There’s a point in every sportsbook’s lifecycle when a bonus stops feeling exciting, even though on the surface, nothing has really changed.
The offers still go out and the promos still get used, but the emotional reaction shifts. At some point you realize that the $1,000 risk-free bet that once felt like a big deal now lands with the emotional weight of a grocery-store coupon. It still works, technically, but it no longer makes anyone feel particularly compelled to open the app.
That’s usually when marketing teams start paying closer attention to what actually brings people back on the days they’re not betting, because loyalty built on incentives alone is fragile in a market where every competitor has roughly the same incentives to offer.
What keeps showing up in those conversations, like a group chat that never stops pinging, is content. Shows, hosts, creator partnerships, short-form video, live betting streams — they all do something promotions never quite manage to do, which is make people feel like they belong to something rather than just transacting with it. A player who tunes into a daily show, follows a few familiar faces on social, and sees the same personalities pop up inside the app starts to build a relationship with the brand that has nothing to do with odds boosts.
From a marketing perspective, that kind of attachment is difficult to replicate with performance spend. A customer who feels connected behaves differently from one who is simply chasing value, because familiarity changes how people make decisions, especially in categories where the functional differences between products are minimal.
Sports betting is starting to look a lot like streaming in that regard. People don’t stay loyal to Netflix because of discounts, particularly now that Netflix has started acting like a landlord. They stay because they care about the shows and the experience of being inside that ecosystem. The same dynamic is beginning to emerge here, where the bet is still the product, but the content is what creates the habit.
That shift also changes how acquisition and retention work in practice. A good piece of content keeps pulling people in long after it’s released, whether it’s a clip circulating on social, a recurring show building audience over time, or a creator driving traffic back into the app. None of that requires a new bonus every time someone engages, which becomes increasingly important as customer acquisition costs continue to rise.
Promotions still have a role to play, but they stop being the main reason people show up. They become part of a broader ecosystem, rather than the center of it, supporting a relationship that’s already there, instead of trying to create one from scratch.
That’s why more marketing budgets are starting to resemble production schedules, with investments in studios, on-camera talent, social teams, and original formats that feel more like media than advertising. The goal is no longer just to get someone to place a bet today, but to give them a reason to open the app tomorrow even if they’re not sure what they want to wager on yet.
In a category where every operator can copy a promotion, but not every operator can build a community, content becomes the differentiator that’s hardest to compete with. Being part of a player’s routine is more valuable than any single offer could ever be.
