Mike, how important is the festive period for the betting industry?
Second only to Cheltenham Festival, the Christmas period is undoubtedly the busiest of the year for sports betting. Both the football and horse racing schedules step up a notch around Christmas, so we’ve got to be on our toes and persistently adaptable.
The PDC World Darts Championship is also a huge competition that thousands, if not millions, of people follow in the run up to Christmas. My team and I are great fans of the darts, so it's great entertainment in the evenings.
The festive period really is the pinnacle of promotional activity throughout the year, so it holds great commercial importance for the industry.
How is Planet Sport approaching content creation and seasonal promotions?
We've been working closely with our ambassadors over the past few months crafting a whole host of tailored campaigns for the festive period.
Successful delivery of the holiday season needs huge levels of advanced planning across multiple fronts. From coordinating with talent, to liaising with our design, marketing, and PR teams, every detail has been considered.
Given the rapid pace of sporting events during this festive period, being prepared is key. It ensures we’re ready to navigate the line-up ahead. It's a balancing act, but we love it year in, year out.
Credit to our teams who work incredibly hard to deliver our campaigns over this time of the year.
What is Planet Sport Bet doing to enhance user engagement over the festive period?
Our main promotion this year is Emma’s Christmas Crackers - a daily offer selected by our wonderful ambassador, Emma Jones.
It’s a souped-up advent calendar of betting offers and promotions. Each day in the run up to Christmas, there are exclusive offers for Planet Sport Bet customers – a £5 bet or a ‘Bet £10 get £10’ offer, and so on. Customers just need to head to planetsportbet.com to see what the day has to offer. It’s a terrific way for us to thank our valued customers for playing with us in 2023.
We’ve also got our horse racing ambassador and star jockey, Harry Cobden regularly sharing his insider insights in weekly blogs, videos and interviews. As Harry has some marquee rides over Christmas, including Bravemansgame in the King George, we’re filming him to capture his thoughts on his mounts and everything else.
Above: Harry Cobden riding Bravemansgame
The football calendar goes into overdrive across Christmas and the matches come thick and fast. We’re still running our free-to-play predictor game, Beat Sav for every round of the Premier League over the festive period. Punters will have extra opportunity to celebrate by really sticking it to Robbie Savage and out-scoring him in match predictions.
We’re also offering daily racing specials from two meetings every day between now and the New Year. We’ve got loads of juicy football offers and plenty darts promotions for punters to stick their teeth into too.
Planet Sport customers certainly aren’t going to be left short of specials this Christmas!
Looking back at the year, what went well across 2023?
Bringing our brand ambassadors on board and putting them to effective use has been a personal highlight for me.
I’ve always enjoyed the content side of the betting world, so working with Robbie, Emma and Harry to build creative campaigns has been fantastic. They have allowed us to improve our proposition and dovetail our sportsbook and sports betting content offerings. All three are a pleasure to deal with and have certainly rapidly elevated our brand profile.
We’ve enjoyed good business growth across all metrics in 2023 thanks in large part to content-led marketing campaigns and our brand ambassadors. Hopefully, this sets us up for more success in 2024.
Above: Robbie Savage and Emma Jones filming for Planet Sport.
Thanks Mike. Great to speak to you and best wishes for Christmas.
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Head to planetsportbet.com and planetsport.com to check out the exclusive offers and promotions Mike’s team are offering this Christmas. You’ll find Planet Sport’s ambassadors in action on TikTok, Instagram and X.