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Sports betting has changed over the years. Who remembers the pre 2010 betting days when no bookmarker offered live betting? Back then, you could only wager on pre-match events. That is to say that you had to put your money on the line even
before any of the players got on the pitch. Back then, the markets were limited too. Those who were making football predictions back then, will tell you that they had to make do with these five markets:
– The three way line (or 1×2) betting where the choices were a home win, away win or draw… which were often as unpredictable as the weather. Remember trying to
– Over/Under for goals, which was always a fun game of guessing if we’d see a give number of goals (mostly 3 or more)
– Correct score, which meant wagering if a match would end in a specific score. It felt like finding a needle in a haystack but the reward was worth the gamble.
– Both teams to score, which was a prediction on whether each side would manage to net at least a single goal in the game.
– Halftime/fulltime. As if betting on who would win the game after the 90 minutes
was not tricky enough, this one had you wondering who would be leading at the break and whether they could hold on to that lead till the referee blew the final whistle!
Then in play betting was introduced. This brought a whole new world of betting to the foreground. With live betting, you could sit in front of your TV, watch every bit of play, and have a stronger, well-informed hunch on the game score than you would have had before it started. It changed the game from guesswork to informed predictions. It was no more about what any statistics or past records predicted, we saw the players play, we saw how motivated they were to win, and we could bet on it there and then – right up until the last whistle blew!
Then, the betting companies introduced more markets. You could now play on whether a specific player would score a goal, or who would get kicked out because of a red card. These markets gave fans the option to combine their knowledge of specific teams and players with the game’s dynamics to make their bet.
This was not it.
Companies like Oracle and Amazon AWS developed new computer vision algorithms that could follow the game real-time. A whole bunch of stats were then introduced. When watching soccer matches, do you see how they highlight how many kilometers each player has run or how many passes they’ve made? These types of stats were now becoming betting markets, thanks to these tech giants.
Then last year, « data zone » which is a statistics heavy flood of information about every pass, shot, and tackle was introduced. Bookies could now compute the expected goals (xG) which is a metric that looks at the quality of chances a team has or allows, and could give punters even more info to make their bets on.
And nowadays? We can bet on whether the referee will go and check the VAR (video assistant referee) or not, whether medics will be called on the field, and even on whether a player will score from outside the penalty box! Talk about leveling up the game!
