New balls please: Tennis goes micro

DraftKings’ recent acquisition of the 85% slug of provider Simplebet it didn’t already own for up to $195m threw the spotlight once again on the emergence of micro betting as a form of in-play that has been gathering strength in the US.

The success of the format – sometimes micro markets – has been ascribed to the nature of certain key sports in the US market. 

Notably, the stop-start characteristics of both American football and baseball are often seen as being particularly useful from the perspective of breaking games down into more bet-able moments.

Indeed, in announcing the Simplebet acquisition, Corey Gottlieb, DraftKings’ chief product officer was quoted as saying the proposed acquisition would “allow DraftKings to leverage Simplebet’s proprietary technology to create an in-play wagering experience that moves at the speed of sports.”

Such is the enthusiasm for the format in North America that a small army of suppliers have rushed into the area of micro betting including providers such as Kero Sports, nVenue and Huddle.

But, says Tomash Devenishek, CEO Kero Sports, the belief that “only American sports are suited for micros is outdated”.

Serve and volley

A new development set to change the micro-betting landscape and which has the potential to bring the format more clearly into the sphere of European and global betting markets is Sportradar’s launch of micro-betting options on tennis.

“Tennis has long been an in-play sport,” says Karl Danzer, SVP of odds services at Sportradar. “You obviously have betting on the outcome of a match, the outcome of a service game and, indeed, we now have point-by-point betting. These are very much binary outcomes and up until now that is where the betting stopped.”

Where Sportradar’s innovation comes in is that it is introducing betting that is even more granular, going beyond point-by-point and now betting on aspects of the game in progress such as the rally length, the errors, whether the point will be won by a backhand or a foreground shot, a volley.

“Basically, it’s introducing betting on the nuances of a game of tennis,” Danzer says. “It is offering more depth around specific points. It is betting beyond the binary outcome.”

Micro betting scepticism abounds

It is the long history of in-play betting in Europe – and within that, tennis in particular – that perhaps helps explain what might be described as old-world scepticism that has surrounded the emergence of micro betting in the US online sports betting space.

It is a scepticism which begins with the very terminology. “The definition of micro markets is still very unclear,” admits Leo Gasper, CEO and co-founder of provider Huddle. “It can be both player props and micro bets such as Simplebet.”

He points out that tennis, in its original in-play incarnation, was already, arguably, micro betting. “Next point betting is definitely micro betting,” he states.

Clyde Harris, consultant with Circle Squared, agrees that definitions around micro betting are slippery. But what ultimately counts is the reaction of the consumer. “I’m not sure customers have much of a sense of micro betting at all,” he suggests. “If you are in the industry you will but the customers just want enjoyable betting opportunities.”

Harris says the evolution in tennis betting being promised by the introduction of more micro betting options on ATP fulfils this overarching aim. 

“Tennis should work pretty well,” he says. “With all innovations in in-play, the fundamental tension is that you want something to happen quickly, to encourage punters to want to bet, but not too quickly so that people don’t have the time to look at what is happening and have an opinion or take a side. So, something short and snappy but not too short and snappy.”

The Goldilocks question

To get that equation just right – what might be termed the Goldilocks question for in-play – Sportradar has employed AI and machine learning as contained within its computer vision technology offering.

Under the terms of its rights deal with the ATP, Sportradar has player and ball tracking data now embedded meaning there is real-time collection and distribution of the on-court action.

“The scoring data comes directly from the umpire’s chair,” says Danzer. “But the umpire can’t collect this other data. This is where the tracking data comes in. It gives us the required data around the character of each individual player, how they play, what are their strengths and weaknesses. It’s the strategic elements of how they play.”

Changing minds

“Tennis is actually quite ripe for innovations in micro betting, if you can do them properly,” says Marc Thomas, head of commercial, product and marketing at Algosport.

He argues that in-play betting on tennis has fallen behind development in football (soccer) betting, particularly due to the rapid expansion of bet builder products. “Tennis betting hasn’t really been pushed forward.”

But Thomas argues that Sportradar could be pushing at an open door with a reinvigorated ATP product. “Operators will pay more for something if it is better, faster, more accurate and with more markets,” he says. “At a high level there has to be a perceived extra value.”

All of which opens up the question as to whether there is an appetite for more micro betting in Europe.

Micro markets making moves

Any discussions around developments in sports betting are dominated by what is going on in the US. But as Harris points out, the industry is not siloed and what happens in North America isn’t so much being followed as being nurtured within organisations that have their feet planted on both sides of the Atlantic.

