iGaming Business magazine In-Play Focus 2016 | Page 18
IN-PLAY FOCUS 2016
THE DATA REVOLUTION
FSBTech CEO Dave McDowell on how live betting has made the all-in-one
sportsbook service more essential than ever.
In-play betting has irreversibly changed the
face of the sports betting industry, and in a
few short years has emerged as the primary
driver of revenue growth for most major
sportsbook operators.
But in-play’s impact upon sports betting
also extends beyond the bottom line. It has
transformed the way we interact with data,
and in turn impacted upon almost every
element of a sportsbook, from trading, to
marketing, to CRM.
This stratospheric growth of live betting
has been fed by our unprecedented access
to data direct from the sporting venue,
which has continued to become faster, more
detailed, more accurate, more reliable, and
more legitimate.
But it has also become more expensive as
sports authorities begin to license their data
rights to the betting industry. As a result, it is
critical we extract maximum value from the
data available.
This access to live data has fundamentally
changed the operations and technology
behind a modern sports betting service, and
created a host of opportunities for those
willing to embrace the data revolution.
Primarily, we’ve seen a move from a
labour-intensive industry to one that has
become highly computerised in order to
handle the sheer volume of in-play product
that has quickly become the minimum
expectation for customers.
Whereas