SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Continuous enhancements are critical in order to stay ahead of the game across most facets of business on a global scale, but this is especially important across the dynamic, fast-paced landscape of sports content supporting media, broadcast, fantasy sports and sports betting.
In addition to offering a selection of reflections and predictions, as is customary at this time of year, the above formed the central focus of recent discussion between SBC News and Greg Kirkorsky, Chief Commercial Officer of SportsDataIO.
Below, he addresses a huge past year for the company, as well as examining key issues such as personalisation, microbetting, artificial intelligence and much more.
SBC News: Before we proceed to take a look at what 2024 could have in store, could you offer a quick reflection on what the previous 12 months has delivered for SportsDataIO?
Greg Kirkorsky: It’s been a tremendous year, where in reflection 2023 has taught us a lot and SportsDataIO is geared up to make 2024 its best year yet! In 2023, SportsDataIO continued its upward trajectory, beating its annual goals again!
It was also a year, where we heavily invested and utilised internal data and analysis to cascade a new growth plan for 2024 which is all about servicing, supporting and enabling our partners for continued success.
As a product and market led company, we continue to build solutions to service fan engagement tools, fantasy sports products, and sports platforms across digital media, mobile, broadcast, sports betting, as well as all of the client market segmentations we support (24 in total)!
SBCN: In recent times, what have you found is the prime focus for sportsbooks regarding their offerings? And how are you best positioned to help deliver an optimum solution?
GK: Last year, we saw tremendous growth and investment from partners across sports betting. These included affiliate marketing companies, sports betting tool(s)/service providers, professional sports betting syndicates, sports betting platform providers and sportsbooks/operators, as well. All of which have a dependency on fast, accurate, reliable and trusted sports data sources.
Much of the focus for sportsbooks was placed on securing new customers, retaining those customers and delivering compelling ‘content first’ solutions, accompanying traditional sports betting UI/UX interface(s).
Operators are constantly challenged with what a sports betting experience should look like; they tapped into our deep experience(s) across sports media, fantasy sports and consumer facing solutions!
Since we have fuelled traditional sport verticals historically, to support front end sports publishing needs and assets, we now find ourselves uniquely positioned to offer up front end solutions that allow for sports betting partners to capitalise around.
More and more data solution/consulting style arrangements are being born out of this discovery, as sports betting continues to take a firm hold in the North American market.
In addition, traditional fantasy sports and DFS companies continue to engage early sports betting enthusiasts. Our fantasy sports partners offer a core fan engagement product and solution offering, which serve as a gateway into more mature sports betting channels and businesses.
SBCN: If you had to select one emerging trend that you believe will be key to success through the current year, what would you opt for and why?
GK: In 2024, companies continue to look for ways to differentiate themselves while competing for new customers. Personalisation is a key way to drive new engagement and to appeal directly with consumers who may be on the fence, and not sure if they want to dip into their wallet and place their first sports wager.
As an example, sports bettors, with a bevy of solutions providers tempting them to place a bet, will be attracted to more direct and in-tune messaging that aligns with their key interests (favourite sports team, athlete, alma mater, where they are located, brand they purchase or follow, etc).
Aligning targeted messaging with personalisation, and even perhaps first party data, will be key to drive engagement, time spent on site/app, money spent and bet and ultimately GGR (for the operators) across gaming.
With more and more companies buying/spending across sports/sports properties globally they look for ways to engage new customers. They continue to spend dollars against platforms that have access to sports fans and sports bettors.
Media companies continue to diversify their offerings and live events through multiple mediums. Broadcasters now offer streaming solutions and platforms to drive engagement through personalisation and tailor their brand partners’ offerings by directly tying to their consumers’ interests and needs.
SBCN: Microbetting has continued to increase in popularity during recent times. How do you see this playing out?
GK: As people become more educated and acclimated to the emerging gaming and sports betting market, operators will look to widen their commercial opportunities and lengthen the time (during a live sports broadcast – game) consumers can place a bet.
