Featured Affiliate Interview – LiveSport

LiveSport is a Czech company specialising in the provision of sports and betting related websites focusing on local European markets. In the Dec/Jan issue of the iGB Affiliate Magazine we caught up with Martin Hajek, LiveSport’s co-founder and CEO.

How and when did you become a gaming affiliate?
Back in 1999, I created, as a hobby, a website for punters in the Czech Republic where I published my findings
regarding the winning rates of local bookmaker odds. It soon became a betting community portal with a busy forum. In time, I started promoting bookmakers to finance new website features. We helped introduce online betting to the Czech Internet audience at that time, namely Gamebookers, which became very popular in our country.

Later in 2003, I introduced BetExplorer.com and the idea behind that was to connect pre-game stats for several
sports with odds comparison. As I wasn’t experienced with affiliate programs, I started selling the ad spots for flat rates to pay my bills. Eventually, I was able to afford to experiment a little more with affiliate marketing. However, I accidentally made my first steps difficult ones, by heavily promoting one sportsbook oriented on high
volume players – my referred customers were so successful that they soon killed the future for my account.

What were you doing previously? Tell us a little about your professional background…
I started my first website for the Czech betting community when I was still relatively young, and this ultimately
accounted for my leaving university. The Czech Republic’s biggest lottery company acquired that site and hired
me to develop it. The experience of being at a big company helped me to see the whole betting business from a
wider perspective as I could meet betting business professionals while still keeping contacts in the player community. This knowledge helped us establish LiveSport in 2006 and set up a portfolio of popular websites for bettors.

What gaming verticals are you currently working across?
As sports fans and betting enthusiasts, we focus on what we understand the most. Therefore, we run informational websites offering live scores, sports news, statistics, betting competitions or odds comparison, and this makes us a natural affiliate partner for several online bookmakers. We also started the biggest poker website in our country, but other gaming segments are presently out of our interest.

Are there any new verticals or markets in which you see potential? Where are the real growth areas for 2010?
We believe that the popularity of live betting will continue to increase, and we are making steps towards launching
an in-running odds comparison service. Live odds will be a natural addition to our OddsPortal.com service and furthermore, we plan to launch a specialised micro site on live-odds.com in 2010. In the skill games area, we see a growing potential for online poker which is still undeveloped in many markets in Europe, although we have different priorities at present.

What are your ambitions as an affiliate? Do you look to build a stable and successful business or do you aspire to super-affiliate status to push your business as far as you can take it?
We’re definitely looking to build longterm partnerships with all established bookmakers. I’m happy to say that an
increasing number of affiliate managers are willing to assist us and cooperate closely. We can offer a different view in advising bookmakers to improve the quality of their translated language sites or that of their landing pages, and flag banners that are not available at weekends and out-of-date odds in their XML feeds. Our portfolio of 45 websites pushes hundreds of thousands of monthly visitors to bookmakers‘ sites, so even small improvements can make big differences to the benefit of everyone.

What about those just starting out in the affiliate industry – is the overall gaming market saturated or is there still room for affiliates in certain (if not all) verticals to make a living?
Definitely – gaming markets are still growing, which brings new opportunities for all involved parties, despite some
complicated legal landscapes. As always, new entrants should introduce something new and different from their competitors.

What would be your advice to them?
Hire a good designer who understands information architecture principles. I believe in the importance of usability
which dictates if people enjoy working with your product/website or leave to find your competition. Explain to new users what’s hot on the site and navigate them directly to their destination of choice. Keep things simple. And of course, have fun doing it.

Information on LiveSport
With well known websites, among others FlashScore.com, BetExplorer.com or OddsPortal.com, LiveSport speaks to millions of sports bettors every month. Thousands of sportsbook affiliates already utilize the free live score solution www.Livescore.in 

Article originally published in iGB Affiliate: Issue 18