As online gambling keeps getting bigger, there are more chances than ever for affiliates and marketers to make money from the growing sports betting niche. But it's not an easy task – there are challenges to overcome.
In this article, we'll go deep into the best methods for maximizing your profits from sports betting campaigns in 2024 and beyond. We'll give you practical tips and tricks that work, so you can succeed in this niche.
The state of the sports betting niche in 2024
Before we get into the details of promoting sports betting, let's take a look at the current state of the sports betting affiliate industry in 2024. In recent years, there has been a huge increase in interest and investment in online gambling. This is partly because many US states legalized sports betting after the Supreme Court overturned PASPA in 2018.
Because of this, lots of new affiliates have entered the market, all hoping to get a piece of the action. The competition has become fierce, making it harder for marketers to stand out and attract profitable traffic.
One big change we've seen is a shift away from the traditional CPA model where affiliates get paid for each customer they bring in. Now, there are more complex deals that include revenue sharing (revshare) and lifetime value. This means that it's more important to attract loyal users who will keep coming back, rather than just focusing on getting as many people as possible.
On top of that, there are more regulations to deal with. Many geos have strict rules for licensing, and operators are cracking down on fraud and compliance issues. As an affiliate, it's crucial to play by the rules and run a clean operation.
Despite these challenges, there are still plenty of opportunities in sports betting affiliate marketing. With the right approach, you can build a profitable and sustainable business in this field. In this guide, we'll show you exactly how to do that.
Choosing your niche
When starting as a sports betting affiliate, one of your first decisions is to choose a specific niche or area to focus on. While it may seem tempting to cover everything, specializing in a particular niche is often the key to success in this niche.
There are several popular niches within sports betting to consider:
- Football (NFL and college)
- Basketball (NBA and NCAA)
- Baseball (MLB)
- Hockey (NHL)
- Soccer (EPL, La Liga, MLS, etc.)
- Combat sports (UFC, boxing)
- Tennis
- Golf
- Esports
Each niche has its own audience, betting preferences, and promotional opportunities. By selecting a niche that matches your interests and knowledge, you can create engaging content, connect with your audience, and drive more conversions.
However, it's also important to stay aware of emerging trends and opportunities outside your primary niche. The sports betting industry is constantly changing, and it's filled with events. So being adaptable and flexible is important for long-term success.
Choosing your offers
Once you've chosen a niche, the next step is to find the best sportsbook offers to promote. To do this, it's important to understand your audience and their preferences.
Here are some things to consider when evaluating potential offers:
- Betting options: Does the sportsbook provide a wide variety of bets for your niche?
- Competitive odds: Are the odds offered by the sportsbook similar or better than those offered by other books?
- Bonuses and promotions: What kind of sign-up bonuses, free bets, or ongoing promotions does the book offer?
- Mobile betting: Is the sportsbook's mobile app easy to use and reliable?
- Payment options: What payment methods does the sportsbook accept, and how quickly can users withdraw their winnings?
- Customer support: Does the sportsbook have 24/7 customer service available through multiple channels?
By carefully considering these factors, you can find offers that are most likely to appeal to your audience and result in higher conversion rates.
Where to find offers?
Now you can definitely find sports betting offers in affiliate networks, however, you can also work directly with advertisers. We created a list of the best affiliate programs in the sports betting niche. You can find it here:
It's also worth noting that some advertisers offer exclusive deals and higher commissions to their top-performing affiliates. By building strong relationships with your advertiser partners and consistently driving high-quality traffic, you may have the opportunity to negotiate better terms and payouts in the future.
Coming up with your content strategy
Once you have chosen your niche and offers, it's time to develop a content strategy to promote them. In the sports betting niche, content plays a crucial role in driving traffic and engagement.
Successful sports betting affiliates consistently create high-quality content that is informative, entertaining, and resonates with their target audience. Here are some content ideas you can consider:
- Betting guides and tutorials: Provide valuable information on how to place bets, understand odds, and navigate the betting process.
- Match previews and predictions: Offer insights and analysis on upcoming games, including team performance, player statistics, and potential outcomes.
- In-depth analyses: Provide detailed breakdowns of teams, players, and leagues to help your audience make informed betting decisions.
