In each episode of The Playbook presented by FanFood, host Rob Cressy discusses how leaders are modernizing today’s customer experience through technology in sports, entertainment and hospitality. We invite industry veterans to talk about how customer expectation have changed in today’s world, and how businesses need to change accordingly for greater operational efficiency and better guest experience.
Troy Machir, Sr Manager, Content Strategy at Rush Street Interactive, joins Rob Cressy to talk about the sports betting industry, the opportunities for fan engagement, and the role technology plays. Why is golf in a position to grow thanks to their use of technology and the way they are making the game more accessible for fans? How can you make your audience feel like you are betting with Big Cat? How can brands integrate with sports betting in a native way? How can technology allow sports betting brands to engage their fans in real-time?
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Listen to the Gameday Playbook on:
Rob Cressy: (00:08)
Welcome to The Playbook presented by FanFood. A discussion around how leaders are modernizing today’s customer experience through technology in sports, entertainment, and hospitality. I’m your host, Rob Cressy. And joining me today is Troy Machir, Senior Manager of Content Strategy at Rush Street Interactive. Troy, super excited to have you on the show.
Troy Machir: (00:33)
Yeah, man. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Rob Cressy: (00:36)
Can you give a quick overview of who you are and what you do?
Troy Machir: (00:39)
Yeah. So I’m Troy Machir, like you said. Senior Manager of Content Strategy for Rush Street Interactive. I oversee all the social media and content director of BetRivers and Place Sugarhouse, the online sportsbooks, and casinos. So, I’m really excited that sports are back then we’re getting back to what we usually are because there’s a lot of action going on.
Rob Cressy: (01:01)
Oh, it feels so good to have sports back and boy, there is a plethora of them and I look at this past weekend, we had golf, you had NBA, you had MLB, you have NHL. It’s just like, there’s so much goodness going on. And it feels good to be part of the community again and be part of something that we all get to root for.
Troy Machir: (01:24)
Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the things you’re seeing is this reminder that perhaps we’ve taken sports and lots of things for granted. So, when it goes away for only a quarter of the year it’s like something we’d never, ever gone through. So, it’s this big hole in our lives. And so now that it’s back in its sports are only back at 25% capacity. We don’t have any real NBA playoffs or real NHL playoffs. They shortened baseball season, but you’re seeing how much people missed it and how much it matters that sports. Not just gambling, but all sports are part of people’s lives. And you just see how big this past weekend was. And that was like any of a number of normal summer weekends in the sports world, but it means so much because we haven’t had it for so long.
Rob Cressy: (02:10)
And this really means a ton for non-football sports. I think about the popularity of golf and I was actually marinating on this week. I think golf as a whole is in for a big revival both from the casual fan playing golf as well as people consuming golf. And why is that? Because we’re spending more time at home. We have fewer options for things to do living in Chicago. We don’t have street festivals, we don’t have Cubs games, we don’t have concerts, we don’t have Lollapalooza. So, the things that we would normally do, because what’s one of the reasons why we don’t golf? Well, you know what? I just don’t have five hours to golf. Now you’re like five hours, sign me up for that.
Troy Machir: (02:53)
Yeah. And I think over the last decade golf has really done an excellent job building up the girth of top-quality competitors. You know when Tiger Woods was coming up during the era of Tiger was him and a handful of other people. And now while there is no Tiger Woods, there are dozens of top-flight golfers who all are recognizable by name. So, allowing them Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday of unencumbered publicity on television is going to help the sport in the long run. So, people in two years when Colin Moore was in the final group of the Masters, a larger percentage of the people will already know who he was because they weren’t competing with all these other things to watch him win two tournaments in the summer of 2020.
Rob Cressy: (03:38)
Related to this, what we’re actually going to meet Jim about today is sort of the intersection of sports betting, technology, and fan engagement. And I certainly think that sports betting is one of the reasons why golf, baseball and some of these other sports are so popular. Now, of course, we all miss sports so much, but I even just think about my own consumption. You take someone like Morikawa or Tony Finau, or these players that you’ve never really thought of before, but now you’ve got a simple way to root for them. Golf for the longest time, with it being an individual sport, it’s like how do you build a personal connection to anyone who isn’t Tiger Woods or Phil or Rory? There were only maybe five or fewer golfers that the casual fan may know, but now all of a sudden sports betting has opened up the world to say, wait a second. We can create a new narrative to engage fans in a way that everyone wins. We, the consumer wins the sports betting operators win and ultimately the leagues and organizations and teams win because we all care about sports a lot more now because we have an invested interest.
