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Keywords

sports gambling; sports betting; regulatory focus; regulatory fit; betting intentions; familiarity

Disciplines

Marketing | Sports Management

Document Type

Original Research Article

Abstract

The sports gambling industry is an extremely competitive market. To attract more consumers, sports gambling platforms are primarily employing one of two customer acquisition strategies, namely ‘risk-free bet’ or ‘bonus money’ welcome offers. This research is built on regulatory fit theory to investigate the effectiveness of these two welcome offer strategies on consumers’ intentions to act on the offer. We further test the moderating effect of customers’ familiarity with online sports betting on their decision making. Findings of two experimental design studies demonstrate that the presence of regulatory fit between regulatory focus and promotional offers (i.e., message framing) positively affected the likelihood that consumers would exploit both promotional offers. In addition, for individuals with low familiarity with a product category, achieving a fit between their regulatory focus and the message framing positively moderated their likelihood of exploiting promotional offers.

Funding Sources

The authors declare that no funding was received and no constraints on publishing nor conflicts of interest exist that readers should know about in relation to this manuscript.

Competing Interests

The authors declare that no funding was received and no constraints on publishing nor conflicts of interest exist that readers should know about in relation to this manuscript.

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