In-Play Sports Betting: How to Raise Your Game in 2022?

The rise of in-play betting and micro-markets, to many, seems a natural outcome when coupled with the meteoric rise of mobile gaming over the last few years.

This iGaming vertical has proved increasingly popular, especially with the younger generation and catalysed by the Pandemic, shows no signs of slowing down.

Henry Newman, Co-Founder of the market-leading in-play platform, BetitRight believes that there is still a lot more we, as an industry, could be doing to leverage and grow this vertical. We caught up with him to hear his thoughts on the future live betting, micro markets and most importantly, player engagement.

Could you introduce BetitRight and the origins of the business?

“BetitRight is the leading in-play betting service designed to help bettors, bet better. The site is the go-to source for analytical sports betting content that offers in depth pre and in-play betting data to better inform consumer betting decisions.

“The revolutionary product evolved out of C&N Sporting Risk’s profitable betting syndicate, now in its seventh year of operation, which leverages key data outputs from predictive modelling to bet on football.

“A core catalyst of BetitRight was a Joint Venture with Spotlight Sports Group to build its In-Play Bet Prompt Product, where Sporting Risk combined its predictive models, with live event feeds and bookmaker price feeds to create engaging in-play bet prompts. The product covers over 50 football markets, with 10-25 prompts generated per match only of the most interesting, engaging and relevant content.”

How does in-play or even micro betting help enhance sports betting experiences and engagement?

“Being able to bet in-play in real time on a multitude of events gives customers enhanced engagement, involvement and overall excitement in their betting experience. Micro-bets placed throughout a live match immerses players in the action and allows for educated decision making to drive betting activity. Those armed with expert insight on certain events are in a better position to take an educational approach to successfully bet on a broader range of markets with relevant information.

“BetitRight achieves this by joining together three feeds of information to generate bet prompts across a wide range of betting markets. The first feed is the output of relevant betting information from our modelling, the core element in the generation of relevant betting information. The second, is a live event feed which delivers key events that occur in-game. And the third is the price feed received from the bookmaker.

“When key events occur in a game, those three pieces of information combine together to generate relevant data and automated sentences – delivered either via an API or a plug and play widget – that can advise and influence consumer betting decisions.

“For example, say Liverpool have gone one up in the first 15 minutes of a game, our product will reference how frequently when they have done this, BTTS ‘Yes’ or Liverpool -1.5 on the handicap, has come in. The engine will then make a bet recommendation using this data. Democratising this data and diversifying betting options gives bettors a chance to wager on games that might otherwise have remained untouched because they now have new, engaging information to guide betting decisions.”

Some operators keep all their trading and operations in-house because they value the ultimate control it gives them. What benefits are there for operators to look externally and partner with a provider such as BetitRight to launch a product like this?

“BetitRight has proven success in striking the perfect balance between enhancing user engagement and activity for operators, while simultaneously servicing the consumer in providing a more educated approach to sports wagering.  Data science and predictive modelling expertise has driven BetitRight’s development and the engagement results show the product is returning impressive results for operators. Providing players with constructive reasons to place bets increases customer interaction and that leads to greater bet propensity. The sticky nature of the content gets users to regularly return and grab their attention ahead of events. Research on the product’s impact reveals high conversion rates around customer engagement, additions to betslip and an overall increased size and volume of bets placed. The power of the product also opens players up to higher value markets for bookmakers.

“In 2021 data taken from several operators and organisations revealed that 24% of sports bettors who engaged with the in-play content added to their bet-slip. On top of this, there was a 450% increase in usage of the product by customers between launch and the end of the football season.  This showed that once consumers become familiar with the bet prompts, they are returning users engaging with the prompts more and more as months passed.

“These increases in activity directly generate additional revenue for leading bookmakers who have hundreds of thousands of users on the site.”

When using live data feeds, what sort of valuable insights can be provided to the player in-game and how does it help them to ‘Bet Better’ with football?

“The live data feeds are an amalgamation of historical information and predictive modelling to provide an edge on expected outcomes across a range of betting markets. Instant access to this information during a game enables sports bettors to capitalise on optimal prices at key moments in a fixture. The player can gain access to vital data to inform betting decision making; this data was not instantaneously available until the launch of BetitRight’s service.

“Intelligent contradiction and price logic exist to ensure all recommendations are relevant. Users will not be shown one recommendation in the first 10 minutes and then a contrasting recommendation 10 minutes later, or a bet priced at 1.1. The recommendations are good; the prices are good; the bets are good.”

3rd party solutions such as BetitRight encourage a more educated and analytical approach to sports wagering. How can operators ensure that the insights gathered are delivered correctly and don’t risk alienating novice players who are intimidated by too many options?

“Our mission of democratising data is driven by ensuring the information is easy to understand. The heavy lifting with the bet-prompt technology is done behind the scenes to allow the data to be presented to players with the utmost clarity and simplicity. BetitRight works closely with its sportsbook partners to provide seamless integrations that remove any friction on the user journey, both in bet understanding and bet execution.”

Football seems to be the most popular application of this product so far but are there any other sports you think intelligent in-play betting software can help maximise the bettor’s live experience?

“Basketball and Esports are two sports that have been identified to be well suited to the in-play product. Basketball is very fast-moving and has a wide selection of markets which means that an educated approach is important to turn a profit. Excluding the play-offs, basketball teams play a minimum of 82 games each season and this has helped build a rich data source that shapes the prompts.

“Esports is another example of a sport that is packed with historical data owing to the sheer number of games that can be played, but it so far has proven hard to access. BetitRight’s data collection and outputs solve this issue and will open up many more betting opportunities for players. Esports games move rapidly, so being able to generate key data at key event points during the game gives the user an opportunity to make an informed betting decision, with relevant data, that they wouldn’t otherwise be able to do.”

Editors’ Note:

As the iGaming market continues to transition to a more customer – centric approach, products such as in-play and micro markets will become increasingly integral to operator portfolios. This idea has been further validated by Henry, who believes that being able to bet in-play in real time on a multitude of events gives customers enhanced engagement, involvement and overall excitement in their betting experience. This is a list of qualities that few other gaming products are able to match!