Inside Asian Gaming

January 2012 | INSIDE ASIAN GAMING 37 first arrived in Europe, mid-way through the last decade, it was perhaps difficult to forecast its explosive growth there. In Europe the small number of events and markets—plus manual input by traders and odds-setters—led to human error and thin margins for the operator. It was also clear that the sports-betting engines many of the operators were using simply weren’t designed for this new application. In many cases, the early-adopter European operators didn’t have the prices they needed, or the trading expertise to adapt to the new sector, often used initially by “savvy, value-seeking” customers. Nonetheless, it was easy to see why consumers loved this new opportunity, and the fundamental reasons for its growth. Firstly, we’ve seen an explosion in the amount of live sport being broadcast, whether on satellite TV, over the Internet or via the tailor-made live streaming most operators now provide on their sites. This live-streaming sector for sports betting was in its infancy just a few years ago; now, some of the larger sports rights aggregators are making available more than 5,000 live sports events, up nearly 50% from just two years ago. Football, tennis and basketball take the lion’s share of events and thus betting revenues. Next, we’ve seen a huge uplift in both the range of markets and the ‘depth’ of subsequent prices offered on those markets, aided by smarter trading tools. This has led to a fundamental change of behaviour by consumers, and not just the ‘early-adopters’; the increasing accessibility of live sport through mobile, tablet and smartphone apps, has contributed to its extraordinary growth. In 2006, two listed European operators started providing analysts and investors their IRB share of total sports-betting ONEworks Without the full picture—Asians view pre-match betting as ‘betting blind’ The flood of live streaming is feeding the sports betting torrent Wireless net—the increasing accessibility of live sport via mobile devices has contributed to the explosion of in-running sports betting