The gambling world has undergone momentous change over recent years, and we have arrived at a stage now where it is possible to bet live (Live Betting) on the action that is happening right before your eyes. Whether it is horse racing, football, Gaelic games, or rugby, the action on the racecourse or field is translated instantaneously into an odds format that represents what is going on in the action. Placing bets on live action for sports fans will most likely be second nature nowadays, such is the presence and popularity of sports betting.
However, behind the scenes, there is a full cast ensuring the odds are keeping up with the play to keep players immersed in the simultaneous act of watching and betting. With tech and software entering an even more advanced age, the capabilities for online bookmakers to create a fully immersive experience are seemingly endless.
There is a newfound sense of immediacy when it comes to watching sports, especially if you are betting on a live event too. Missing any action becomes much more significant for both activities with individual moments and split-second decision-making potentially making the difference. There are many powers at work to ensure these two align with each other smoothly. While punters ogle at the live sporting action and try to find the most profitable angle and odds, here is what is happening behind the scenes to make all that possible.
It begins with a stream
Nowadays, there are so many television companies vying for the rights to show sports. In Ireland, there are Premier Sports, RTE, TG4, Sky Sports, Setanta Sports, and TNT Sports which all offer sports coverage. However, due to those strides in technology and software, online bookmakers are also able to stream live action. It must be noted that live streaming of football matches is still relatively new to these online operators, but there has been a breakthrough in sports shown on these platforms.
It might seem like a simple case of videoing something and transmitting it to another media source. However, there are steps between capturing an image or event and producing an excellent quality stream on a platform. In a nutshell, here are the steps required to stream the action to you:
- Record content with image and audio
- Compress content and produce in a digital format
- Send to content delivery network for release
- Content data cached to optimise bandwidth
- Picture and audio decoded (usually) via HTML5
- Voila, the stream is produced and aired
There is much more to it than simply broadcasting an image. For an online bookmaker to successfully stream a live event, optimal latency is required. For these operators, this means low. For live sports betting to work effectively, there needs to be as little lag as possible, besides the natural lag created by the online bookmaker.
Event data collection
Sports betting odds are not chances plucked out of thin air or guesses. They are deeply considered representations of what is happening at an event. Often it can be simple. If a team goes a goal down, their chances of winning generally decrease. However, if they are dominating a match, then they will still have a decent chance of securing at least a draw, if not the win. This happens regularly in sports, so how do online bookmakers know what live odds to release?
Despite our reliance on technology, there is still a human element to assembling data for live odds and a digital method of course. At events like football or hurling matches, live scouts will report on the action and give a human perspective on how the events of the match are unfolding. However, it is the intervention of tech that has allowed the live betting market to explode.
With scouts posted live at matches, their input can nowadays be corroborated in rapid time with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI is a piece of technology that can perform tasks based on human learning. For the purpose of live odds, AI can scour huge sets of data and discover patterns that can in turn be used to create the overall picture of how a sporting event is playing out. For football, this could include statistics like entries into the penalty area, passes exchanged between certain players, or the number of “big chances” falling to a player.
Overall, the collaborative efforts of human beings and tech are responsible for the live odds that are constantly changing throughout an event, but it is tech and its rapid operation that allows online bookmakers to create odds for the live action.
The creation of live odds
The final aspect in the production of live betting odds is the determining of the odds. Whether the odds go longer or shorter is determined by the information collected by the scout and AI. Once a betting platform has these variables, algorithms are used to calculate the end live odds. For instance, if you were to take a look at the Dolfwin live sports betting platform during a round of rugby autumn international friendlies, for example, the odds in an individual match would change every few seconds due to the constant evolution of a match of rugby.
These clever algorithms are also able to react instantaneously to any sudden occurrence and change the odds for the better or worse of a team or player.
Real-time sports betting
All these processes and interventions by tech help create the trending phenomenon of live sports betting. Not only are Irish sports fans able to put their money where their mouth is, but they also have another way to interact with sports besides from the multiple avenues that already exist. With sports only gaining more exposure and airtime, and with AI only beginning to find its feet, we can expect more live betting innovations to further enhance the sporting experience.
