On 19 June, Euro 2024 will get underway and with that comes opportunities both on and off the pitch. Ready to provide insight on everything from TV schedules to in-form players and where to find the best odds is Swedish affiliate Bettingstugan, as Jonas Weimer explains.
It’s easy to imagine the scene in only a few months’ time. Supporters flocking to Germany to mingle for the Euros with the occasional ribald song being sung and good-natured epithets exchanged.
You may not want a beer in the dappled sunlight but you may want a bet – and Leadstar’s Swedish brand Bettingstugan has you covered. Jonas Weimer, website manager and project leader for the affiliate, explains how Leadstar is preparing for the Euro 2024 tournament and what the most recent Google Core update means for its SEO rankings.
The immediate goal is to build Bettingstugan’s guide to the Euros, something Weimer is fully engaged in. “I’m writing about the whole tournament – every team, every group – and also the TV schedule, doing news articles about the Euros and writing some pregame articles about every game taking place,” he says.
Interactivity and generating traffic
The site will be interactive with a banner to the guide on the homepage, though Bettingstugan gets most of its traffic from Google. “If [a customer] googles ‘Euros betting companies’ or ‘Betting tips for Euros’, then hopefully we will end up high on the SERPs for those keywords,” he explains. “So mostly we’ll get traffic from Google and of course we have some big social media groups as well on Facebook and Twitter and also Instagram, so we’ll get traffic from there as well. But the guide will only be about the Euros.”
The recent Google core update has had little impact on Bettingstugan’s plans as the company writes content for users not for search engines. “We haven’t used any AI text,” Weimer explains. “It was a decision we took years ago, and I think this just proves that we did the right decision about building our text ourselves.
“That was one of the big things with the core update, I think. From the way I see it, nothing has changed from the way we work about content. So, we continue like we did before, we try to build everything that the user wants to read about the teams and the games, betting tips and things like that.”
Google has insisted that its spam policy will crack down on parasite sites. This is something that will be beneficial to Bettingstugan with its strong product offering, Weimer says. “It was a good core update for us. I don’t know if it’s the parasite sites that have been decreasing, but I think we have seen some of them of them in Sweden also decreasing. So, it’s good for us.
“We haven’t used any AI text; it was a decision we took years ago, and I think [the Google core update] just proves that we did the right decision about building our text ourselves"
Any future Google update will likely have the same effect, not impacting Bettingstugan’s operations. During March, in fact, the site’s numbers went up month-on-month over February with a rise of 23% according to Google Analytics and April is heading in the same direction. The Semrush data shows a climb in visibility from 29% in February to 35% in April.
No dependence on Swedish team
Sweden, of course, failed to qualify for the Euro 2024 tournament but Weimer is convinced that the national side’s absence won’t dent betting options. “It’s been a long time since we [last failed to qualify for] the Euros,” he says, “but we have missed some World Cups and I tend to [note the impact of that]. In fact, Bettingstugan’s statistics show that betting on the 2022 World Cup was actually up a notable 70% despite Sweden’s non-participation in the tournament. A target it hopes to emulate for the upcoming competition.
“If Sweden isn’t playing,” Weimer continues, “then maybe you want to gamble to get the excitement of the games. I think what we saw in the World Cup wasn’t that big a decrease, but of course the interest is a little bit lower here in Sweden and the newspapers are not writing that much about it.”
In Sweden the Euro 2024 tournament is also favourably scheduled for the home audience. “During the evenings the games start at six o’clock. They’re not competing with the swimming during lunch or going to the beach during the days,” Weimer notes. “But I think we will have a lot of people watching the games even though Sweden isn’t playing.”
“I think what we saw in the 2022 World Cup wasn’t that big a decrease, but of course the interest is a little bit lower here in Sweden and the newspapers are not writing that much about it"
In a summer featuring Olympic Games in Paris and the culmination of the national ice hockey season it is still football that is the biggest attraction in Sweden. With another Scandinavian team – Denmark – in the tournament, there will be some geographic interest but, really, the major draw will be in following England and Weimer thinks the game itself will be the winner: “I don’t think any other team will have more or less, but when the big teams are facing each other, there is always a rise in traffic as well.”
And, naturally, as the tournament progresses, Weimer hopes Bettingstugan will see a boost in betting terms. “Yeah, I think we’ll see some increase,” he says, “and of course the semi-finals or the final would be the biggest betting games.”
Tipping the nod
Weimer isn’t on his own. “There are four of us working on some unique content right now. And also betting tips, we’ll have at least two betting tips on every game. So, I will activate my tipsters on our site. We have a dozen tipsters, so we will see a lot of betting tips on every game on Bettingstugan.”
“We will do videos about every team and every group [at the Euros] with Anders Limpar on what he thinks about the tournament. That’s some unique content on Bettingstugan that will attract people here in Sweden"
The company also has Anders Limpar to help with the betting tips. Formerly of Arsenal, Everton and Birmingham City, he is the Swedish equivalent of Steven Gerrard, according to site manager and project lead. “He’s a big star here,” says Weimer.
“He’s one of the people that are writing betting tips on betting stars. We will do some videos as well about every team and every group with Anders and he will tell us what he thinks about the tournament. So that’s some unique content on Bettingstugan that I think will attract some people here in Sweden.”
The igaming economy in Sweden appears to be dwindling, with national regulator Spelinspektionen reporting a 0.7% drop in 2023 from the previous year in online gambling revenue. However, this seems not to be the case for Bettingstugan. “What we can see is that during bad financial times people dream of fast money,” says Weimer, “and we don’t see the same decrease as other markets in Sweden.” It’s a fairly consistent maxim that people continue to gamble a lot even when the economic headwinds are against them.
Weimer is confident that Bettingstugan’s numbers will stay steady and continue to climb for the Euro 2024 tournament. With a bigger and better guide and more betting tips than competitors there will also be a big push on social media channels. A daily competition and the chances to win tickets all serve to encourage traffic.
Leadstar’s Bettingstugan is proud to call itself a site for people who love betting, be they beginners or old hands. Weimer is hopeful that their betting tips for Euro 2024 will provide “some great winnings” and will guarantee excitement.