SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
The online sports betting industry has seen a rising concern with regards to product innovation offered by sports betting providers. With these concerns in mind, Team SBC spoke to Metric Gaming CEO Martin De Knijiff about the recently launched Metric Gaming SuperLive sports betting platform.
SuperLive allows customers to wager on in-game events as they unfold in real time. Offering multiple sports markets, De Knijiff believes his product may well revitalise the sports betting trends and user habits.
An avid bettor Martin De Knijiff has over 20 years’ experience in sports handicapping and has consulted various operators on in-play betting and risk management.
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SBC: Hi Martin Pleasure to meet you. Can you give our readers a brief description of the Metric Gaming Superlive product and what it brings to the sports betting market?
Martin: SuperLive is a mobile-optimized turnkey solution for operators, technology providers, media companies and any other business looking to embrace the next generation of sports wagering. Whereas conventional “live” or in-play betting merely allows players to wager on end-of-game outcomes while the match is underway, SuperLive offers wagering opportunities on every play – with all bets resulted and settled in real time. As a result, bettors can wager up to hundreds of times in a single match – continuously putting winnings back into play – thereby creating a truly “instant gratification” sports wagering experience.
SBC: Your product has a high emphasis on live optimised match data and in-play match happening/events, these attributes are not easy to deliver, what obstacles did you have to overcome in order to create and deliver your product?
Martin: SuperLive would be impossible without an extraordinary level of sophistication in technology, real-time data feeds and handicapping knowledge. We are fortunate to be working with some of the brightest minds in the business developing our software, as well as industry-leading real-time sports data providers to give our traders the tools they need.
I have also contributed some of my own expertise as a long-time professional sports bettor to create the algorithms that support our trading staff, who must constantly generate sharp betting lines on illiquid markets that are sometimes available for only fifteen seconds at a time.
SBC: As a new comer to the sports betting provisions market, where in the industry’s value chain, do you feel your product can make the biggest impact?
Martin:First and foremost, SuperLive is fun. It combines the instant gratification thrill of slot-machine style play with the ability to capitalize on the sports knowledge and intuition that appeals to most sports bettors – effectively creating a brand new sports wagering experience.
This innovation will drive both customer acquisition and loyalty, particularly with the new generation of sports bettor that has grown up in today’s smartphone and social media-driven society, where up-to-the-second information and results are now demanded and expected. SuperLive will also naturally increase player turnover because wagers are graded in real time, allowing winnings to be rolled over instantly – sometimes hundreds of times per match.
SBC: At this early stage in your products cycle, do you think that your product can applicable to all betting operators or do you prefer to target a select few?
Martin: As with any new product, we recognize that marketing and customer adaptation will play a key role in SuperLive’s success. Accordingly, while we are confident SuperLive will eventually become a staple for all sportsbook operators, in its early stages we are naturally interested in partners who already have a substantial and dedicated live wagering customer base.
SBC: Finally, how do you see sports betting habits evolving, and how will these impact your business? What should the sector be preparing for in terms of new user habits?
Martin: The current mobile trend is unmistakable – whether via smartphones, tablets, phablets, Google Glass, or whatever may be the next iteration, we are quickly headed towards a world where all forms of consumerism will be available everywhere and instantly. Conventional sports betting, however, does not fit this trend, nor does it take advantage of the rapidly advancing technology in this sector. Instead, today’s mobile sports bettors have to search, scroll and click their way through multiple menus and submenus just to locate their desired sport and market, only to then wait hours for the game to be played before the wager is resulted.
What we can expect to see in the coming years is therefore sport-specific betting “apps” that streamline the wagering process by vastly reducing the amount of unwanted information currently presented to end users – with rapid in-game markets (such as SuperLive’s) and live mobile streaming of sporting events becoming the norm. As a result, the sports wagering experience will conform more closely to our on-the-go mobile entertainment culture, where distractions are sought in short increments with instant results.
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Martin De Knijff -CEO & Founder- Metric Gaming
