How is football betting evolving ahead of the new season?

With the World Cup now firmly in the rear-view mirror, the majority of European football’s top-flight leagues are set to return for the new season this weekend. Meanwhile, the gambling sector is also gearing up for another campaign of competition.

Much has been made of the shift in sports betting as a whole, with an increasing focus from bettors wagering on players over teams.

Micro-betting has offered the sector a way of tapping into this shift, allowing bettors to not only bet on the outcome of a game, but also how the match will play out.

James Derbyshire, sports director of UK & Ireland at LeoVegas Group, says this reflects a fundamental shift in how customers engage with football betting, with the focus moving away from simply predicting a final result and towards expressing an opinion on how a game will unfold.

“Where we’ve been over the past 20, 30 years in football is really focused on team outcomes,” Derbyshire says. “And you can see now that the market is heavily shifting towards more player-based outcomes.

“Customers increasingly want an opinion and an expression of how they think the game is going to play out. That’s across goals, corners, bookings, shots on target. So there’s really been an exponential rise and really, it’s given customers more flexibility on how they enjoy the game from a betting perspective.”

Data driving football betting forward

With Derbyshire highlighting an increasing focus on narrative through player props, this heightens the importance of data providers such as Genius Sports.

Last year, Genius struck a landmark deal with the European Leagues Association, securing the exclusive rights to capture and distribute official betting data for 18 of its member leagues.

As part of this, its GeniusIQ system is driving richer tactical analysis, officiating and fan engagement across the sports ecosystem.

Genius has deployed its computer vision camera systems in stadia across Europe, with AI technology that can collect 10,000 data points from every player 200 times a second, creating a much greater understanding of where exactly the ball and each player is on the pitch at any given time.

As Genius Commercial Director James McKiernan explains, this provides greater opportunity for the company’s operator partners, especially considering both the speed and accuracy that GeniusIQ offers.

“At the moment, in-play bet delays exist where operators and their customers don’t want them,” McKiernan tells iGB. “But if we know the ball is going out for a goal kick and it’s going to take six to seven seconds for that ball to come back in play, you should be able to accept bets with no delays, which means a better experience for your customers. Why would you need a bet or cash-out delay when you know for certain that it’s a goal kick? Machine-captured data is going to solve the headaches of resulting player markets, like shots, too.”

The importance of official data

For Chris Gerstle, director of commercial and business development at European Leagues, the role of official league data is “absolutely critical” in ensuring integrity and accuracy as betting products become more granular.

“Without well-established relationships with the companies that collect official data from within the stadiums, both through human and automated processes using new technologies, it is impossible to ensure the provenance of the data,” he explains.

This is especially important when considering the growth of micro-betting football markets, with Gerstle adding: “This has only reaffirmed the importance of what is a long-standing historical relationship with data providers. It has also reinforced the importance of having official licensed data partnerships.”

Relevance ahead of volume

But while the enhancements in data and rising interest in micro-betting have led to a proliferation of the markets available to football bettors, Derbyshire suggests LeoVegas may have actually gone “full circle”.

“Maybe four or five years ago, it was about how many markets that we have on the site,” Derbyshire explains. “And actually, now we’re thinking more along the lines of which are the markets that are most relevant to the stories that customers want to be engaged with from a football perspective.”

With this in mind, LeoVegas’ thinking has now shifted towards which markets are most appropriate for bettors.

“It’s about personalisation, forms of automation as well, but making sure that customers are served with the right thing at the right time and not being inundated with markets that just aren’t relevant to them anymore,” Derbyshire adds.

“Everybody is very early on in the development of that, but you can definitely see that it’s more around the narrative of the game. So, whether or not you think, okay, well actually, Arsenal are going to dominate Man City. So how do you create markets and offerings around that outcome?

“It’s going to move more towards potentially narrative and the way the customers see those matches unfolding as opposed to having 100 different market outcomes that they can place a bet on at any given time.”

Integrity challenges

But while the interest in player-specific markets is rising, so is the threat of integrity risks due to the increasing number of potential points of manipulation.

Gerstle says the growing popularity of individual player markets has reinforced the need for leagues to work with trusted partners that have safeguards built around official data.

“On behalf of our member leagues who are signatories to our European Leagues agreement, we aim to promote integrity by working with trusted partners who have built-in safeguards as part of their operations that are based around official league data,” he states.

Genius employs a team specifically focused on integrity, developing tools that are capable of identifying spot-fixing.

The company works with leagues and federations to manage the issue in real time, but also sends reports after games and holds education workshops to ensure integrity is protected.

“Official data is a source of truth, and we collect data that’s always authorised and approved by the league,” McKiernan says. “So wherever we’re capturing official data, we always have the foundations in place to protect it.

“Everything we do through our betting business is backed up by equal integrity measures because we work in lock-step with the sports.”

The risk of negative outcomes

A particular area of concern commonly cited in terms of sporting integrity is negative outcomes, for example a basketball player scoring below a certain number of points.

There have been several scandals in the National Basketball Association in which players have allegedly feigned injury when a high volume of bets have been placed on performance “unders”.

Genius takes specific actions to prevent such manipulation, with McKiernan explaining: “We partner with the league, giving them visibility over where betting on their sport is happening. We provide robust integrity solutions, and work with the league to protect what they do and don’t want people to be betting on.

“For example, some leagues restrict bets on negative outcomes, like an individual to score less than a certain amount of points in a basketball game. Real-time bet monitoring and education for the teams and players are key pieces because ultimately, sports and betting are all part of the ecosystem.

“If our integrity monitoring team sees anything that doesn’t look right, we communicate with the league.”

Blurring of the lines between watching and betting

While integrity continues to evolve alongside the growth of player and micro-markets, the same technology is also opening up a much broader range of possibilities for the future of football betting.

Genius has developed BetVision, an interactive in-play betting experience in which gamblers can stream games and bet within one interface, while tracking relevant statistics and betting markets for each individual user.

McKiernan feels BetVision’s blurring of lines between watching and betting will ultimately provide football bettors with a smoother gambling experience.

“Streaming on its own has been around for a long time,” he says. “And the major point we have with sportsbook operators is trying to understand, are those streams actually engaging fans, or are they just there and nice to have?

“We know people are watching the stream and betting at the same time. With BetVision, they don’t have to come out of the streaming experience to place a bet. The lines are becoming blurred between watching and betting. I don’t think they’re separate things. We’re engaging with customers on the sportsbook by making it a more relevant and interesting experience, so they can stream, see stats, track bets and place bets at the same time.”

LeoVegas’ push for combinability

That move towards a more interactive experience is also evident in the way operators are approaching bet builders, with customers increasingly looking to combine different outcomes into a single wager.

Derbyshire says the challenge for operators is to make markets easier to discover and combine, while providing flexibility for bettors.

“For us, the opportunity around how we think about bet builders and how we think about player props isn’t necessarily about adding more and more outcomes to that particular product,” he states. “It’s making them easy to discover and relevant to what the customer wants. And I think the bit that is becoming increasingly prevalent as well is the combinability of them.

“Customers don’t understand why certain outcomes can’t be combined. And that is a popular customer frustration. So really, how we think about it is giving the ultimate flexibility and trying to allow them to be as combinable and flexible as possible. So again, customers can really watch the game and bet on the game in the way that really matches what they think is going to happen.”

With excitement now at fever pitch ahead of the new season, it appears the next phase of football betting will be one that’s defined by how companies harness data and technology to provide an increasingly immersive and enjoyable experience for fans.