Caesars Bets on Flex Parlays, Injury Protection as Sportsbook Competition Evolves

As sports betting evolves and bettor habits change, sportsbooks are looking beyond simply adding more markets to keep customers engaged, said Dominic Hammond, senior vice-president of sports at Caesars Digital. Jaxson Dart, quarterback of the New York Giants, celebrates a win last season. Sportsbooks like Caesars are beefing up their offerings for the new NFL season. (Image: Ishika Samant/Getty Images) “For me, content will always be king,” said Hammond. “We’re constantly adding new markets. A KPI [key performance indicator] that we track is the number of markets we offer versus our peer set, and we always perform very well.” Beyond More Betting Markets What customers are looking for now, beyond what they can bet, is ways to protect that wager, he added. With the start of the National Football League (NFL) season, Caesars Digital rolled out a series of new products that Hammond said directly respond to what customers were asking them for. Flex Parlays allow bettors to miss one or more selected legs of an eligible parlay and still potentially receive a reduced payout. Protecting the Bettor’s Wager Injury Protection can protect qualifying bets when a player involved is ruled out because of injury, including early in a game. That’s particularly useful for NFL bettors, since final lineups and injury lists for Sunday games, for example, are not updated until close to kickoff. “[With Flex Parlay], we know customers want to have fun,” he said. “Losing parlays over and over again isn’t great. You want to give customers a sense of getting a win that is as organic as possible. We all remember the time when we missed the parlay by one.” Flex Parlays Take Spotlight Caesars also introduced Squad Builder, a free-to-play in-app game that lets users build a seven-player roster by revealing players throughout the week. Each player is tied to a sportsbook player prop. Users who correctly pick all seven props are eligible for a $50,000 weekly jackpot, while fewer correct selections can unlock other rewards. “We went around and around on this, and I think for me that is what the customers expect, what is fairest,” said Hammond. “Injury Protection was a big one last year. We heard it from our customers. That bet is protected. We will do a cash refund. “Customers are saying, ‘Give me as many options as you can.’ And give me multiple ways to protect this bet. Sometimes we don’t like it, but customers tell us how they feel, and we respond. But a lot of us are bettors ourselves – what do we want to build? What excites us?” More Markets Caesars owns its own technology to build new products and offer unique features, and that’s what Flex Parlay is, Hammond said. This past summer’s World Cup was the template, where Caesars rolled out Flex Parlay, an event where they also set out to have the most content – ten times as many markets at the start as they did for the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The NFL is a continuation of that, said Hammond. The rise in popularity of prediction markets is top of mind for regulated sportsbooks. Prediction Markets Raise Stakes “We know they have a formidable offering, and they are spending a lot of money,” he said. “Fundamentally, we view their product as sports betting. If you can build a parlay, that’s sports betting. I don’t think you can call it anything else. We know we can take parlays in a completely different direction, with things like Flex, we’ve got Caesars’ rewards, promotions, loyalty, things that prediction markets don’t have.” Other sportsbooks are beefing up their products for the new NFL season, as well. BetMGM has introduced BetDefense, a player-injury protection feature similar to Caesars’ Injury Protection. Under the BetMGM model, like with Caesars, if the player is injured during the first quarter and cannot return, the player can have the player-prop stake returned. NFL Drives Product Innovation Fanatics, though, announced it was expanding its Fair Play injury protection feature from its sportsbook to its prediction market offering. If your player is ruled out during the qualifying window due to injury, your trade amount comes back to you as FanCash, which can be used across the Fanatics ecosystem (jerseys, collectibles, tickets, and more). In the end, as Hammond said, the NFL is the one sport with the size and scale for sportsbooks to roll out and get an accurate read from customers on the effectiveness of new features. “We are constantly innovating, but there’s no getting around the NFL being the biggest platform, marketing-wise, where we have the biggest reason to shout in the market,” he said. The post Caesars Bets on Flex Parlays, Injury Protection as Sportsbook Competition Evolves appeared first on Casino.org.