SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Having boosted the live market inventory of Accuscore, CEO Tuomas Kanervala details to SBC readers why sports prediction services should be vital tools for bookmakers and not just betting punters.
Working with media owners such as Yahoo, CBS Sports and the Wall Street Journal, Kanervala details that utilising sports prediction services bookmakers can optimise and refine their customer retention strategies and planning.
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SBC: Hi Tuomas, can you detail to SBC readers Accuscore’s sports prediction services and how they are utilized by a wide range of sports stakeholders?
Tuomas Kanervala: Accuscore simulates sporting events thousands of times and predicts outcomes of the event. This includes team win probabilities, amount of goals or points in the games as well as individual player performance projections for fantasy purposes. We cover every single game from 10+ European football leagues, NFL, College football, NBA, College basketball, MLB and NHL. In addition to this, we cover European ice hockey leagues from Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic and KHL.
Individual sports bettors can use our predictions in order to make a more analytical betting decision. At the same time, fantasy players utilize our projections to draft best possible teams for season long fantasy or daily fantasy leagues. Media companies have used our projections to generate more pre-game conversation with their experts. Operators benefit our content when they provide this objective third party information for their customers for enlightened decisions for their bets.
SBC: Why should industry operators and betting stakeholders pay attention to sports prediction dynamics? How does effective prediction help day to day operations?
TK: Of course, there are companies who provide odds to operators that they use in their day-to-day operations. Accuscore’s content is directed more to operator’s marketing side.
When we think casual bettor who has decided to use £100 per week for his bets. If he loses all of those, the revenue he generates to an operator is £100 per week. Also, if he just losses week after week, there is a quite big chance that he is going to decrease his betting or even stop it completely.
If this casual bettor has more information to make more accurate bets, he will win here and there. This will at least keep him interested in betting week after week improving bookmaker retention. It might be so that he will start to increase his stakes or bets again his winnings. This directly increases operator’s revenue.
SBC: What data variables does your team collect and gauge, when a sport… What are core variables for effective sports prediction?
TK: Our algorithms use historical data, injury information, lineups, weather, team cohesion and qualitative input from our sports analysts who have a detailed information about the specific sports and league they are a charge of. The key for effective prediction is to find signals from the noise. There needs to be clear and empirically proven correlation and linkage between input and output of the simulations. Simulation models and algorithms are never ready. One of the key metric for successful prediction is the accuracy that drives constant development of the simulations.
SBC: As operators place a higher emphasis on live sports metrics, how has impacted effective/efficient sports prediction?
TK: Live predictions have traditionally been set up a bit differently than pre-game predictions. In the past there haven’t been possibilities to run thousands of simulations within seconds to update predictions live after goals or other key events. The live predictions have been based more on situational analysis and manual input of the sports analyst. Now when we have access to constantly increasing computing power, there will be options to run simulations constantly during the games as well.
SBC: How do you see your sports prediction product developing in the coming months?
TK: We will add few new football leagues – England League One and League Two – to the scope of our predictions. This would increase our coverage of British football to every single game of five top leagues. We are constantly monitoring our performance and keep updating algorithms for better results.
We have also tested since the start of the year automated betting solution that is a base for betting fund operations. This is not open for everybody to deposit 100 pounds, but for more “institutional” investors who want to take advantage for our prediction accuracy.
SBC: You will be showcasing your product at the upcoming boscon 2017 conference, what do you want delegates to learn about Accuscore?
TK: Accuscore provides accurate predictions and generates different content for media and operators. We have been working with all major sports media in USA – eg. ESPN, YahooSports, CBS Sports, Wall Street Journal, Sporting News as well as with operators in Europe – Veikkaus, Unibet, NordicBet, Coolbet, Betfair to name few. Our predictions can be packaged to automated data feeds, articles, animated videos or blogs.
Our subscription service helps individuals to make better betting decisions and our fantasy projections ensure that fantasy player has better chances to win their leagues. Our predictions have been accurate since 2004 when the company was established. When bettor bet £100 to value pick and totals to every football game we predicted during last season in 10 football leagues, his pure profit was at the end of the season was 33571 pounds. All our historical predictions and results are visible for our customers since 2009.
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Tuomas Kanervala – CEO- Accuscore
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