Beating the Spread: 2024 UK Sports Betting Landscape

Online sports betting in the UK is on the rise. While the market is mature compared to the newly legalized US, increasingly engaging online experiences are driving more and more app downloads. To help you better understand the state of sports betting in the UK and abroad today, Sensor Tower is proud to announce the release of the 2024 Sports Betting Landscape report. If you want to dig right into the report, click here to get a head start on digesting critical insights. For those who want a sneak peek of what’s inside, keep scrolling.

MGM Resorts International’s subsidiary LeoVegas entered the UK market with BetMGM: the same BetMGM brand that is a co-venture between MGM Resorts International and Entain in the US and Canada. Entain brands Ladbrokes and Coral are some of the biggest in the UK. BetMGM saw huge downloads in March, especially during the Cheltenham Festival, but downloads have dipped since. For ad channel trends behind these downloads, download the full report. Two primary ad channels saw impressions from UK sportsbooks rise 70% and 140% respectively in the past twelve months.

Zooming in on the horse races that drive the most app downloads for UK sportsbooks, we see that BetMGM won out on downloads during the Cheltenham festival, while bet365 saw the most downloads for the Grand National.

One tactic BetMGM used to achieve this result was running a custom product page a week before Cheltenham Festival. During this time, BetMGM dramatically climbed the UK iPhone Free Sports category rankings, ultimately taking the #1 spot. Its rivals mostly ran custom product pages during the races, but couldn’t seem to dethrone BetMGM during this time.

For more on the tactics used by UK sportsbooks, including the impact of becoming a Cheltenham partner and Apple Search Ads, check out the full report.

What else is inside?

• Competitive landscape by parent company and brand

• Analysis on the Euros

• Demographics analysis of Flutter brands, and how one key event impacted them differently

• Ad creative trends

• Creative text analysis

• Global perspectives and a section on the US

• And more