Troy Machir: (04:50)
Yeah. And I think there’s also just the aspect, you know in a golf tournament you have four days if your player makes the cut. Four days to invest in them. You can invest long term, in the futures for a tournament winner or top 20, top 10 finish. But you can also do real-time betting in the moment. So, it’s unlike where you put on a future spend on a baseball team and you have to wait for 162 games. But it’s also different where you’re just betting on the Sun’s line tonight, where it’s going to be over in two hours. Where golf is that intersection of being able to do real-time, I want to bet on however this golfer does on this sixth hole, or I’m going to invest in him over the next four days. So, it has that short, middle and long term distance in one weekend where a lot of sports to do futures. You got to sit it out the whole year and hope that you’re right. Whereas this is really futures for the next four days, which is a good balance for people who aren’t committed to your long bedding,
Rob Cressy: (05:45)
Which I really believe is perfect for the current mindset of the new fan, because the new fan likes LeBron James. They followed him from Cleveland to Miami back to Cleveland now LA, but guess what? They aren’t just saying I’m a Cavs fan. So, the same mindset is going true where guess what? I could like Tony Finau for just this weekend. Next weekend, I can be fading Tony Finau. And the same goes true for all of the NBA and these other sports where the relationships are much shorter, but a lot more passionate. And when we think about fan engagement, I know there’s a variety of different things that we want. But I think with that, we need to start thinking about things in terms of short term opportunities and long term opportunities because they’re both right there for us.
Troy Machir: (06:33)
Yeah. And I think that’s what golf does well is the mixture of both. It doesn’t sink you in for the whole year. I mean, to be honest, a lot of people couldn’t tell you when the golf season starts and ends, other than the four majors. So, with fields for each tournament, there are some weeks where Tony Finau is the best player in the event and has been right there. So, it’s good because there’s not enough noise that you’ll forget all of this if you want to. You’re not competing with the three-horse racing events. You’re not competing with major boxing events. You’re not competing with an Olympic year or a World Cup year, or NBA playoffs, NHL playoffs. So, it really is the perfect time for a sport like golf to really shine and gain publicity.
When you look at one of its kind of counterparts in tennis. Tennis has gone the other direction in terms of kind of putting a pause on all their major tours. You guess there is tennis every week of lots of different leads and calibers, but the top end tennis has gone away during the pandemic, whereas golf has been front and center. You’re seeing more people become comfortable with golf or tennis. I feel I could be in a similar scenario but have chosen to go the direction that they have which is totally fine.
Rob Cressy: (07:55)
And we didn’t intend to make this golf focused, but guess what? I think there are some great narratives to this and let’s take this next step further on the technology side of things. Because golf had always been seen as boring, slow, regressive. It’s like wearing pleated khakis and driving a Buick like that’s what the perception of golf was. But guess what we’re seeing right now? A shot tracker. So, when that boom, you see the drive, it goes right there. And then you see the puttying how far it is. And then the percentage of likeliness of make and what they’re doing is they’re adding in a technology part of this to enhance the fan experience because guess what? That is the new standard because we have so many things vying for our attention normally, but certainly right now with this reset you’re going to have to say, sure, it’s nice that we’ve got games or matches going on, but if tennis were to start back up again does that mean that immediately everyone’s gonna start jumping on board with that? No, there needs to be an added element for the fans that says, alright, how can I make it more relatable so that when Novak Jokavic drills and ace at a 110 miles an hour, how can we sitting on our couch watching this on a Sunday relate to it more as we can, there’s a 17% chance of Jason Day making this 21-foot putt.
