SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Last month, sports betting data and trading specialist Betgenius launched its first-ever streaming service designed to help sportsbooks plug crucial gaps in their in-play betting schedules.
The company’s Global Partnerships Director Matt Stephenson told SBC how Betgenius plans to offer its partners fresh and engaging content around the clock.
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SBC: Hi Matt, thanks for this interview. Can you detail to SBC audiences why Betgenius has launched a live streaming service after so many years specialising in data and outsourced trading?
MS:As part of the Genius Sports Group, Betgenius has access to a huge portfolio of official data rights which it provides to sportsbooks as either raw live data feeds or outsourced managed trading services.
Launching a live streaming service was a natural evolution of these close relationships we have with sports; creating an official data product for betting is about helping leagues and federations grow their fanbase and attract new revenues – exactly the same can be said about streaming.
However, we also wanted to bring something fresh and valuable to market. From a sportsbook perspective, we saw a growing need among operators to strengthen customer retention during quiet scheduling periods. Therefore, we are initially focusing on content which fills gaps in the live betting schedule, for example, fixtures played during midweek daytimes and overnight for operators in European time zones.
SBC: What type of content is Betgenius offering to its partners?
MS: Initially, our content is focused on football, basketball, volleyball and table tennis fixtures played across four continents – Europe, Asia, Africa and South America – and subsequently multiple timezones.
This is a mixture of content derived from direct sports partnerships where our own data and video technology is used, along with content from third parties who hold the streaming rights. Through the latter for example, we are able to exclusively offer more than 35 Asian football competitions.
SBC: What makes the service different?
MS: Much of the new content we are offering has never been made available to sportsbook operators before. Yet perhaps the biggest strategic value to operators is the timing of these broadcasts.
While streaming of high profile events is, of course, important, most sports fans would rather watch them on TV and not a bookmaker’s website. By focusing on fixtures played at off-peak times on, say, a Monday afternoon, when there are no Champions League or Premier League matches, our partners will offer a complete in-play experience, including live odds and footage.
SBC: How does this streaming service dovetail with your live data and trading services?
MS: Our entry into the streaming space is really an extension of our commitment to creating a symbiotic relationship between sports and betting. Like data, streaming is a mechanism for sports to commercialise and sportsbooks to engage customers and grow profits. By partnering with sports directly, we are able to provide our sportsbook partners with fast and reliable streaming content while ensuring the sports themselves receive a fair return from the betting sector.
Alongside this new service we will be offering a full range of official data and trading services for every streamed fixture. These two elements are highly complementary and allow our partners to access a complete live content solution in one place.
SBC: It was announced earlier this week that Betgenius sister company Genius Sports acquired live streaming specialists Oppia Performance. How does this translate to the services that you’re providing to sportsbooks?
MS: Oppia Performance supplies an entire range of sports with their own live streaming and performance analysis capability, specialising in volleyball, basketball and an array of other indoor sports. It’s a hugely exciting acquisition which allows Genius Sports to offer an automated video production and distribution system to its global network of over 500 sports partners as GeniusLive.
In the future Betgenius will gain access to official – low-latency, 4k HD – streaming content via these partnerships and Oppia’s know-how and technical capabilities will prove an invaluable asset as we roll out our new services to sports and bookmakers.
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Matt Stephenson – Global Partnerships Director – Betgenius