- Industry news and updates: Keep your audience informed about the latest developments, such as rule changes, transfers, and injury updates.
- Opinion pieces and editorials: Share your thoughts and perspectives on relevant topics or controversies within the sports betting world.
- Expert interviews: Conduct interviews with industry experts and insiders to provide unique insights and perspectives.
- Multimedia content: Explore different formats like podcasts, videos, and infographics to cater to different preferences and engage your audience.
Remember, the focus should be on delivering genuine value to your readers rather than solely promoting offers. By establishing yourself as a trusted authority in your niche, you can build a loyal following that is more likely to convert when presented with relevant offers.
Creating great content is only part of the equation. You also need to optimize your content for search engines and social media to increase its reach and visibility. This involves:
- Conducting keyword research: Identify popular, low-competition search terms to target in your content.
- Optimizing for SEO: Use relevant keywords in your headlines, meta descriptions, and content structure to improve search engine rankings.
- Technical SEO: Implement schema markup and other technical best practices to enhance your content's visibility in search results.
- Social media promotion: Share your content across social media channels and collaborate with influencers to expand your reach.
- Building backlinks: Seek high-quality backlinks from reputable sources to increase your website's authority and improve search rankings.
By combining great content with effective optimization and promotion strategies, you can create a powerful cycle that generates sustained organic traffic and engagement over time.
Paid traffic
While organic content should be the foundation of your sports betting affiliate strategy, for affiliates who have no time to waste, paid advertising is the way to go. It can also be an incredibly effective tool for driving targeted traffic and accelerating your growth.
The most common paid media channels for sports betting affiliates include:
- Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on search engines like Google and Bing
- Paid social media advertising on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
- Native advertising through networks like Taboola and Outbrain
- Display ads
- Push Notifications
Each of these channels has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, and the right mix will depend on your specific niche, audience, and budget. However, there are a few key principles that apply across the board.
- Start small and grow gradually: Don't spend your entire budget on a single campaign or channel. Begin with small test campaigns and increase your spending as you figure out what works best.
- Focus on relevance and intent: Your ads should be highly targeted and relevant to your audience. Use precise targeting options and focus on keywords and placements with high intent.
- Optimize for mobile: Since most sports betting traffic comes from mobile devices, make sure your ads and landing pages are optimized for smaller screens and touch-based navigation.
- Constantly test and make changes: Paid media requires ongoing testing, measurement, and optimization. Compare different ad variations, landing pages, and targeting options through A/B testing, and be ready to adapt quickly based on the data.
- Stay compliant: Online gambling regulations are complex and ever-changing. Ensure that your paid media campaigns comply with all applicable laws and guidelines. Work closely with legal and compliance teams to stay informed about the latest requirements and restrictions.
By following these best practices and continuously refining your approach, paid advertising can be a powerful tool for driving targeted traffic and maximizing your return on investment as a sports betting affiliate.
Advice from a top affiliate in the sports betting niche
To show what it takes to run a sports betting offer, we are going to look at advice shared by Georgina Green, the CEO of GMT Hub - a media buying agency based in London. She has had the experience of running multiple 7-figure sports betting campaigns especially those promoting sports betting apps:
We have been running multiple sports betting apps simultaneously, and each of those apps was generating around the same impressive amount of money. In that single month alone, we generated several million dollars in pure profit, not just top-line revenue. This is an important distinction.
So how were we able to achieve this level of success and scale up so quickly to making millions per month? It really comes down to implementing simple but powerful strategies that many affiliates overlook or neglect:
1. Obtaining licenses in key states
If you want to seriously compete in the US market, getting licensed in multiple states is absolutely essential. On the US map, the dark blue states are ones where you don't need to apply for an affiliate license yourself, as the brands and operators already have blanket licensing that covers you. But in the light blue states, you as an affiliate need to go through the licensing process.
While you don't necessarily have to be licensed in every single state, a general rule of thumb is that the more states you are licensed and active in, the higher your potential earnings. It's a numbers game - more states means more eyeballs on your apps and more players you can acquire. The licensing process for affiliates is actually quite straightforward in most states - it typically just involves some paperwork and maybe a quick background check. So there's really no excuse not to do it, and the payoff in terms of increased revenues is immediate, and big.