Troy Machir: (09:16)
Yeah. And I think one thing that golf does have going for it that the other sports don’t is that there is no other side. The golfers are competing against themselves and the course. So, yes. I suppose if other people just start heating up there’s nothing you can do, but you can’t control the other side of the game or match. Bettors feel more comfortable laying down money on someone because it doesn’t matter what the other side does because there is no other side. So, I think it’s really interesting and golf is also a slow sport. It’s a slow sequential sport where you have different sequences and different situations come up where you have enough time in between to place new bets. Whereas in basketball, it’s a little bit harder to live bets.
Now you can and I’ve done this recently where you’re watching a game and you see a team catch fire from three, we have options to bet on what the next made field goal will be. If it will be a three-pointer. However, by the time you do all that you’re already five possessions into the game because basketball is so fast. So, everyone has their own formula. Everyone has their own statistics that they look for, but the variance of the game and how it’s played, I think takes a huge account into what you’re able to do and how you do it.
Rob Cressy: (10:38)
So, let’s dig a little bit deeper into this from the sports betting site on the importance of tech. Because I really believe the real opportunity is around mobile and technology. One, the casual fan is going to slowly be adopting this stuff, but mobile and live betting are the two biggest opportunities. Of course, sports betting brands would love for people to come into the casinos. But the reality of the situation is we live in a second screen world. So, when we’re watching the Lakers in the playoffs, people are going to be sitting there on their phone, on Twitter, on Instagram, and now sports betting needs to be forward-thinking enough to say, alright, what can we do to get a piece of that fan engagement so that they can continue to come back to us over and over again? And you guys really help assist on the technology side of things. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Troy Machir: (11:32)
Yeah. Well, I think the goal is to make a place where you have the most interactive, competitive, and engaging options and information for people to use in real-time. And I think that the key is real-time. A sporting event has completely emerged. We are a part of every facet of it. And we don’t want to be beleaguered and buy ads or spinning wheels or things not working. In the money industry, we want our money, we want to be able to do whatever we want with it. So, having those options to real-time and having the statistics and having the proper, I think honestly, a big thing for me is competitive lines. Making sure that the games we’re playing are always competitive and as honest as possible, because we want to give people the chance to win. We also want to keep people engaged in what’s going on. And as the industry grows bigger there will be competition. And I think the more competitive we are with other outlets, the better chance we have. It gives people more opportunities, and this should be fun. This should be fun. And something where you never want to stop. And that’s what we’re trying to get towards is where game after game today, we got six games on the docket the next couple of game days for the NBA. So, we want people to be able to engage in all six games.
Rob Cressy: (12:58)
I believe that’s actually going to be one of the biggest challenges of the industry, knowing how early we are in the legalization of things across the United States. So, there are very few choices in Illinois in terms of a legal sportsbook. So, oftentimes you may be the only game in town and what is the line that is going to be offered. And there is an opportunity for sportsbooks, in theory, to give non, we’re used to minus 110 for a traditional line. For the people who aren’t familiar with this, it’s like, Hey, there’s a 10 cent on every dollar amount that you pay as a big to the sportsbook for doing all of this. But really a sportsbook can say one set of it being minus 110, let’s make it minus 117. And all of a sudden, we, as the sports fans, we see that and they’re like, well, wait a second. Why in the world are you charging me more? And then the next level above that goes, well you’re in Illinois so we’re going to make the Cubs -135 because we know that more people are going to be better than the Cubs. And you’re like, well, wait a second. Why are you screwing me? And it becomes the sportsbook versus the sports fan on the pricing. And while being the only game in town, it’s hard for people to go somewhere else, but I believe the challenge becomes the user acquisition and the adoption. If the casual fan knows that you guys aren’t giving us the best lines from a pricing standpoint, they may not be as apt to download and deposit.
Troy Machir: (14:31)
Absolutely, absolutely. Especially when you got to a place where there’s more than one option to download and deposit. So, I think, yeah providing the options for people to engage the most is something that I know each and every one of us is focused on. And again, like for me, Hey if you make the line a little bit in my favor, I’ll take the flyer. I’m a dog’s guy, man. I bet the dogs all the time. And so if I see the plus sign next to it, and it was minus 104, but you decided to be generous and go plus 105, I’m in. So, it’s very much the happy hour specials and Hey, right now instead of that 24-ounce beer, do you want a 38-ounce beer? Who’s ever going to say no? So, the types of indoor, casual, fun things that will get me to say, I don’t know, to yeah. That’s what we’re looking for.