“The big conglomerates are so big, there is a natural sharing of information anyway,” says Harris. “If something is working in one market, there is no way they won’t be looking at offering it across into other markets.”

It is instructive, for instance, to see the extent to which Entain, BetMGM and MGM Resorts have all spoken during recent investor meetings about what Entain’s recently acquired Angstrom odds and trading operation means.

And while a lot of that chatter has been about what Angstrom might be able to bring to the BetMGM same-game parlay offering in the US, Entain’s interim CEO Stella David made the point during her company’s Q1 earnings update that Angstrom was also as much about enhancing its European offerings as those stateside.

“It’s such an opportunity for generating competitive advantage, not only in the US but in other markets,” she told the analysts.

Angstrom might not – as far as we know – be working on micro markets, but the implication is clear: the innovations it will be bringing to the US will also be brought to bear in Europe. This is very definitely not one-way traffic.

Cross pollination in sports betting

“There is so much cross pollination now,” says Harris. “We don’t exist in a siloed world where the Europeans are not aware of what the Americans are doing.”

What they are doing, arguably, is attempting to rewrite the book on how to offer a betting product. “We are seeing some interesting things in the US,” says Tom Daniel, senior vice-president for trading at Huddle. 

“The US is looking at this with fresh eyes and they are innovative by default. And with micro betting they are looking at it from a user perspective in a way that the Europeans haven’t done,” Daniel adds.

It is worth noting that Jason Robins, CEO at DraftKings, spoke during a recent conference hosted by Bank of America about how the acquisition of Simplebet was attractive not just because of the cost savings alone of bringing a vendor in-house.

“The upside is that we can really continue to enhance our live betting product to a point where we are heads and tails ahead of competition,” he told the audience. “I actually think currently live betting, we do have the best-in-class product… [but] I think there’s an opportunity to make it better.”

Marginal gains

It will be the potential of the micro betting market that will eventually determine the extent to which we see the format grow a larger footprint in Europe. Viewed from the standpoint of current offerings on tennis, micro betting on tennis – that is, the current market for betting down to the level of point-by-point – is somewhat niche.

But Daniel adds that the “missed opportunity” is to capture the bettor who may want to engage with a specific trigger point in a match, whether that be tennis or another sport. “It’s about opening it up to having more options,” he adds.

“The unmet demand is someone watching a game who wants to be given a bet in the next minute,” he adds.

“Europe is unfashionable but there are opportunities there and if you want to entice a new generation, you need a really good user interface.”

Making micro betting more contextual

Harris expresses similar thoughts. He suggests that if the aim of an operator is to increase engagement with a site and its stickiness, then a micro betting offering could provide some of the answer.

“You want to keep them engaging with the site and micro betting is seen as being a good thing from that point of view,” he says.

But he says that one innovation he is yet to see is that of combining micro betting with other aspects of an offering such as bet builder.

“The concepts might not work together, though,” he adds. “But the potential is there to make micro betting more contextual.”

Devenishek says that his company’s efforts have been directed at moving micro betting on from “traditional” markets which “resolves quickly and is typically available throughout the entire game, with constantly recalculated odds and often with variations based on player or team variables.”

Instead, Kero works on markets which are “triggered by specific game events”. Two things happen here, he says. First, the ‘base’ market is adjusted to reflect the game’s context, making it more relevant and, second, a ranking algorithm prioritises this market over others, surfacing it as top options for bettors in real-time. 

“From our experience with over 100 global sportsbook partners, we’ve seen the importance of contextuality firsthand,” Devenishek says.

“Basic integrations, where markets are simply added to a new tab, don’t drive the same engagement that advanced integrations that ‘merchandise’ markets across the home and event pages and pair them with live streams.” 

ATP

Danzer points out that Sportradar’s advantage (pardon the pun) in respect to ATP micro betting is that it can also provide both the visuals, via a streaming offering, and also an augmented streaming product that can visualise the outcomes and results of shot-by-shot betting. “It’s very modular,” he adds.

And this isn’t just an approach that can work with tennis. “We’re seeing tremendous success with soccer across our international partners, a sport many thought would be a challenge for micro markets,” says Devenishek.

Meanwhile, Daniel points out that the “killer app” for micro betting might be cricket and specifically the IPL. 

“That could be 90% micro markets,” he says. “That could really fly.”