However, merely getting licensed in more states is not enough on its own. You will now need to put in the work as an affiliate.
2. Scheduling campaigns
The next key piece of the puzzle is efficiently scheduling and adjusting your campaigns. One common mistake I see affiliates make is either running their campaigns in a totally linear fashion, where they just send the same amount of traffic day after day regardless of whether there are big games happening, or they do the complete opposite and get over-aggressive, where they suddenly 10x their spend and traffic on Super Bowl Sunday or the day of a big UFC fight.
The problem is that both of these approaches will get you in trouble with the app store algorithms and fraud detection tools. They don't like when your traffic patterns are erratic or don't match real-world user behavior. The optimal strategy that we discovered is to create a natural-looking traffic ramp up leading to the big events.
Here's exactly how we do it - 2 days before a major sporting event, we message our publishers and traffic partners and ask them to increase their traffic by 20%. The day before the event, we have them ratchet it up to a 50% increase. And then on gameday itself, we go all out and have them double their normal traffic volumes, aka a 100% increase. Then immediately after the event is over, we have them scale it back down to regular baseline levels.
This creates a smooth, gradual crescendo and decrescendo that matches how real sports fans actually behave. They get more and more excited in the lead up to a big game, open and check the apps more frequently, and are more likely to place bets. Then after the game, interest returns to normal levels. By architecting our campaigns to mirror this, we are able to fly under the radar and avoid getting flagged or penalized.
But scheduling is not just about total traffic volumes - it also applies to which specific apps you are promoting and when. For a global tournament like the World Cup where you have different countries and fan bases playing on different days, you need to localize and segment your app selection accordingly.
On a day when England is playing, we will heavily push a UK-focused betting app like Betfred.
When the US team has a match, we'll direct the majority of our traffic to an American-centric app like BetMGM.
For games involving Australia, we'll feature BlueBet.
And so on and so forth. You never want to just blindly promote the same apps in the same relative ratios day after day, because not all apps are equally relevant or compelling to all audiences. A more targeted, geo-specific approach will yield much better results.
3. Relationships with traffic sources and publishers
Now, while licensing and scheduling are key pillars, the single most important factor that will make or break your sports betting app campaigns is how well you nurture and take care of your traffic sources. You need to construct deals that are a win-win for both parties.
One of the best ways to do this is to push for CPA payout models rather than just CPI. With CPA, you are showing the brands and operators that you are supremely confident in the quality of your traffic. You're putting skin in the game and telling them you only want to get paid when you deliver real depositing players, not just installs. This inspires a lot more trust and credibility versus just asking for a big CPI and not caring if the players actually end up depositing and betting.
You also need to make life as easy as possible for your publishers by proactively providing them with all the information and intel they need to succeed. We send out regular messages and alerts notifying them of all the upcoming major sports games and events, along with clear instructions on how much they should scale up their traffic by on each day. We also educate them on the KPIs they need to hit and the specific conversion flow and attribution logic each app uses, because it varies from app to app. The more guidance and advanced notice you can give your partners, the better they will perform.
4. Negotiating with publishers
When it comes to payout negotiations and margin-sharing, a tactic that has worked wonders for us is to initially pass through the entire payout to our publishers with zero margin taken. Yes, this means we aren't making any money in the short term. But it accomplishes two hugely valuable things - it builds immense loyalty and goodwill with the publishers because they are making way more than they would with any other network, and it allows us to go to the brands and operators and show them how incredibly high-quality our traffic is. We're willing to put our money where our mouth is.
Then, after a few months of this, once we've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt how awesome our traffic and partners are, we can go back to the apps and request a sizable increase to our payout. Once they see the data and results, they are more than happy to give it to us.
We take that extra margin and share a portion of it with our publishers so they are still earning more with us than they could anywhere else. But now we've opened up our own profit window as well. And we've created such a deep moat and competitive advantage that it becomes nearly impossible for other affiliate networks to steal our partners or traffic because they simply can't match the economics. It's a beautiful flywheel effect.
5. Handling fraudulent traffic
Now, the elephant in the room with all this is fraud. Any discussion of mobile user acquisition would be incomplete without addressing fraud prevention. It's a huge, complex, always-evolving topic that you could literally dedicate an entire summit to. But for the purposes of this presentation, I want to quickly share some key benchmarks and best practices we've learned.
