Research conducted by Bettormetrics, an AI-driven data company specializing in competitive trading intelligence for the sports betting industry, has uncovered that major sportsbooks are losing substantial football turnover due to inefficient market suspension strategies.
The study, which analyzed data from eight prominent online sports betting platforms across more than 40 Premier League matches, examined key metrics such as uptime, overround, unmatched suspension duration, and arbitrage duration. The findings highlight significant lost wagering opportunities as a result of suboptimal suspension practices.
According to the research, there is a clear correlation between market uptime and margin performance. Flutter Entertainment brands Sky Bet and Paddy Power, along with bet365, reported some of the highest suspension times, underscoring the need for fine-tuning strategies among the UK’s biggest sports betting operators. In contrast, Asian-focused brands like Dafabet and SBOBet showed significantly higher uptimes but with lower margins.
Bettormetrics estimates that bet365 alone could be losing over €100 million in turnover annually due to its suspension strategy, while Unibet’s suspension timing accounts for more than €50 million in potential lost wagers. Overall, the report indicates that the bookmakers analyzed could each be losing at least €1 million in real profit per Premier League season, with bet365 potentially losing over €10 million in revenue due to excessive suspension times in its 1×2 markets.
Sabin Brooks, Chief Revenue Officer at Bettormetrics, commented: “Through our analysis, we’re able to put a hard cash value on the deleterious effects of sub-optimal suspension strategies throughout the Premier League season, and the effect on operators’ bottom line is eye watering.
“bet365’s nine-figure number of lost turnover is the most eye-catching, but the effect on smaller operators is even more damaging. The €15m in potential lost wagering is a significant sum for MarathonBet, who could be reinvesting more trading profits into building market share and avoiding the negative association low uptime has on the punter’s betting experience.
“While suspensions are both inevitable and necessary in a trading room, especially with the advent of VAR adding even more uncertainty to pricing up big moments, having a strategy to minimise it in line with the array of other factors can clearly have a major impact on a business’ revenue stream in football.”
Robert Urwin, CEO and co-founder of Bettormetrics, added: “By exploring a range of factors, and utilising a plethora of data sources, we were able to extract an array of interesting insights into the performance of operators across the globe, and how suspensions can seriously affect the bottom line.
“With a clear difference in approach between UK-facing bookmakers and Asian-focused operators when it comes to margin, we can see both pricing approach and suspension strategy are vital to protect against lost revenue leakage.”
