SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Jakub Myszkorowski, CCO at STATSCORE, compares the “smooth and enjoyable” experience of watching sports video games on a streaming portal to the reality of watching live football. Can sports visualisations really replace the real thing?
Okay, so I know the title could be seen as a little controversial, perhaps even annoying, but before you start hitting empty cans on my head let me defend my case. Do not ‘boo’ me yet, fellas! In my opinion, animations can really take over our minds and let us experience the sport in a better way. How? Let me explain.
Have you ever used Twitch or any other PC games’ streaming portal to watch talented youngsters playing one of the sports games? You had probably tried playing the same game on your own and… well it did not end up going so well.
When you wanted to pass you found yourself producing a high cross and while you tried to make Zinedine Zidane’s signature move – “the 360 roulette” – you just gave the ball to the opponent. Yeah, embarrassing as hell!
Now you see these kids playing and they can create magic that the world has never seen! Everything goes so smooth and enjoyable that you think: ‘Well, let’s postpone the next appointment and just watch how this one game will end.’ 10 games later, you are still there happy as you were young again.
Then compare this experience to watching real football. And, well, the reality seems to suck a little bit. doesn’t it? You see not so great teams playing a not so fast style at a less than impressive technical level.
Life tries to match the video games which have been inspired by it, but it is losing in a way akin to a pub team facing one of the pro teams. And yet this is the world we have created.
If you can imagine all of these things above, why would you argue that showing the videos from the sports – especially from the lower and less popular competitions – can still make a better offer for the viewers than showing them the same game with fully animated display?
Indeed, a fully animated display where the poor quality video of poor quality sportsmen is replaced with arousing and well-shaped 2D animation? Think about it this way – how about turning a grey day of sports into a sunny fiesta?
You might still ask: but why? Why change something which is real and exists into something that is… well, artificial and has to be created? The answer is simple, even if it could still sound a little bit controversial.
Firstly, because virtual sports (as a whole) gets more and more people to follow. Not only because of the plot behind the rivalry, but mainly thanks to the way the games are shown.
Whether you like it or not, it looks beautiful. Perhaps more importantly, your generation Z users and the next ones have shown that they choose virtual over reality. Let’s skip on the judgement tone here and not discuss if this is right or wrong. Just treat it as a fact and think of the implications it has for your business.
Secondly, the world of live sports animations doesn’t have to be created as… well, we have already done it at STATSCORE. Years ago we sat, drank a sea of coffee and came up with what we believed at that time would be the future of presenting sports events for online betting.
Fast forward back to 2019, and we see that we were damn right about it. Ever since 2011, we have been developing our LivematchPro live sports widgets that now display 17 sports with dedicated animations and live players’ stats for every single incident of each game.
Why you would seek anything more than something that is right there in your hand and can boost your income from live bets like a tsunami? Just dig in into the world of tomorrow and be a little more virtual than you are used to.
