Poll: Is one-touch betting the next big in-play innovation?

Last week Paddy Power unveiled some big updates to its mobile app including a One Touch live betting function the operator claims will leave competitors in its wake.

The firm said it developed One Touch after customer research showed a level of frustration at the occasional inability to get in-play bets accepted due to market suspensions and odds volatility.

On the updated app, when a logged-in user clicks onto the in-play screen, they can toggle the One Touch functionality to ‘on’, and select their pre-set One Touch stake.

Once activated, customers simply click the selection odds they want, and the bet is placed for the predetermined stake.

Paddys’ One Touch product manager John Campbell was so confident in the new function that he told EGR he expects copycat offerings to spring up across the industry.

“Firms do the ‘quick bet slip’ kind of thing at the minute but this leaves that stuff behind,” Campbell said. “If competitors want to keep up on in-play betting, we’d anticipate them following us with this.”

However, while the function does speed-up live betting, it is not without its flaws.

There are the obvious concerns about accidental bets being placed – although Campbell said it had not been an issue in the testing phase, it could be a different story once punters start playing with the app when out and about.

Similarly, One Touch is also something of a blunt instrument – punters are going to want different stakes for a team to win a game than they are for a next goal scorer selection, for example. Turning One Touch off to change your stake in order to do this almost defeats the point of the functionality.

Paddys said it is still too early to tell how popular One Touch is proving with punters so for this week’s EGR poll we want to get your opinion – will One Touch prove to be the next step in the evolution of in-play betting, or just another gimmick? Have your say on the right-hand side of the page.