Everyone wants to get a better understanding of what is currently happening with sports books, and if it might change customer habits once we get past this pandemic. We knew Keith O’Loughlin, SVP of Sportsbook and Platforms at SG Digital, would have the answers, so our Becky Liggero Fontana spoke with him recently.

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First, Liggero Fontana wanted to understand what kind of numbers O’Loughlin was seeing, as live sports had yet to return at that point. “We have customers in most jurisdictions across the world, and what we’re seeing first off is in terms of turnover in Asia-PAC, customers kind of Australia, New Zealand, are holding 60% to 70% of the turnover they had previously,” he said. “They’re very lucky because Australian horse-racing has been able to stay right through the period. And customers have really migrated to having a bet on, even if they’ve bet it on football or other, they just want to have a flutter, and have it on that.

“In Europe, it’s between 30% and 50% of the prior betting levels,” he continued. “In some respects, most of our customers expected it dropped further and what they are using virtual sports and esports, Belarussian football was a feature for some time when it was there, and also, funnily enough, table tennis. And what it’s showing is customers want to be entertained, they want to be able to have some fun. Virtual Grand Nationals was run on the 8th of April in the U.K., it was on at the same time with the same kind of expected 40 runners. It had the same peak level of betting and then the real Grand National had two years ago with our customers, on a virtual event.”