Betway Share the thrill: A Rebrand Case Study

logo design

In 2014 I was handed the initial brand guidelines for the Betway brand and briefed with turning it into a working brand system and implementing it into several marketing campaigns and the Betway product itself.

Founded in 2006 by a group of Swedish entrepreneurs, Betway began as a self-confident organisation rooted in online sports betting. By 2014 it had grown to be  leading regulated brand that delivers world-class sports betting and gaming to over 1.8 million players globally including UK and Scandinavia. Users play over 500 industry leading slots, video poker, blackjack and roulette games, Betway Sports offered over 30,000 betting markets including live in-play.

old betway UI

Three core principles shaped the new brand identity:

At Betway, sharing the thrill isn't just a tagline, it's our promise. This isn't just betting, it's an experience. We take you beyond the scoreboards, into the heart of the action. Feel the rush of the spin, the thrill of the hand, the elation of victory.

Because it's not just about the win. We create an environment where you feel valued, entertained, and in control. Everything is possible when you bet with Betway. That's the mentality that drives us, from our developers to our customer support team. It's why we offer unrivaled value and service.

Expertise is at your fingertips. Dive deep with a huge range of sports markets, the latest games, and features like in-play betting and cash out. We empower you with stats and facts to make informed decisions. Betway: Where trust is earned, and every bet is a chance to play like a champion.

The Challenge

Being a fast-paced environment with 1000s of assets going out every week across dozens of campaigns and offers, we were highly dependent on using stock imagery and third party assets. The challenge was to create system and methodology to be used by in house design teams to create marketing assets across all 5050mediums while maintaining a consistent and cohesive brand narrative reflecting the brand pillars.

The Solution

To allow us flexibility we created a set of formulaic templates which revolved around a central piece of artwork or set of artwork depending on the scale of the campaign. While this sounds constricting it lent us a fair bit of creative flexibility while ensuring a consistent user journey across campaign channels and touchpoints.

brand guidlines01

The artwork was generally heavily treated, due to source images being of inconsistent quality and colouring. We developed a grading process and composed images to be instantly recognizable as Betway and illustrate the Share The Thill aspect of the brand by making the viewer feel like they were part of the action. We developed a treatment to give the impression of the type of focussed tunnel vision you get when you have surge of adrenalin.  Exaggerating the light and action within the image using a faked short depth of field and desaturating the background.


Deep etch the subjects to be the main focus
Introduce artificial DOF by blurring the back ground non-destructively using the smart filters
Desaturate the background and make it a little darker if necessary.


Desaturate the image generally globally and adgust brightness/contrast and enhance the light to suit.
Where possible introduce an element of the sub-brand colour non-destructively


Place as a smart object within the required frame size remembering to observe rule of thirds, positioning of copy and context of use.

Over the artwork would be a headline outlining the offer clearly and concisely followed by a call to action button This would in more expanded forms of the campaign, be supported with body copy and other imagery.

We developed a system for call to actions to allow us flexibility across various media types within in the sub-brands, the styling and behaviours of which carried through to other navigable items.

brand guidlines01

When building our landing pages we optimised the page for the maximum keyword density building the page as a responsive single column with alternating text and images to ensure the maximum dwell time. We also tried to keep the page as light as possible by using smaller images and not a series of large images that covered the screen in order for the page to score better on Google ranking the result was a 4 million Pound saving on our PPC campaigns.

Once a user had signed up they were directed to the lobby which we called the one click game grid. The idea was to create an interface that interrupted the user as little as possible. We had an area at the top which was used for promotions which are either new games or offers tailored to each user followed by a grid that was filterable by a selection of tabs or a search tool. Once a user had selected a game to play the game would open on a background designed to feel like it was part of the game and deliver an immerse sensation in keeping with the Share the Thrill brand pillar

brand guidlines01

Although we had soft launched a month previously in order to work out any bugs, the grand unveil was on the 31st of may 2014 with the sponsorship of the rematch between Froch and Groves At Wembley Stadium. Attended by a record breaking 80 000 people and broadcast in 60 countries worldwide. In the UK, the primary carrier was Sky Box Office, which saw a buy rate of 900,000. In the US, viewing figures on HBO averaged 700,000 with a peak of 830,000.