SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
With betting markets re-emerging from lockdown last June, Sportradar launched its suite of Formula 1 live in-race betting products, seeking to revitalize F1 race-day engagements for global motorsport’s biggest audience.
As Round-6 of a revamped Formula 1 season gets underway this weekend at the Spanish Grand Prix (Sunday 16 August Barcelona) – David Lampitt, Managing Director Sports Partnerships at Sportradar, said that bookmakers cannot ignore F1’s new wagering innovations as motorsport’s biggest incumbent delivers on action and drama amid a disrupted sports landscape.
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SBC: David thanks for this interview. Sportradar has stated that F1 is one of bookmakers’ biggest active opportunities in 2020. Working in partnership with F1, what has Sportradar been able to deliver to betting operators?
David Lampitt, (Managing Director Sports Partnerships at Sportradar): Over the last 20 months we’ve worked closely with our colleagues at Formula 1 to create something truly unique for the sports betting industry, a product that no other supplier can offer.
We use historical data and live data taken directly from the track on a race day to create new and expanded live odds models which power our F1 live in-race betting products. With this comprehensive range of data we’re able to provide operators with the broadest range of F1 betting markets including 20 in-race markets that are unique to Sportradar.
And, with a global fan base of 500 million, that’s a sizeable opportunity to provide operators as the season gathers pace.
SBC: Compared to Sportradar’s traditional partners, how much harder is it to collect and distribute live raceday data from 22 individual racetracks during the F1 season? What technical challenges has Sportradar faced when developing a sports betting product for F1?
DL: The process of collecting and modelling data for any sport is a challenge. Modelling the data for Formula 1 is complex because of the sheer volume of data we have to analyse. Additionally, the format changes that take place season-to-season require our models to be adjusted.
To give you an idea of the amount of data we have access to, every car has 1.1 million data points coming off it every second. We use car telemetry to collect measurements and other data at remote points and automatically transmit that information to receiving equipment for monitoring.
There are hidden stories that emerge from that data, and we incorporate the most valuable data points into our live product.
The data is delivered to our customers fast – latency is somewhere between 50 – 300miliseconds, depending on the message type. This is the first time operators have had access to such fast, reliable, live F1 data.
SBC: F1 has a huge global fan base; what are the main opportunities for Sportradar and F1 in different markets around the world?
DL: Formula 1 is one of the few remaining untapped major sports within betting. For them to unlock their data in this way essentially creates a new betting opportunity for operators who previously didn’t have access to that data.
For mature European markets, such as the UK, Italy and Germany where F1 is extremely popular, live in-race betting on F1 is an untapped opportunity, so there’s real potential for growth amongst an engaged following. Similarly, emerging markets like Brazil, again with a sizeable F1 fanbase, provides significant future potential.
Live in-race betting is where we see most potential for growth, however it’s also important that we enhance the customer experience throughout a race to keep fans engaged. We’ve developed a range of visualization tools which are all powered by our data. For example, our F1 Live Race Tracker is updated in real-time and provides punters all the information they need during an F1 event.
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David Lampitt – Managing Director Sports Partnerships – Sportradar
