SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Stats Perform hosted one of the biggest launch events of the year this week, showcasing five brand new sports betting innovations. The sports data and sports betting technology firm also announced a rebrand of Watch&Bet, renamed and repurposed to Bet LiveStreams to reflect a new age of “interactive, hyper-entertaining, ‘built-for-bettors’ video”.
Setting the scene on stage for an impressive show from a secret London venue, Chief Betting Officer Andrew Ashenden stated: “It’s a real privilege to be stood here today, introducing our new betting products. We believe passionately in their potential to light up your sportsbook and accelerate its growth.
“By ‘light up your sportsbook’, we mean game-changing new tools that will empower you to create personalised and hyper-entertaining betting experiences, driven by amazing new content and amazing new ways of using content.
“These are tools with simple integrations, that are packed with incredibly potent features. They give a brand new meaning to the term ‘sports betting entertainment’ and will help you increase share of attention, and share of wallet.”
Handling the first three launches was Nick Cockerill, Vice President of Product, who introduced viewers to Instant Highlights; Smart Stats Overlays; and Dynamic Betting Stats.
Cockerill chose to kickstart proceedings by explaining the Watch and Bet rebrand, saying: “Bet LiveStreams is the new name for what you might know as Watch and Bet, our industry-leading service delivering premium live streams around the clock to sportsbooks all over the world.
“But Bet LiveStreams is a lot more than a new name. It now includes two powerful new features, to take sportsbook streaming beyond simply watching, it’s a new type of experience – one which is more relevant and entertaining than ever and more proactively engaging to more of your customers, all around the world.
Cockerill turned his attention to Instant Highlights, the first flagship feature of Bet LiveStreams, explaining: “A customer places a bet pre-match, they close the app, and go about their day.
This is a typical experience of millions of customers placing bets around the clock. A goal goes in and the customer receives a push notification, a simple update, an attempt to re-engage the customer, to attract them back to the app to track their bet, or to place a new one.
“But right now, these notifications have a low success rate…there’s no compelling reason, no significant call to action that makes me want to go back. With the Instant Highlights push feed, you can change that. Now, you can offer the customer the chance not simply to know the goal has gone in, you can give them the chance to see it, seconds after the ball has crossed the line.”
“But perhaps the most exciting thing about Instant Highlights is how many different ways there are to unlock the true potential of live streaming. What about a customer already watching a stream, but thinking about leaving the app, because the match has slowed down? Now you can simply direct them to highlights from another game that’s playing at the same time. It’s a step change in the ability to hold a customer’s attention and imagination.”
Switching focus to Smart Stats Overlays, Cockerill said: “The rapid growth in available betting markets means it’s more important than ever to get bettors the specific information they crave, at the right time, without disrupting the match. Smart Stats Overlays is here to do exactly that.
“For major and minor leagues, for outright, team and player markets, it means in-play bettors who want contextual stats through the match don’t have to leave the stream, or your app, to research their next selection.
“Smart Stats Overlays lights up live streams by putting the most important team and player statistics and insights right into the eye-line of bettors without them lifting a finger or navigating away from the app. We automatically select the best metrics, to show the most relevant information at the perfect time, without getting in the way of the action.”
Smart Stats Overlays is available now for soccer, including for all the major leagues in the firm’s live streaming package, and more metrics and sports will be added through the rest of the year.
Next up was the new Opta-powered Dynamic Betting Stats, built specifically for stats markets, both on their own and as part of bet builders and multiples. Said Cockerill: “The Dynamic Betting Stats API is the first and only dedicated, pre-match and in-play statistics service for player stats markets.
“Utilizing the vast, unrivalled Opta data store for football, the API can provide, in sub-second response times, detailed form data and statistical insight into 18 player and team-specific metrics that make up every possible stats market, specifically designed to allow operators to build disruptive, groundbreaking and personalised stats and insight experiences.
According to Cockerill, that information can be requested for any player or any metric within a single competition or across them all and by any time period. ”Quite simply, the Dynamic Betting Stats API represents the single biggest leap forward in access to player stats in the history of sports betting,” he said.
Taking over presentation duties for the final brace of product launches was US Product Manager Bryan Shumway. Beginning with the Automated Betting Insights API, he told viewers: “This year, we’ve taken insights to the next level – now, they’re not just for teams, they’re for players. They’re not just pre-match, they’re in-play.
“Our feed of new in-play team and player betting insights provides real-time, bite-sized context for over 10,000 soccer matches across 35 competitions. It’s also available for NBA and NFL, with tennis and more coming soon.
“Powered by Opta data and proprietary AI and machine learning, we select the best insights about a player, match, or team, in real-time as the game unfolds. Every insight is linked to a specific betting market and written in engaging, easy-to-understand language so customers can make fast, informed betting decisions.”
Last, but not least, Shumway took the wraps off the new Automated Betting Preview videos and articles, saying: “What’s different about these previews, like the in-play betting insights, is their unprecedented scale. Both the preview videos and articles are fully automated using AI which means they can be produced for any competition in our vast database.
As a result, you can offer high-quality, journalistic content across your sportsbook, for top tier games and teams, right down to individual players, for hundreds of competitions at all levels across the world. And what’s more, the preview videos are not only just pre-game but also mid-game, such as at half-time or even post-match, as part of the bet tracking experience.
In sports betting, these are under-served periods for interest and engagement, for which you can now provide ”built-for-betting” content that isn’t available anywhere else.”
If Stats Perform set out to deliver a bigger, better product launch than this industry has seen before, they achieved it.
Watch a replay of the event here www.statsperform.com/LUYS.
