The United League General Manager Ilona Korstin took part in the panel discussion «How to make sport more attractive for bookmakers?» as part of the forum «Gambling: deductions for sport».
During the discussion with other executives, club representatives and bookmakers, Korstin explained how the VTB League has built its product and changed over the past years to become attractive to sponsors and fans.
– When it comes to potential sponsors and bookmakers, we realised that can’t stand still, we have to evolve and adapt quickly to the situation. Therefore, when two years ago we realised that our clubs would not be able to participate in international competitions, that we would not have any more European tournaments, we decided to change our format very quickly. Now the League is played in two stages and there are a lot more interesting games, especially in the second part of the season. We added the Playoff series to four wins, which also means more intense and high-quality games. As a result, last season was one of the most successful and intriguing seasons ever. We received feedback from our partners and bookmakers, among others.
In addition to our main competition, there are two other important events that we are also actively developing – the SuperCup, which we organised before the start of the season, and the All-Star Game.
We are ready to offer our sponsors and bookmakers an annual package of three components (the League season, the SuperCup, the All-Star Game), or sell these events separately. But at the moment we still have an existing contract with our sponsor Olimpbet.
If you look back of the relationship between the VTB United League and bookmakers in general, it has changed a lot over time. If you take the value of contracts, it has increased 10 times in the last 5 years. We continue to develop, and I believe that in the next few years, the value will increase even more as we have commercial offers and tools that we are ready to offer to our bookmaker. This concerns the classic advertising: stickers, LED screens and airtime, because we have made our schedule in such a way that VTB United League games can be watched on TV every day. All games are broadcast on TV. We have a contract with Match TV. There are 50 games that are shown there. And, of course, bookmakers are also very interested in this.
I can say that we need to develop from within, and we are also developing with our bookmaker partners assistance. When a bookmaker participates in activation and offers something for its implementation, for the development of the product, it only benefits us all. By activation I mean the organisation of sporting events. Inviting bloggers, pop-stars, organising huge shows.