Rob Cressy: (15:30)
And let’s talk about opportunities. I completely agree, because what you just gave me is an example of how you feel like the book is being your friend. Over the course of time, the book has narrowed. The casinos have never been our friends. They’re only there to take money. And when you and I jammed before we talked about one of the biggest opportunities when it comes to fan engagement for these sportsbook operators is how do you make your audience feel like you’re betting with Big Cat from Barstool Sports? And the reason we talked about this is this. Everyone is together, a community mindset. Win or lose, we’re betting with Big Cat. And why is that so important? Because as fans, we want to feel a connection. We want to feel like we are with someone and quite frankly, marketing 101 is, can you make a of a fan feel like a friend to your brand?
Troy Machir: (16:27)
Absolutely. And I think especially now more than ever there are no sports bars. There are no tailgates. There are no bleacher creatures. There are no 400 sections. So, all we have is this really fun, free website called Twitter and Instagram and Facebook. So, we now more than ever are looking to come together and root on something together. And for lots of people, that is one specific team with specific colors and a specific Jersey, but for a lot of us, it’s the lines and the numbers. And we go back and forth depending on what game is being played. So, I think it’s really important for us to ultimately have a really strong relationship with the user. Because time over time, it needs to be a relationship, not a transactional approach where you’re just coming to us for business. No, no, no. This is altogether. This is sports, we’re all sports fans. So, we should be in this together. And I want our relationship with each user to be like we would add a bar where yeah, sure. You can have one of my chicken wings, as long as I know you’re getting the next basket.
Rob Cressy: (17:32)
Yeah. And I think we can even break this down in a nonsports betting standpoint for brands. And let’s just think about this in terms of regular sports. There are brands out there who can and will comment on what is going on on a real-time basis in the world of sports. And there is a huge opportunity for brands to stand out, to build relationships and deepen that connection with sports fans by having their pulse on what’s going on, but doing so in a way like you said, that’s like your friend at the sports bar. Because sports fans, we can tell when something doesn’t pass the sniff test. When it is so generic, where it’s like, a nice basket by LeBron, as opposed to having something that has a good brand voice in tone to it. Like we would talk about using gifs or memes. If we’re talking about Twitter and really emerging yourself in the sports landscape and the Twitter-sphere. Because I think Twitter of all platforms when it comes to sports fan engagement on the real-time side of things, Twitter is where it is because we’re all watching the same game together. And it’s the community aspect that we’ve missed so much that we’re so looking forward to. So, that’s where there’s an opportunity for brands outside of sports betting just to be part of the sports narrative.
Troy Machir: (18:59)
Oh, yeah. Because every game is just an open conversation online and while we all are passionate about your team winning or losing, the number of times I’ve been watching one of my teams lose and really paying more attention to Twitter because that’s where the discussion is. That’s where I learn stuff. That’s where I laugh. That’s where I get frustrated. So I think it’s all about the relationship because ultimately it’s like when I go to a sports bar, I’m going to go to a sports bar where I know the bartender I know is going to top me off for free or have some small talk. Look for the things that make you feel comfortable and make you feel like regardless of the overall outcome, it’s worth your time and energy spent. And I think in any transaction that’s the most important thing for our brand is to make sure that the person does not feel like a transaction. They feel like it’s worth it.
Rob Cressy: (19:46)
And we can even get tactical on this. So, it’s like, all right Rob and Troy, we’re a brand. We want to engage with sports fans. How in the world do we do this? What I recommend is literally creating a sports social media strategy for your brand on how you want to engage fans around sports. Know what’s coming up from a sports calendar side of things. So, we had the PGA Championship, that’s one of the majors. We’ve got at the NBA playoffs starting soon. We’ve got the NHL playoffs in the swing. The NFL is coming up here. Have an idea of the forward landscape in one thing related to this tangentially, you had said to me previously, change doesn’t happen unless you are thinking ahead. And this works both for the technology side of things as well as the fan engagement side because one trap brands oftentimes fall into is they’re reactive instead of being progressive. You know that a PGA championship is coming so you’ve got someone on your Twitter account who’s watching, who’s planning. You know what, Hey, we, what our calls to action are going to be during this, as opposed to, Oh my God, this didn’t work or we were just tweeting. And then these things happen there. Talk a little bit about change and how you need to think ahead, both on the tech side, as well as the fan engagement side.
