With a summer World Cup in Russia forming the centrepiece of a mammoth 12 months in sports betting, iNTERGAMINGi asks industry experts how best to cash in
As a dynamic and evolving industry, any sportsbook operator who stands still this year is guaranteed to crash to the turf. In football, the summer World Cup in Russia brings with it stringent challenges in terms of competition for customers, who now expect to be presented with myriad cash-out options while also requesting their own odds – to name but two big changes from the last FIFA jamboree in Brazil four years ago. There’s also the Winter Olympics to consider. The Pyeongchang event has assumed a status in the consciousness of the general public due to the International Olympic Committee’s ban of Russia and with interest piqued, bettors will demand innovative markets on which to chance their arm in the wide variety of sports on show.
Recent figures suggested that 80-per-cent of all betting revenues now come from live betting and looking ahead through 2018, Delasport’s Ran Fodor believes that getting the level of fine detail right is key to forming an attractive proposition for the weight of customers who want to bet while watching. “All companies are putting a lot of effort in enhancing the experience and possibilities that their live betting platforms provide,” Fodor says. “This is only logical, since the majority of bets are placed on live matches – not only bets are settled faster this way, but bettors have the ability to place multiple and varying bets as the game progresses. Of course, there is the overall excitement of being part of the ongoing action. “One of the keys to unlocking the full potential of live betting is to provide even more detailed and comprehensive ‘Live Centre’ platforms. More statistics and better visuals will certainly improve the overall experience and attract even more players. The inclusion of dynamic cash-out features is also something that we will see more and more of – systems that allow bettors to guarantee profits or minimise losses as the game goes along. “A feature that has been gaining more and more attention is the option to place bets on the next action that will happen in a sports event. Not only is this really attractive and exciting for the bettors, it also helps operators maximise the volume of placed bets in a short time frame.”
Looking more closely at data, Abelson Info’s Jeevan Jeyaratnam holds that for the coming year operators will need to at least consider working with official suppliers. “Sports betting remains a dynamic marketplace and nobody can afford to rest on their laurels with so many new, heavily funded competitors entering the space each year,” says Jeyaratnam. “New and existing firms are forced to innovate in order to retain market share. “For 2018, we can expect to see further development around the pricing of the ever-increasing quantities of granular data we have access to. Football is, once again, the test bed for much of this and there are a number of new operators promising to provide all manner of new data points. “However, at this level some of the data is difficult to verify and validate. From a settlement point-of-view, this leads me to believe that operators will require official data sources for verification and customer satisfaction. “Some of the smaller enterprises may find it difficult to agree terms with tier one and two clients for this very reason. I believe that those companies providing odds using this granular data will require the assistance of official data suppliers in order to be considered legitimate.”
Read EvenBet, Digitain’s and Sporting Solutions opinions in Issue 1 of iNTERGAMINGi