Microbetting solution providers will continue to support end users, via sportsbooks leveraging their technology that extend sports betting windows and offer up the greatest volume of activity to drive entertainment across sports wagering.
Microbetting technology continues to advance and offer up the potential for sports fans to bet on discrete gameplay and outcomes, even at the pitch-by-pitch and play-by-play level.
SportsDataIO’s live in-game data offering (grading out the results of in-play and micro-betting), increases the sports betting gaming window and offers our partners’ sports fans an unlimited amount of ‘sweat equity’, as they are able to bet throughout an entire game.
SBCN: A constant pipeline of developments and/or updates are integral to staying ahead within this industry. With this in mind, how is SportsDataIO continuing to evolve its own products to stay ahead of the game?
GK: As a company, SportsDataIO continues to invest in core technologies and solutions to empower its partners through unique products like SportsDataIO’s BAKER Prediction Engine, which launched in 2022.
BAKER uses AI, ML, and monte carlo simulations to derive probabilistic outcomes against future player and team performances. It has been at the front of our product roadmap for the last two years.
BAKER was built, with the assumption, it would solve for next gen fantasy projections across our media and fantasy sports partners. However, BAKER has evolved into much more, now supporting large fantasy sports organisations and sports betting platforms/operators alike.
BAKER’s product evolution empowers trading teams and betting platform providers by possessing correlations amongst 10,000 simulations at the play-by-play level. This depth of data now fuels the creation of same game parlays, true odds, and alternate lines to facilitate more engaging and profitable markets for operators.
Today, the product even provides unmatched trends analysis and a proprietary ‘Interestingness Rating’ that aligns with unique customer preferences + personas and is being utilised as a marketing tool to support personalised messaging on behalf of a sportsbook’s brand looking to connect, acquire and retain their customers.
SBCN: Building on this previous question, what sports do you believe will be high performers through the current year? And which tech development could have the biggest impact?
GK: Aside from the traditional core four major professional US sports, I personally believe we will see continued demand and growth across more niche sports such as women’s sports (WNBA was at an all time high this prior year) and the Summer Olympics in Paris 2024.
Though not something SportsDataIO is covering yet; there are even opportunities for emerging sports, like Pickleball, which is interesting based on how it is viewed and played in the United States today – by all age brackets!
SportsDataIO, continues to embrace technology to enhance and add new sports, capture increased and differentiated data sets, curate new products and refine low latency demands across its sports feeds.
Enhanced data collection requires automation and fact checking around discrete data points/metadata within mapping endpoints and files being delivered via delivery protocols throughout traditional game day reporting.
As for our product sets, artificial intelligence plays a major role for the company, as it accelerates its integration of aggregated odds; adding additional sportsbooks and thousands of sports markets globally.
As sports betting continues to grow and sports micro-markets support new betting windows, automation and speed will rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to speed up the processing of discrete data points.
A proprietary piece of technology SportsDataIO is excited to share in 2024 is its newest tool, Replay. Replay is a robust test environment that now gives its customers a unique behind the scenes experience.
Replay allows our partners to gain access to real world data, on their timeline and access our APIs independent of when games are actually live. This allows them to gain a leg up in surveying our data/technology and fostering transparency during their decision making process.
SBCN: What are you expecting to be the key trends through 2024?
GK: In 2023, we saw the convergence of sportsbooks/media companies and it will still take on some new players/new names (known and unknown in 2024 and beyond).
BetFanatics and ESPN Bet are relatively new to the market, though both have huge audiences and have proven that they can dominate globally inside the sports industry; albeit they have done this across numerous sports platforms and verticals historically.
Their new pursuits, which will include the monetisation of their current consumers/fans, will include offering up sports betting to current client base that may have not been previously exposed to sports betting.
These are just two examples of large sports media empires investing in sports betting and sports content geared for the bettor today, versus the traditional sports fan.
SportsDataIO continues to invest in its product suite to best leverage its data sets to support its commercial partners in this space and to curate new services supporting traditional sports media, fantasy sports, sports content tool providers, predictive analytics and new technologies dependent upon historical, in-season and real time data solutions.
