This tweet really comes about as a response to some of the replies on the thread about stale prices (Tweet 147). It is really about this notion that the more markets and selections offered by a bookmaker the better the customer experience.
That it is impossible to price up the markets that a bookmaker currently offers properly, because they offer so many. It will mean stale/wrong prices exist and that the way to deal with that is by restricting accounts. I find the obsession with numbers of markets just weird. But we offer 100k selections on site at any one time. The customer has incredible choice. Amazing times to be a customer. Blah blah blah. It feels so mid 2000’s as an approach to the bookmaking industry. Sheer quantity over quality.
It’s important to understand how this crazy number of markets are generated in the first place. These days the creation of events is normally always outsourced to a third party such as Betradar or BetGenius. To quote them. They do the heavy lifting. They will provide all the raw information to a bookmaker such as which teams are playing, start times, etc. They also offer pricing and results services. What usually happens is that the bookmaker will then use a platform such as Openbet and decide which template they will use for a match On that template there maybe 300 markets for a Premier League game. Maybe 50 markets for a League One game. Once the template is applied and it’s activated that match will suddenly have those 300 markets available for customers.
The bookmaker can then make adjustments such as what book %s they want to bet to on that game. What limits. Maybe adjust their pricing. Often a bookmaker will use a combination of sources for their pricing rather than just one. May aggregate prices. The reality is that these days the bookmakers have very little input into the literally thousands of markets you see on site.
How can a Betradar do it? They have huge teams who do the work for them and they then sell it to the multitude of bookmakers. Betradar has upwards of 500 clients they are selling this information to. Creating events. Generating prices. Managing the prices. Offering in play services. Settling results. It’s why bookmakers can have relatively small trading teams relative to market offering. These third party companies are hugely incentivised to offer as many markets as possible to the bookmakers because they can charge them more money for them. The problem is how many of these markets actually offer the customer something useful and at what cost.
It used to be very interesting when I worked at Betfair because we were responsible for which markets were offered on site at any one time. The big difference with exchanges was that you needed the markets to have liquidity in them or they wouldn’t trade. In fact it was a hugely negative experience for a customer if they came to try and place a bet on a market but found there were no prices or liquidity. We had to constantly evaluate which markets were trading and which had liquidity amongst other considerations.
Where the number of markets is interesting is that we would have different templates for different quality of matches. In Tennis, Grand Slams were very different to Challenger Tour events. Let’s imagine we decide to add two new markets to the ATP Tour template. Let’s keep it simple. 1st Set Winner. 1st Set Correct Score. So these markets would then be offered for every ATP Tour match as standard. Let’s say there are 2000 matches a year. Suddenly we have added 4000 markets to the site over a year. I saw this happen with Soccer on a huge scale. Let’s add ten extra markets per match. Multiply that through and suddenly we have 100k+ more markets a year on site. Is the customer getting a better experience?
It really depends on what the market offered is. Let’s put all the player props and other player markets used for SGP to one side as they add hugely to the customer experience. Most of the other markets are ones such as Match Total Games Odd/Even in Tennis. Literally a coinflip and actually dangerous because they are casino like. These tend to be markets where it is very difficult to predict the outcome. They also tend to be run at huge margins that are just not transparent to your average joe punter. Offering terrible value to them.
I would love to see how many of these markets actually see money bet on them. It gives the bookmaker a great excuse for any issues that arise in the markets that they do offer. But we have 100k markets. How can we possibly manage them all? They tend to be vanity projects.
The focus should always be on new sports, new leagues and new products to ensure a global reach rather than these ridiculous additional markets within a game, that serve very little purpose apart from as marketing material/KPI enablers.
If there was one thing Covid should have taught the industry it was that people will literally bet on anything. Customers will find a bet to have. Whether it be Korean baseball, Russian table tennis or Swedish Trotting. Don’t clutter the offerings. Get back to the basics of being able to manage the markets you do offer properly. Easily accessible. Bin off casino type offerings as they muddy the waters between sports betting and casinos. Importantly, remember what a terrible customer experience it is when they are restricted.
ProPunting 