Key points:
- Generative AI changing the relationship between clients and agencies
- First-party data to become an important asset for marketing
- Hyper-personalisation and AI to be the big trends over the next few years
How important are events like today for bringing the industry together, especially considering we've got people from outside the industry as well in terms of bringing more innovation within marketing?
Yeah, I think that's the key point around what Sportradar Connect is really meant to be: connecting different facets of the sports ecosystem, whether that's from businesses within the betting and gaming industry or those businesses that are adjacent to sports betting, or even sport and a few others that are also there for related world experience. And I think that is the crystal point, while marketing is consistent in terms of the challenges, there are a lot of good learnings and insights that come from a sports brand or a technology brand that is also very relevant for, let's say, a challenge of business who is in the iGaming or a rapidly growing market.
So what we've seen from these events previously is it's not only the insights and the panels which really provided a simulation, but it's the conversations that people get to have in and around the event, the collaboration, the networking that goes on. So, the name Sportradar Connect is quite true in this instance and the fact that it is an opportunity to connect with people from across the industry.
CRM personalisation is going to continue to develop over the next few years and first-party data is going to be the real currency of that future
Looking at the kind of marketing industry at the minute, what kind of technologies do you think are trending at the minute?
Marketing is an industry that has been disrupted heavily over the last 10 to 15 years due to technology. Some of them have been silent, and some of them have been noisy, all of them have been pretty disruptive, whether that was social media breaking through on the channels through to programmatic really dominating the channel media.
But, as of right now, I think the real interesting part for marketing has been on the creative aspect around generative AI; that really is changing things and the fact that it's the relationship between clients and agencies. It's the skillsets about creation of assets and then the deployment of that, and that aspect is really interesting. But, right now, it's all about understanding what is the best way to navigate those waters and: how do I make sure I'm beating the competition? Am I maintaining market position and driving the most effective marketing I can in a sea of change?
One key change we've seen recently is the move away from third-party cookies. How do you think the industry can adapt to that?
It's a very interesting topic and the fact that Google has certainly thrown everyone's heads in a spin by the fact that they've had us for years preparing for the end of, let's say, third-party cookies. Obviously, changing that decision has changed the timeline of what that actually means; but if you look at the macro trends which were driving that change, that hasn't changed. People still have a different relationship when it comes to cookies, their data privacy, that's not going away. We've seen in the non-Google area of Safari and Firefox that they have already have made that change on the back of consumer behaviour. So regardless or not of Google really cutting the tape and saying this is the end of third-party cookies, we are seeing that trend to first-party data. And then the reality is the big macro theme at the moment is around hyper-personalisation, which is powered by an AI.
But hyper-personalisation is not actually possible without first-party data; that's really the hook around it. So knowing the fact that even though third-party cookies is driving a real effective level of marketing and programmatic advertising, first-party data is required both on a real personalised acquisition level, but equally as you then acquire customers to drive what you would class classic retention or CRM personalisation. So that trend is going to continue to develop over the next few years, and first-party data is going to be the real currency of that future.
Marketing is an industry that has been disrupted heavily over the last 10 to 15 years due to technology
You touched on personalisation. That's been one of the big industry trends in 2024 and it was the cover theme of our July/August issue of Gambling Insider magazine. How far do you think you can go in personalisation; how deep can it go to a single person?
It's a good question: how far can it go? The reality is it can go as far as the data that is being captured, right? And that's ultimately the brutal truth for the positive and negative. This is where first-party data is a real complication for a lot of industries. Sport is not one of those industries, and this is where sport and first-party data have a really unique opportunity and relationship, because really, what sport is to people is a passion, and passion is the currency of first-party data.
What that means is, if I'm a Southampton fan, I'm happy for Southampton to have a lot of data about me and understand my passions around it, and they can get those data points to build up a profile that allows a very contextual level of targeting; then other brands have an ability to leverage that point and that could be native; let's use my Southampton example, let's say Southampton do turn around their season and qualify for Europe, which isn't going to happen. But we win and qualify and we're playing AC Milan, we beat them and then we're going to play Barcelona. The moment that is happening in real time, knowing that I'm a fan, knowing I'm maybe looking to travel, that is an ability to look at hotels, it is an ability to look at flights, it is an ability to look at anything related to that area because you're combining sports data and data points with personal data.
So going back to your question about how far it can go, it's about what level of depth you can collect from someone and then what other data points you combine that with. And that's really what Sportradar has been a leader in being able to take the data points that we have, which is unparalleled in regards to sport data, to then start to build that into personal data opportunities in the first-party world.
That will have a real change on the constructs of a marketing team, the type of employers that they actually hire, the skill sets that are needed, and also the dynamics with agencies, agency partnerships within clients
Finally looking at 2025, you've touched on a lot of points, but are there any other industry trends you can see in marketing in the next year?
I think literally the two trends that are not going to just be the big ones for next year, but realistically, for the next three years are going to be hyper-personalisation and AI. The AI, you can split it into generative AI in terms of the creative style, but don't underestimate the operational side of AI and what that's going to do in terms of process, ways of working, efficiencies. That will have a real change on the constructs of a marketing team, the type of employers that they actually hire, the skill sets that are needed, and also the dynamics with agencies, agency partnerships within clients.
So that is going to be the big two topics over the next couple of years and those two topics are completely connected within AI and hyper-personalisation. For any marketeer that is looking to the future, these are things we've been craving for a very long time.
