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Mobile Gaming Outlook
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It’s a tricky thing to get right but the complex world of instant betting can prove a hit
for both operators and players, says Max Meltzer
Sports betting has long been a game of opinions. If a player believes
something is going to happen, then as a sportsbook we must give them
an opportunity to put their money where their mouth is. While that
may never change, at Kambi we are seeing a new demographic of
sports betting customer coming through.
The rapid growth of in-play betting, particularly on mobile, has
created an explosion of new quickfire instant betting markets –
bet offers that last anywhere between 30 and 90 seconds. Kambi
began offering instant betting markets around 10 years ago, but it’s
only during the last two years that we’ve really seen an increase in
instant betting appetite.
What these rapid markets offer is a betting option for those that
have no real opinion on the outcome of a game or match but seek
an experience s imilar to the quickfire thrill they enjoy when playing
random number games such as slots or roulette.
This valuable cohort of customer prefers a product where they can
spend five or 10 minutes with a reasonably modest bankroll and turn
that sum over a number of times until spent.
Learning lessons
One of the features of social games like Candy Crush and mobile slots
is that people can enjoy the instant gratification they bring while on
the bus, or during a TV commercial break. Players are able to dip in
and out of the product whenever they please.
Until recently, this immediate and repetitive experience wasn’t
offered by sportsbooks. With the product mix more geared towards
markets with a long shelf life, it didn’t lend itself to ‘snacking’
player behaviour.
This is why Kambi led the way in developing and offering instant
betting markets. Players can now bet in-play on the current point
in tennis, what the next occurrence on a football pitch will be, or
whether the next field goal in basketball will be a two- or three-pointer.
The list goes on.
These instant markets have proven extremely popular, right through
from our customers in Europe, to those in South and Latin America,
and more recently in the US following the opening up of the market
and our partnerships with DraftKings and Rush Street Interactive.
As well as being hugely popular on mobile, they engage the retail
customer too; walk into a PlayCity casino in Mexico and you’ll find
players betting on these rapid markets through one of our modern
self-service betting terminals.
Max Meltzer is chief commercial officer at
Kambi Group. He was previously head of sales
at the Press Association, having originally
joined the company within the racing and sports
betting commercial team.
Appealing to the masses
Having these markets on offer provides our operators with an
opportunity to acquire new players or cross-sell their casino players
into a similarly rapid-fire product, and one which offers greater yield.
While we don’t expect instant sports betting to replace players’ casino
play, it can certainly increase share of wallet, particularly during high-
profile events such as the World Cup or Wimbledon.
Take our customer Mr Green as a prime example. A heritage casino
brand, Mr Green realised instant betting’s crossover appeal to a casino-
playing audience. Leveraging our open APIs, Mr Green built an instant
betting tennis lobby, which recreated the feel of a casino lobby, and
enabled players to bet with one touch – removing the need for a bet slip.
As a result, they now have high turnover customers betting point-
by-point on tennis matches.
Expertise required
However, unlike roulette and slots, instant betting in sports is complex
to offer. That’s not me being disrespectful to online gaming, but
offering an RNG game is very much a different beast to offering odds
on live sports, particularly in-play, and even more so when these
markets settle every minute or so.
Instant betting carries obvious risk, data and latency concerns. And,
as a product, it can only work if the markets are constantly available to
bet, even during difficult match situations. For this, the whole supply
chain must function in perfect harmony: the quickest live score data,
integrated into sophisticated automated trading tools, models based
on years of iterations, all run by an expert trading team able to manage
risk and liabilities in real time.
We have learned a lot of lessons in getting to where we are today –
achieving the steady margins we have on such complex offers is far
from straightforward. And by doing so, we have managed to widen
the appeal of sports betting. We’ve welcomed a new audience to this
wonderful vertical of ours and at the same time opened up a new
revenue stream for our partners.
i GamingBusiness | Issue 112 | September/October 2018
85