We already 3 days after the start of the world cup and there is a lot of discussion about the marketing that many of the companies used in order to reach their audience and who managed to create a better hype. One thing is for sure, the Nike Ad “Write the future” stole the hype from Adidas and managed to connect the American sports company –if not more- equally with adidas to the minds of the sports fans with the World Cup.

One of the sponsors that fifa will come to think in the future is a new category… the betting sponsor.

The times are changing and everyone is “fighting” to get connected with big sporting events and the World Cup is one of them. The big betting companies have all made a big effort to connect themselves with the wc with “ambush” marketing techniques like more or less Nike , using most of the times journalists/tipsters in an effort to get the attention of the bettors.

If you said to someone 7 years ago the word “seo” they would look at you unmoved. Now all betting companies created microsites specifically for the world cup targeting to all the customers that are looking for the world cup news through any search engine.

The strategy is simple…target the customers wherever they are.. youtube/social media/search engines. So, who do you choose from them, and more important, why?

Well, basically I believe its time to move on and embrace the future. The betting industry is one of the strongest world wide where growth doesn’t stop. Many people will say that FIFA and UEFA as well as the local football associations wouldn’t want to be connected with betting companies as this will increase the voices from fans for fixed games and changes in the results.

What its time to realise is that already most of the betting companies have MoM (memorandum of understanding) with FIFA and UEFA so they are already co-operating in many fields. Also the fact that many countries do not have opened up there gambling industry is something that is changing also. France, Italy has opened up the industry and Greece will be soon.

The advantages that betting companies can give are huge and its time to start taking advantage of this industry as it is well connected with fans and sports for a long time now. In case that something like that happened who do you think would have most of the chances to take such sponsorship? Well, bwin is as a favourite in all those sponsorships. They have already there brand in the biggest teams like Real Madrid and Milan , also there headquarters are closer to FIFA’s headquarters than any others… On the other hand…how about Betfair? They are new, and ever evolving, and they already have a strong cooperation with FIFA in “checking” games.

We are not far away from the time that we will see a betting company put there name next to the world cup and we shouldn’t take it as an insult or anything. The betting industry is growing and maturing enough to be officially recognised in those sporting events. Its just a matter of time now..