SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
AI has experienced unimaginable growth over the last few years with companies like OpenAI and Microsoft being at the forefront of this revolution.
Trading in sports betting has emerged as yet another area where the technology can bring significant improvements with its increased pricing and risk management, as well as full automation capabilities.
The latest from SBC in partnership with Soft2Bet brings you the Digital Innovation Day with a focus on sportsbook tech, where we asked our partnering experts to evaluate the implementation of AI trading and its effects on sportsbooks and players, as well as its impact on operators and their staff.
Kicking off the panel discussion was Christina Thakor-Rankin, moderator and Principal Consultant at 1710 Gaming Ltd, who got straight to the point: “Am I right in saying we’re already using AI in some shape or form within our trading rooms?”
First to answer was fellow panellist Matthew Trenhaile, Consultant at Anubis Trading Limited, who said: “We certainly are.”
“From the moment where bookmakers went online they realised they are generating a huge amount of data – across not just the bets themselves but their customer behaviours on their websites as well,” Trenhaile added.
“They’ve built up enormous data sets and the only way to get the most from those data sets was to go down the path of machine learning techniques and language models.
“The reality is that as storage collectively became cheaper, as processing power became more accessible and as data sets grew larger, it became the case that trading rooms would be foolish not to try and leverage that data to make better decisions.”
Following on from the point of large data sets, Thakor-Rankin reminded the audience of the enormous expansion that betting has seen over the last 15 years or so, with prospective betting markets significantly increasing global betting volumes.
This is also where her next question stemmed from, which asked if using machines and tech is actually inevitable in today’s world of sports betting.
Trenhaile said: “Where AI will really kick in is where bookmakers’ player bases have gotten so large. It allows you to answer questions about why your ever-increasing player base is doing what it’s doing.
“From a trading perspective this is about minimising the risks to the bookmaker and trying to make sure that sophisticated players aren’t damaging the bottom line over time. That same profiling can also be leveraged across all parts of the bookmaker.”
Ian Perrygrove, panel speaker and Chief Risk Officer at Kwiff, also chipped in by highlighting the commercial value that AI can introduce by allowing smaller companies to compete with bigger players.
“We’re all sensing that AI is something that is revolutionising everything. You can’t be behind the curb on that. Measured approaches are going to be slightly better. There is also a commercial driver that I absolutely see leading us there. And the rest of the business may be following that.
“I’m super lucky to have a great data science team here at Kwiff – a very small organisation. And for us to be able to compete with larger operators, we’re going to have to use some of these concept ideas and tools within the relevant budgets.”
The discussion then branched off to exploring where AI can help with preventing match-fixing and money laundering, with all three participants sharing their expert views. To watch the full webinar, view the rest of the panel sessions from that day and more, click here.
