wednesday. While in-game betting represented about 20% of all wagering shortly after the 2018 PASPA decision, the figure on in-game wagering eclipsed one of every two bets at PointsBet last September, according to PointsBet USA CEO Johnny Aitken.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell may address the intersection between football and sports betting at a press conference Wednesday. A record 50.4 million American adults are expected to wager in all forms on Super Bowl LVII, an increase of 61% from last year, according to estimates from the American Gaming Association.
