Data provider Sportradar has launched an AI-driven product aimed at providing bettors with an alternative to live sports and a means for operators to protect their revenues
With the cancellation of live sporting events coming thick and fast over the past couple of months, many operators have seen sports betting revenues fall off a cliff thanks to Covid-19.
But the lack of events doesn’t necessarily mean punters aren’t keen to place bets. In fact, with most other entertainment options limited due to the lockdowns in place across the globe, many players are as interested as ever – if only there were events to bet on.
A number of operators have been creative in their attempts to keep players engaged, with niche events such as Ukrainian table tennis and Belarusian football suddenly occupying positions in the betting world that would have been laughable two months ago.
Other online operators have focused – some quite successfully – on diverting bettors into the casino, lottery or poker verticals in a bid to hold onto their business.
However, it’s esports and virtual sports that have perhaps attracted the most attention from sportsbooks keen to provide bettors with the closest possible products to their usual preference.
While many believe the former has a lot of potential, thus far it’s proven difficult to integrate easily into existing sportsbook offerings. Those operators that have enjoyed success in this area have done so largely by building an entirely bespoke esports offering and pitching it to different players in a different manner to their other sports.
Virtual sports, on the other hand, have proven much more complementary with existing sportsbook offerings. Revenues for many operators have soared in recent years, often beyond expectations, and virtual sports are often described as “filling the gap” between sporting events.
Mind the gap
The problem is that this is a very big and very unprecedented gap. While Sportradar, which has been offering virtual sports for the past 10 years, says its customers are seeing a “considerable uplift” in virtual play at present, it has also recognised a need to provide players with something more akin to the real-world games they are currently missing.
For this reason, it has today launched a new product called Simulated Reality, an AI-powered offering that aims to replicate professional sporting matches as closely as possible.
Werner Becher (pictured), head of US betting at Sportradar, is keen to point out this isn’t simply an extension of virtual sports and says the company has “effectively created a new category”.
“They are two different products. Virtual sports have no AI integration and effectively operate on the same level and mechanics as a casino game,” he explains.
“Simulated reality operates on an entirely different level and is far more complex in its approach, design and build and delivery due to its use of artificial intelligence. The entire product has been built using AI. It also continues to learn and adapt due to the AI systems we use and the millions of data points that we have gathered over 20 years and input into the system.”
Sportradar is starting with football – its most popular game for virtuals – and is effectively looking to finish off the big football seasons in Europe.
Kicking off on Saturday (4 April) at 12.30 with the Aston Villa vs. Wolves game that was scheduled to be played at Villa Park in Birmingham before the pandemic hit, it will run the full length of the game and aim to mimic as closely as possible how that game might have played out.
Sportradar will then continue with the remaining UK Premier League games, the German Bundesliga and Spain’s La Liga, before adding the Champions League and Europa League. In future, it plans to roll out to 700 events per day, including second- and third-tier leagues.
Longer term, an extension to other sports such as tennis, basketball and handball is also on the cards.
Replicating the real game
The idea, according to Becher, is that it, “gives fans the same experience as they would have when watching and betting on a real game: the same teams, at the same day and times they would usually be played, and all the betting options they would normally be presented with on a matchday.”
Bettors will have the option to place bets both pre-match and in-play, in a similar manner to any live sports event.
Sportradar’s position as the biggest data supplier to the betting industry has obviously given it an edge in devising such a product, especially in such a short timeframe. “Normally we collect data from thousands of real games, our AI then analyses the data coming in and calculates the best markets and odds,” says Becher. “With simulated reality we generate the data ourselves from our AI engine.
“All our historic and statistical data from millions of sporting events helps to model an unquantifiable number of data points. We provide the AI engine with all the inputs, categories and filters and within the simulated reality product it then selects the best scenes which fit any given moment within a live game.”
Rather than being pre-recorded, as is the case for some of the other games in the market, the AI adapts as the game plays out.
“The AI engine looks for historic games with similar conditions and odds and, depending on the game, lets the RNG decide which sequences to choose and show next,” explains Becher.
“For example, if Liverpool are playing a supposedly weaker team and are favourites but find themselves 1-0 down after 20 minutes, then they will inevitably push for an equaliser. The engine recognises appropriate but completely unpredictable sequences.”
The million-dollar question
The big question, of course, is whether or not something like this will help operators make up for the losses they are suffering due to the dearth of sporting events.
Becher is confident it can. “If 80% of revenues are generated during live betting, then we are aiming to generate as much with simulated reality.”
It’s a lofty goal, especially when other non-real world sports games such as virtuals have usually been pushed as adding incremental revenue to sportsbooks rather than cannibalising their live sports offerings.
On the other hand, there are almost no live sports to cannibalise at the moment and the product appears sufficiently different to the faster-paced virtuals, which are typically aimed at occupying bettors’ attention for short periods of time.
In any case, with the company offering it to its sports betting partners with no extra cost or integration implications, it seems likely many operators will give it a try. Indeed, Becher says the motivation for the game was largely demand from clients.
“Both retail and online operator revenues across the globe have been hit hard due to the cancellation and postponement of so many sporting events,” he says. “This product has been created and developed in response to the demand by our partners and their customers to continue enjoying the best possible user experience and sporting entertainment while we navigate through these unprecedented times.”