Troy Machir: (21:08)
Well, I think the biggest thing for me is strategy, planning and being prepared. Those are the most important things for trying to capitalize on a major tent pole event and it’s tricky because with sports you can plan and prepare all you want, but if the game is a dud or if what you thought could happen didn’t pan out then it’s a lot of exhaustion and over effort. But, I think if you’re original and honest with your ideas then you can do a good enough job creating the content and creating the atmosphere that even if you’re building towards this rematch game of the century and it’s an absolute dud, it’s not the end result. It’s ultimately the journey of how you got there which is all sorts of corny cliches that old coaches have told me when we’ve lost championship games. It’s not really about winning the championship, it’s about what you acquired getting to this point. So, I think like we’ve been discussing the journey, the previous 59 minutes and 59 seconds of a game are just as important as the final shot towards building your brand. If you’re consistent and have a plan and have recurring content themes on a weekly game by game basis, then regardless of the result your fans are going to come back because they know what they’re getting themselves into. And they’re signing up for two hours of jokes, engagement, stats, information, and all that.
Rob Cressy: (22:39)
I think one of the challenges yet opportunities of the industry is brands and people who are new to sports betting. Why is it an opportunity? Because so many people are new to sports betting. Why is it a challenge? Because so many people are new to sports betting and don’t understand it. So often, whether in sports betting or tech or social media, if you don’t understand it it is not as easy to take action because you’re not as confident about it. The more confident you are about something, the more active you are going to take. So, dig a little bit from your perspective into the newness of sports betting and what people or brands can do to better increase their learning curve also from a marketing side of things.
Troy Machir: (23:30)
Yeah, it’s tricky because I think there are two large parts of it. Which is the traditional smart betting public, and then the casual sports fan. And those two sides could not be more dissimilar and knowledge-based, and passionate for that knowledge. And that spectrum of knowledge and sports betting is sharper and more aggressive than I think a lot of other niche industries, niche sports because of the number of financial and in their industry buildup. So, it’s twofold. You have to speak the smartest to the smartest people who don’t want to be BS’d but you also have to slow play and bring along and educate the people who know it’s interesting, but are just far behind in terms of the rules or regulations of how you do it. I think anyone who’s ever watched a major football game, like they know what spreads and lines and odds are, but they may not know what they mean. So, you really have to educate the people furthest behind and keep the smartest people ahead fresh so they’re not getting frustrated. And somehow you have to do that both, talking to both sides.
Rob Cressy: (24:42)
So, what are you guys doing at Bet Rivers or Rush Street to help with this education component? Because I believe there is a good opportunity to combine tech plus education to say, listen, we know that the biggest opportunity isn’t actually the diehard fan. It is actually the casual fan who may play fantasy football, not a die-hard but they wouldn’t mind having a few jellybeans on there. What can we do to better engage them knowing they’re not as likely to deep dive on this?
Troy Machir: (25:13)
Well, I think first and foremost is infuse as much information that we have with the basic pads, explaining not just that this person has such and such odds, but that if you bet this much on this person you would make such and such money. Because I think again, after a while it doesn’t really matter how big the odds are if they don’t understand how that translates to the money in their pocket. So, education on payouts and just what this bet means, as simple as it sounds is a really, really strong practice because it’s the theory of, you’re only as strong as your weakest link. So, we have lots of people who are casual sports fans and especially now where gambling is moving up because we don’t have tailgates. We don’t have sports bars. We don’t have the games itself. You’re seeing more and more people get closer to the sports betting industry. So, we need to educate all those people. So, even the newest people know exactly what they’re getting themselves into because it can be a slippery slope. But we want to educate, inform and give people the best information possible. So, it’s fun and hopefully lucrative.
