Betting (Re)Evolution: How Sportsbooks Are Preparing For The Future
Can data and stats-based betting help sportsbooks move towards offering interfaces that open the client base and keep them coming back for more?
FROM THE HUGE ONGOING investment in HD-quality in-play technologies by Bet365 and Bwin to the complete rebuild of Coral’s main sportsbook platform by ex-Orbis staff at Geneity, there has probably never been a more active period of development among online sportsbooks.
While much of this activity is timed to get new products and platforms up and running by March and April to be ready for next summer’s football World Cup in South Africa, it also represents a wider recognition that urgent surgery on many sportsbooks is needed. The reasoning being that these changes will allow them to harness the potential of social networking and other new web tools and pull in new constituencies of punters beyond the core transactional bettor.
One of the areas of focus is the use of sports data and statistics to push betting volumes upwards. But it is also part of a more fundamental drive to try and generate a new sense of dynamism and community around live sports betting that is more in sync with the real-life events on which they are based.
Not before time, according to Brian McSweeney of real-time betting product developer Boolabus, who says of the products currently available on most sportsbooks: “They are essentially an output from the database, shoved up on screen. You could be on any website on Champions League night. You are on your own, there is no sense of it being an exciting night, just dead pages of output.”
Affordable streaming data from the likes of Opta and third-party in-running trading solutions such as that offered by Betgenius have enabled sportsbooks to chase the tail of industry leaders such as Bet365 (now offering 90 markets on an typical in-play football game). But most in-running markets fail to attract much interest and action, with the bulk of betting activity still confined to the core 1 x 2 and goal markets.
Fantasy Sports Betting (FSB) recently launched its Man of the Match product on Coral, enabling punters to place fixed-odds bets on player performance, measured using Opta-provided data feeds.
Having effectively built and launched a new product around raw data streams, chief executive Dave McDowell understandably feels operators are not making best use of the live data available.
“Most bookmakers have running markets, like the first team to get three corners, but where’s the data to go and find out how frequently these games get corners, and how do you make an informed decision about which of those teams you want to bet on?” he says.
Interface-driven future
Given that data itself doesn’t get people betting until you present it and interpret it in a way in which it can drive betting opportunities, the interface will play a key role in unlocking stats-driven betting in the live realm, argues McDowell.
This may involve doing away with the conventional betslip format of typing a stake into a box, replacing it with an intuitive interface that allows punters to enter markets simply by clicking on representations of real-life events on the screen as they unfold.
“Sportsbooks are already offering 20 or 30 different markets just on goal scoring. You can’t just continue to put more markets down at the bottom of the page. Once the interface is cracked that collects all the data live, displays it in a way that makes sense and can drive betting opportunities, that’s what’s required to make stats-based betting take off,” says McDowell.
Bettorlogic’s in-play updates for its Form Lab betting tool, now on Ladbrokes, have been launched to fill the void of information for in-running bettors and to stimulate in-play bets by presenting data in a timely and directional way.
As the action unfolds, the punter is presented with event-prompted stats and data on current in-running football games, much of which was previously inaccessible in real-time to in-running punters.
Bettorlogic chief executive Michael Falconer says knowing what data to present to customers and at what moment grew out of their extensive research into bettor behaviour (see box out).
Boolabus’ Betstream In Play product, now live on Betfred, takes a different approach to Bettorlogic. It aims to multiply live-betting revenues by wrapping Betgenius-generated data feeds and markets in an interface specifically aimed at making the football live-betting experience more engaging by helping it resemble a live game.
Thus punters watch icons change in real time as substitutions are made, players’ stats change, goals are scored and cards are awarded.
“Stats and real-time data on goals, players, fouls and cards can play a huge part of getting people excited and interested, but it’s obvious by now that just shoving it into existing formats doesn’t work. So we’ve blended this content in with the betting, got proper team kit colours, essentially tried to bring it to life,” says McSweeney.
He sees the emerging use of stats to drive betting as part of a much-needed overhaul of sportsbooks to make them somewhere bettors can go and hang out and experience the game, through chat, video, real-time stats, audio and live commentary.
The experience counts
“Because you create that experience, customers will stay around longer, enjoy it more, and spend more. That model has been proven. We can see very direct uplift in betting and behaviour based on what the experience is like,” argues McSweeney, who thinks a “phenomenal result” for Betstream would be doubling Betfred’s in-running football revenues.
It will be interesting to see if sportsbooks can widen their customer-base and create a social media-type ‘experience’ out of sports betting and succeed in stimulating betting on markets punters have to date shown limited interest in.
APPLYING SCIENCE TO BETTING BEHAVIOUR
Operators’ use of data and statistic to stimulate betting activity around sports events is not new.
Research-based bettors have always kept data and applied their own systems, and sportsbooks realised early on that if they put numbers up relating to the markets on offer, it would increase the likelihood of people betting on them.
This is borne out by evidence showing that pre-match and in-play betting activity can be significantly stimulated using analytics. Recent testing on 5,000 Betfair users of a version of the Bettorlogic product similar to that now on Ladbrokes showed average weekly bet volumes went up 34% during the test period among profiles with access to the tool compared to those denied access.
Bettorlogic chief executive Michael Falconer says: “The immediacy of understanding how people are going to want to apply the data is crucial, so you have done a lot of the work before it’s even got into their head.”
By tapping into the growing realisation among bettors that by applying science to what they do, they can do it more effectively, or at least more interestingly, such tools enhance the inherent stickiness of in-play, argues Falconer.
“In-play is much less price sensitive. You take the odds comparison guys out of the market, and customers are more likely to be loyal, as they haven’t the time to go look at different prices.”