Sports betting is mostly about numbers, whereas localization is mostly about words. So why would you localize your sports betting product into more languages?
Have a look at the numbers below. We are quite sure you will agree that it’s a good idea to localize your sports betting product in the first place, and secondly we know that you’ll agree that it makes sense to let localization professionals take care of the sports betting localization for you.
Localization decisive for deposits
According to these statistics, there were more than a billion internet users in Asia in 2012. In Europe, there was a bit more than half of that. The two American continents together had as many Internet users as Europe, while the rest of the world added up to approximately half of Europe in terms of internet users.
How many of these people would make a deposit to an online sports betting site which was not localized into their native language?
Hard to say, but not impossible. Research carried out by Common Sense Advisory showed that 72.4% of consumers are more likely to buy something online when the information is in their own language. The same research showed that 56.2% of consumers said that the ability to obtain information in their own language is more important than price.
We do not want to draw too many conclusions here, but these numbers could easily indicate that more than half of the market would prefer slightly lower odds or a slightly worse bonus, as long as the sports betting product is localized into their native language.
Internal and external localization research
Furthermore, research done by the European Commission showed that 9 out of 10 European Internet users said that, when given a choice of languages, they always visited a website in their own language.
We also did some research ourselves. In 2011, All-In Translations initiated a survey in which we asked people to answer a few questions related to gaming and languages. The survey was put online on our website and people were also invited to participate through Skype and MSN. Precisely one hundred people replied.
Impression of high quality – important
94% of the people who answered said that it is was either ‘important’ or ‘very important’ for a gaming site to give an impression of high quality in order for them to trust the site. 70% said it was either ‘important’ or ‘very important’ for a gaming site to give an impression of high quality when deciding to make a deposit or not, while 77.5% said it was either ‘important’ or ‘very important’ for a gaming site to give an impression of high quality when choosing this site to play on.
When asked how important it was to have the game text/website localized/translated/written in their native language in order for them to make a deposit, 56% answered either ‘important’ or ‘very important’. 53.1% said it was either ‘important’ or ‘very important’ to have the game text/website localized/translated/written in their native language in order for them to play for real money.
In other words, you can attract a much bigger audience by localizing your sports betting product, but if you decide to go ahead with sports betting localization, you need to use professionals in order for the result to give a trustworthy impression. At least that is our opinion.
