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