Rob Cressy: (26:21)
What do you think looking forward is going to be the path for brands to be more part of this? I know we mentioned, Hey, from a social media marketing standpoint, there is an opportunity, but brands are already in sports, but being in sports and being in sports betting, or are two different things and not everyone’s a team, not everyone’s a league, not a big company, not everybody’s a small company. So, there’s a wide variety here. So, what do you see looking forward in terms of brand integration regarding sports betting in some capacity?
Troy Machir: (26:55)
Yeah, I think it’s honestly long term it comes down to accessibility and just how seamless you are with that. So, you have to have a spotless app. You have to have an excellent website that the time it takes to use. You have to be user friendly. I think that’s when you’re providing a product of any kind in 2020 and beyond, where everything is at their fingertips, fans and users after a while they don’t want to be explained how to do it. They just want to know how to do it intrinsically. And if it’s not there in front of them, if they can’t figure it out then it’s going to be a turnoff for them. So, I think product and tech is just so important because with every year there’s going to be new companies, new people learning more about this industry and wanting to get involved. So, the people who are already there have to be established and lead the way in terms of how good the product is because other people will come along with that same type of product. So, we need to be the most engaging, the cleanest, the most efficient because we want to be a leader and we want people to, when they are sports betting, you need to say it’s a thing that BetRivers is the one to be using.
Rob Cressy: (28:01)
And I think that is a fantastic point you just made. It makes me think about something called the mom test. You know what the mom test is? You ask your mom if you know about an athlete and who they are. So, if you say mom, who is Tiger Woods? She’ll go, Oh, I know Tiger Woods, boom. But if you say, mom who is Colin Morikawa, she’ll be like, I have no idea who you are talking about. Well, the same goes true for apps and anything with technology. Go to the mom test. If you were to give your mom that app from a user functionality standpoint, could she be able to figure this out without having to be explained very much? If the answer is yes, congratulations, you created a fan for a user-friendly app, but if all of a sudden your mom looks at it and she’s like, I have no idea what in the world is going on there. Well, guess what? Because so often one of the challenges companies run into is they know so much about this, that they over create or over tech for their audience in what we care about most is actually going to be ease of use may not be added features.
Troy Machir: (29:12)
Yep, absolutely. I totally agree. And I also think one thing that just helps overall is how much it’s talked about and the public over the past five years, the gambling world the intersection has just opened up. It’s no longer a wink, wink, nod, nod. But it really does help. I think when you have massive events like Leicester City winning the Cup. Because the entire story wasn’t just that this was some unheralded team no one had ever heard of, it since it’s the largest underdog ever in any major competition. So, the more we have big things like that, like driving home the fact that when the Nets beat the Bucks it was the largest spread upset of the last 15 years. Even if people aren’t familiar with all the ins and outs, tie major sporting events or sports news on a week to week basis with some betting information. Not so far down the rabbit hole, but if you can merge the two worlds together out in the open, people will slowly pick up on it. And then you’re building that next generation of users.
Rob Cressy: (30:22)
Do you know what all that breaks down to one-word stories, be a great storyteller as a brand. If you do so you can weave together sports, sports bedding with anything going on in the world of fan engagement. Troy really enjoyed jamming with you. Where can everybody connect with you?
Troy Machir: (30:44)
Yeah. BetRivers.com. We have a blog at BetRivers is where we’re writing all our previews and posting a ton of content. Also @BetRivers on Twitter and Facebook. And then @TroyMachir. I tweet all the time. Now more because sports are back. That’s just part of it. Knowing every day at 6:00 PM I turn on the TV and I got baseball games to choose from. It’s so fun that our favorite thing is back and we have different ways to enjoy it and engage with it.
Rob Cressy: (31:14)
And as always, I would love to hear from you about this episode. One, if you are a fan, are you a sport bettor? If so, let us know a little bit more about how that happened. And number two, if you’re with a brand I’m curious to hear where if all sports betting is ads on your marketing and fan engagement mindsets. You can hit up FanFood on Twitter @FanFoodondemand. On Instagram @ FanFoodapp or on LinkedIn. And as always, you can hit me up on all social media platforms @Rob Cressy.
