Rikstoto
& Live Center
Norway’s leading horse racing and betting site uses live blogs to engage horse-racing enthusiasts and provide last-minute inside info from the race course
Introduction
Horse-racing enthusiasts rely on data to influence their betting habits. Getting live, real-time updates and analysis on big betting days makes a big difference.
For Rikstoto, Norway’s betting hub for horse racing, live blogging with Live Center is a critical way to enable the freshest news and analysis for the most passionate horse-racing aficionados – and a monetization pipeline.
Background
Rikstoto (Norsk Rikstoto) is a Norwegian foundation that operates equestrian racing and betting.
Approx. 40,000 active, unique customers/month. Annual revenue of 3 billion NOK.
The problem:
Constant updates for the most dedicated audience
Rikstoto, Norway’s only licensed bookmaker for horse racing, focuses intently on user experience. The development and editorial teams recognized a need for near-constant content updates for the most dedicated of the horse-racing audience segment to accompany its live-streaming content from its streaming portal, Rikstoto Direkte.
The idea, according to Rikstoto’s Product Owner, Kristoffer Eide, was to be able to supplement streaming races with up-to-the-second content close to the betting deadlines that would influence bets.
“We have long-form articles and more static content on our website,” Kristoffer explained. “But we wanted something more spontaneous, live and available on the fly for constant updates."
Before looking into live blogging, the Rikstoto editorial content strategy did not include any ways to share live editorial content.
They had social media, such as Twitter or Facebook, but this took users away from the site and didn’t foster the sense of “creating a specific universe on the site” for the most passionate fan segment.
The solution:
The winning bet calls for instant updates
Having seen live content updates on other sites, such as Dagens Næringsliv, Kristoffer discovered Norkon and the Live Center live-blogging platform. As the development team lead, Kristoffer reasoned that an out-of-the box external solution like Live Center would make better economic and time sense.
Developing an in-house solution would end up taking too much time, costing too much money in development and maintenance, and building up technical debt over time.
“Live Center was exactly what we needed,” Kristoffer shared. “We were able to launch an MVP to get started, and with minor brand-related customization, such as styling, colors, fonts and labels, Norkon helped us get our live blog up and running in less than three weeks.”
The results:
Big boost in bets: More engagement, more conversion
Since its launch in mid-2021, Live Center has been used successfully at Rikstoto to push continuous content on big betting nights, such as Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. With Live Center Rikstoto’s editorial team writes horse-racing analysis and content right up until the betting deadline, hoping to provide customers with the correct information to place their bets accordingly.
“Our reporters can push content quickly, right before races, and we instantly see much higher betting percentages. Live Center delivers much higher revenue per customer, according to analytics data. Live content is a trigger for placing bets, making Live Center a no-brainer and an easy ROI justification.”
Kristoffer continued, “This kind of live content is time sensitive and specific, and would not make sense on our main website, which is why Live Center is so important. We can also augment this content easily with content from other platforms, such as Twitter or YouTube, as well as images and videos, which makes the content more interactive and fresh. In the 1.5 years we have been using Live Center, it has worked exactly as we hoped. We saw immediate benefits.”
“Our top product is V75 on Saturday - seven races that can take up to three hours. We have discovered that user habits have changed in recent years – a lot of customers don’t have time to watch all the races in addition to pre-race analysis. With phone in hand, Live Center provides an excellent possibility to get last-minute insight before placing their bets without necessarily ditching all their Saturday afternoon plans.”
Betting on the future: Growth and interaction
User interaction will forge the future of how Rikstoto uses live blogging. The comment function has recently been launched, and Rikstoto will evaluate how it is received now that the feature is live.
“Any additions to Live Center that create more opportunity for customer/reader interaction would be positive for us. The more we can interact, the more we can influence. We are always working on new features to improve the user experience, as this is what will enable continued growth,” Kristoffer explained.
Ready to try out Live Center for yourself?
2x - 4x
More page views
than regular articles
80%
More ad impressions per page
view than regular articles
60%
Our clients cover live events
60% more after using Live Center