Poll: Will screening sports in live casino rooms catch on?

Innovation needn’t be complicated, as Coral proved last week when it streamed Cheltenham Festival races live to customers in one of its live casino rooms.

In an attempt to satisfy the needs of roulette players who also like to bet on the gee-gees, the operator rebranded one of its live casino rooms to ‘The Cheltenham Room’, and equipped it with a TV screen showing all races across the four-day event.

As well as keeping its players active on the wheel – which kept spinning during races – the room also offered players special bonuses and pre-race info from its in-house horseracing expert.

Coral described the streaming of a live sports event to a live casino room as “an industry first”, but could this idea catch on?

The practicalities around the set-up appeared pretty simple and relatively cheap. If successful, it will have seen players remain playing casino instead of leaving the room to watch the races.

The streaming in live casino rooms also opens up the option of doing similar across other major sporting events, should the bookmaker hold the streaming rights.

However, the live casino did not offer the customer the ability to place a bet on the race, meaning customers would still need to leave the room in order to place a bet via the sportsbook.

Furthermore, with most of the races being screened live on ITV, UK-based customers could have simply switched on their TVs and double screened if they wanted to simultaneously watch the race and play casino.

With this in mind, this week’s poll asks whether you feel streaming sports into live casino rooms could be adopted more widely. Have your say below: