Seth Young: “Engaging Hispanic audiences in the US – we succeed where others fail”

Casino Guru News sat down with Seth Young, Fifth Street Gaming Digital’s CSO, who is a well-seasoned industry veteran and has held multiple positions in the industry. We spoke about the company’s unique approach to bringing sports betting content and products to a mostly Hispanic audience and how operators in the United States have lagged in communicating to this specific consumer group in a meaningful and sustained way.

This is just as well as Fifth Street Gaming Digital is blazing a trail. Check out our conversation with Seth to see how an operator can excel while focusing on the Hispanic and Latino audience that traditionally has not had a voice or strong product offering in the USA.

Q: Fifth Street Gaming has been a pioneer in addressing the underserved Hispanic audience in the United States when it comes to sports betting. How has the mass legalization of sports gambling in the United States impact your business model?

The legalization of online gambling in the United States is one of the many reasons JefeBet started. Interactive gambling is enjoyed by millions upon millions of people globally. In the US, we’re starting to see this form of entertainment regulated on a state-by-state basis. As such, millions of Americans now have access to an activity that was previously underground and unregulated. This includes an audience of 64 million that identify as Hispanic or Latino, 12 million of whom speak Spanish as their first language. Today, there’s no meaningful personalized or localized content for this audience as it relates to gambling and entertainment. Fifth Street Gaming, the sister company of FSG Digital, started serving this audience with brick-and-mortar casinos – the Silver Nugget and Lucky Club – in North Las Vegas over 15 years ago. These properties have been deeply integrated into the local community, and we made a conscience decision to extend the Fifth Street Gaming hospitality experience and expertise to a broader online audience and provide a centralized hub of sports gambling and entertainment content for this massive, underserved demographic.

The upshot is that for all of the investment and attention the US is seeing with regard to the development of the sports betting and online gambling market, we were shocked to see that no individual or company was meaningfully investing to provide an authentic product to a massive audience that represents a sizeable percentage of the US population.

In a sentence, the proliferation of sports betting was a catalyst to launch this business, but the glaring gap in the market paired with our subject-matter expertise was the true underlying impetus.

Q: Jefebet has been on the market for several months now, what is your initial impression of the rollout, and have you seen a greater participation from the Hispanic sports betting community in the US?

Jefebet just celebrated its 1-year anniversary in September, though we launched JefeBet.com to the public on March 1, 2022. Between September and March, we spent our time working on the infrastructure and making sure that we were creating the best possible anchor for growth with all best practices in mind, with an eye towards our strategic goals. So far our traffic, audience, and brand awareness are growing much faster than we anticipated. We knew intuitively that there was a good fit for a brand like JefeBet in the market, but to see our data reflect that is definitely validating for our team. It feels like a bit of a "finally" moment for the Hispanic and Latino audience in the US. "Finally, something that puts us first. Finally, something for me. Finally, something for us."

So, we’re energized by the initial reception, even more so about the consistent month over month growth so far, as that allows us to continue to introduce excellent authentic content, and new engagement products.

Q: Do you think other brands are doing enough to involve sports bettors from your target audience, and do you see this as a threat or an opportunity? What are your thoughts on how brands have been targeting different groups of bettors so far and how’s Jefebet bucking the trend?

In a word? No. In two words? Definitely not. It’s table stakes to translate an app or a website to even rudimentary Spanish, and that’s without even considering the personalized and conversational nuances of the language that are relevant to the many different cultural backgrounds of Spanish speaking Americans.

I think it’s completely fair to say that to date there is no single brand in the US gaming market that has made a concerted effort to communicate with this audience meaningfully. It just hasn’t been a focal point for anyone in the face of competing priorities, which we can understand. However, once the cadence of new state launches slows to a more manageable pace for most operators – which seems to be happening now after a 3-year flat out sprint – we also think it’s completely fair to say that many forward-thinking sports betting, and online casino operators might quickly consider how they can best engage 64 million people that have not been part of their mainstream marketing calculus.

At the time of writing this there are only two sports betting operators offering legal sports betting options to Spanish speakers, and all they’re doing in translating their content from English to Spanish. If every operator leaned in, it’s a significant opportunity for both their operations and for JefeBet. It’s not a matter of if it happens, it’s just a matter of when it happens. We understand that we’re ahead of the market right now, and we also know the audience is way too large to ignore.

Q: You put a focus on content creators as much as sports bettors. How is this helpful and what is the end goal?

We’re leveraging well-known bi-lingual content creators to build JefeBet’s brand awareness, and frankly, to create fun and interesting content that can be enjoyed every day. Our focus on working with content creators is in line with one of the main underlying tenets of our business, which is create authentic and compelling media for a vastly underserved audience. This part is pretty simple; by having native Spanish speaking influencers and content creators, we reach our target audience and grow the market. Ideally, our audience is enjoying the thousands of pieces of content we’re putting out on a monthly basis, whether its on JefeBet.com, the JefeBet Podcast Network, our social channels, on the JefeBet sports prediction app, or our impending Loteria-Keno game.

Q:Do you imagine Jefebet to be a self-isolated phenomenon within the Hispanic community or do you want to build it to encompass all gamblers, but while still empowering your main target audience?

Today our primary focus is on the American audience that identifies as Hispanic and Latino. We also serve our content in English so we may give bi-lingual speakers the choice to engage in their preferred language. As a function of having Spanish language content, we are seeing engagement from Spanish speakers around the world as we reach them organically. Anything is possible in the future, but today our primary focus is on the Hispanic and Latino audience that traditionally has not had a voice or strong product offering in the USA.

Image credit: Fifth Street Gaming