Promoting with celebrities: How sweepstakes casinos attract players
Pavle D. • Last updated on 28 October 2024
The new phenomenon is clear: sweepstakes casinos have gained a significant market share in the last few years with their excellent games, graphics, social media marketing, and online casino bonuses. The ability to navigate the legal gray area also helps succeed where traditional online casinos couldn’t. However, this isn’t enough to stay at the top.
As the number of businesses grows in the online gambling industry, sweepstakes casinos are constantly searching for new and innovative ways of improving their platforms and rising above the competition. One of those innovative techniques includes celebrity endorsements, some of the latest marketing strategies they’ve found compelling.
Today, we’ll dive deeper into these celebrity endorsements, discuss how sweepstakes casinos harness the power of such marketing, and examine their overall impact. We’ll also look into a few examples of successful celebrity endorsement campaigns and discuss the potential adverse effects of such marketing.
The significance of celebrity endorsements
Businesses can create enormously successful ads that increase their reputation by hiring and paying an actor, musician, football player, or other influential person. Through commercials and social media posts, these marketing techniques improve brand recognition and attract many new customers.
You’ve undoubtedly seen these ads on TV or the internet. Examples of these ads include Papa John’s and Shaquille O’Neal, McDonald’s and Travis Scott, Corona and Snoop Dogg, L’Oreal and Eva Longoria, and a few other ones floating on social media or interrupting your TV program.
Sweepstakes casinos are no strangers to celebrity endorsements. Such platforms have also been hiring influential people to capture the public’s attention, increase trust in the casino, and attract new customers who follow these celebrities.
How sweepstakes casinos utilize celebrity marketing
Now that we know the power of celebrity endorsements, we can tap the various methods sweepstakes casinos are using for such ads:
- TV commercials – Although the internet is slowly taking over as the primary medium for advertising, TV commercials are still an excellent alternative. Therefore, many sweepstakes casinos run TV ads that showcase their platforms and a celebrity enjoying their favorite game.
- Promotions on social media – Whether through posts, stories, videos, or live streams, sweepstakes casinos can tap into a massive demographic by posting a celebrity enjoying the sweepstakes platform. Combine them with a few hashtags, and these promotions can be enormously successful, attracting many new players.
- Ads on a celebrity’s profile – Whether talking about online content creators, social media stars, or streamers, celebrities have a massive following across various social media platforms. Thus, sweepstakes platforms often sponsor a celebrity or pay for an ad to appear on their profile.
- Event hosting – Sweepstakes casinos often hire a star to host a special event or tournament. Fans and gambling enthusiasts love it, as it’s an excellent chance to interact with people you follow or admire while enjoying your favorite casino games and having fun.
What’s the goal of celebrity endorsements?
Celebrity endorsements often serve a dual purpose – draw attention and increase trust. Although similar, in the context of sweepstakes casinos, these marketing techniques have the following goals:
- Attracting potential customers – It’s arguably the primary goal of celebrity marketing. These ads can reach millions of people, whether posted on the casino’s social media pages, run as TV commercials, or find their way to a celebrity’s profile. Fans of these celebrities find it challenging to escape the allure and thrill of playing at the same sweepstakes casino.
- Boosting the overall casino reputation – Celebrities are often our role models, someone we aspire to be like and trust. Thus, seeing your favorite celebrity endorse a sweepstakes casino increases the platform’s trustworthiness. People automatically connect such ads to security and fair play, leading them to choose the same product or service.
- Increasing sweepstakes casino brand recognition – As the market is overflowing with rising sweepstakes casinos, celebrity endorsements can significantly impact the brand, elevating the platform’s status and differentiating it from the competition.
Now that we’ve seen how it all works, let’s move on to the benefits of celebrity marketing.
Casinos benefiting from marketing with celebrities
Since beginning to use celebrity endorsements for marketing purposes, numerous sweepstakes casinos have massively boosted their user base and reputation through celebrity endorsements.
For example, the Stake and Drake collaboration was a massive hit. The Canadian rapper has an enormous following on social media and, since the partnership began, has made millions of dollars running Stake’s ads. Of course, the casino has also massively benefited from this collaboration since it’s brought thousands of new users and significantly increased their sales.
Similarly, the star of “Extreme Makeovers: Home Edition,” Ty Pennington, has partnered with Caesars Slots. Together, the sweepstakes casino and the celebrity gave away 21 trips to Las Vegas. The collaboration attracted massive attention to the launch of a new sweepstakes casino, which immediately brought thousands of players to the platform.
Consequences of sweepstakes celebrity endorsements
Although celebrity endorsements can significantly help attract new players and increase the sweepstakes casino’s reputation, such ads also have a few downsides. The following potential consequences of sweepstakes casino celebrity endorsements are worth considering before utilizing such ads:
- Ethical considerations – Although they often include responsible gambling tools to prevent issues, gambling games in sweepstakes casinos have an addictive nature. Using celebrities to glamorize gambling games can be unethical since they promote addictive games and normalize gambling.
- Scandals and controversies – Regardless of being our role models, stars are human, too, and humans make mistakes. However, these mistakes can lead to scandals and controversies in the world of fame, and such ad campaigns can negatively impact the sweepstakes casino, too.
- Loss of followers – Many fans are often obsessed with a particular celebrity, and, in their eyes, that person can’t do wrong. However, a minority of followers will act on even the most minor mistakes or slip-ups. According to many, endorsing a casino is equal to selling out, and such followers are patiently waiting for an opportunity to create a massive backlash against the celebrity.
As you can see, these endorsements are not without their risks, but the pros often outweigh the potential cons.
Conclusion
Celebrity endorsements are some of the most potent forms of marketing used in various industries worldwide. Seeing your role endorse a product or service automatically increases the brand’s trustworthiness, so many businesses have used such ads to build up their reputation and attract customers.
Sweepstakes casinos, although relatively new to the game of celebrity endorsements, have started using this tactic for the same purposes. Most of the time, such an ad campaign has proven enormously effective, building trust and bringing thousands of new players to the sweepstakes casino.
However, such ads also come with a few ethical considerations and potentially harmful effects, which we’ve covered.