First, you want at least 70% of your clicks to convert into installs within the first hour. If the majority of your installs are taking 6 hours, 12 hours or more to show up, that's a big red flag.
Second, your conversion rates from click to install should fall between 0.5% on the low end to around 35% on the high end, depending on your traffic sources and methodologies.
If you're seeing an 80% conversion rate, unless you are doing some very heavy pre-qualification, there's a good chance a lot of that is fraudulent. Conversely, if your conversion rates are below 0.5%, your traffic is likely way too cold and untargeted, or your tracking setup has issues.
Third, pass as many device and user parameters as you possibly can in your tracking links - device type, operating system, connection type, location, etc. The more data points the attribution provider has to work with, the better they can identify patterns and anomalies. Don't just fire a generic click and hope for the best.
Following these guidelines will help keep you in the good graces of the app stores and MMPs. But even then, some level of fraud is sadly inevitable. It's an ongoing battle and arms race. Just be vigilant, transparent, and responsive in your communication with the platforms and you'll be able to manage it.
6. Spread your risk
Finally, I want to touch on how to intelligently spread your risk and create more consistent year-round revenue, because as lucrative as sports betting apps can be, they are inherently very seasonal and cyclical. You'll have huge spikes around marquee events like the Super Bowl and March Madness, but you'll also have significant lulls in between.
The key is to diversify your app portfolio so you have other genres that can pick up the slack during those down periods for sports. For example, we've seen massive success with the Jackpocket lottery app, especially when the Powerball or Mega Millions jackpots start ballooning up over $500 million or even $1 billion. That creates an absolute frenzy of downloads that can generate six figures in commissions in a matter of days.
The beauty is that this often happens in the middle of summer when there isn't much going on in the sports world. Another great vertical to layer in is news apps, because there is always some kind of breaking news event or scandal capturing eyeballs and clicks. During the early months of the Ukraine-Russia war, we saw a massive surge in demand for VPN apps like NordVPN. Travel and hospitality apps tend to have an inverse seasonality to sports, peaking when people are going on summer vacations or holiday trips.
Even within the sports niche, you can create a more steady baseline by promoting fantasy apps and sports betting apps that allow wagering on non-traditional events like eSports, Nathan's hot dog eating contest, the Oscars, political elections, and so forth. It's all about having diversity and counter-programming in your app mix so there is always something popping off.
As I step back and reflect on everything I've shared, I want to leave you with one overarching thought - while this industry can be insanely profitable and generate life-changing money, it's vital to maintain perspective and balance. The highs are super high but the lows can also be devastatingly low. You have to train yourself to not get too euphoric or too depressed based on short-term results.
At the end of the day, this is all one big game and you have to remember to take pleasure in the process, the journey, rather than fixating solely on outcomes. I say that from a place of deep personal experience. My family went through a harrowing ordeal where we narrowly survived a terrorist attack and devastating wildfire that burned down our home and thousands of acres around us.
When you have a near-death experience like that, it makes you realize that all the money in the world doesn't mean a damn thing if you don't have your health, your loved ones, and inner peace.
So by all means, work hard and strive to crush your business goals. But don't neglect your mental and emotional well-being in the process. Take time to nurture your relationships and live life outside of the perpetual grind. Because trust me, you can have all the riches in the world, but if you're not careful, you can still end up feeling empty and alone inside.
Conclusion
Promoting sports betting offers can be an incredibly lucrative and exciting opportunity for affiliates and marketers - but it's not without its challenges. To succeed in this dynamic and competitive space, you need to be strategic, adaptable, and relentlessly focused on delivering value to your audience and partners.
By following the strategies and best practices outlined in this guide - from choosing your niche and offers to crafting compelling content, mastering paid media, building partnerships, staying compliant, and optimizing performance - you can build a thriving and sustainable sports betting affiliate business in 2024 and beyond.
But perhaps most importantly, remember that success in this niche requires a long-term perspective and a commitment to continuous learning and growth. The niche is constantly changing, and what works today may not work tomorrow.
So you need to stay curious, and experiment new approaches.
