Microbetting Pioneer Simplebet Looks To The Future
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For the second year in a row, Simplebet has received the American Gambling Awards title of “Online Betting Product of the Year.” The awards are produced by the Gambling.com Group.
In naming the microbetting pioneer as the 2023 winner, Charles Gillespie, chief executive officer of Gambling.com, said Simplebet remains “at the forefront of fan engagement with the success of its live in-play microbetting product.”
“As unique wagering experiences becoming increasingly important, Simplebet has shown every operator the high upside of microbetting,” Gillespie said.
Q&A: What’s Next For Simplebet?
With 2024 on the horizon, Gambling.com asked Mark Nerenberg, Simplebet’s chief operating officer, about the company’s current successes and future goals.
Gambling.com: What are some significant milestones for Simplebet over the last 12 months?
Simplebet: In addition to seeing impressive growth across our markets with existing customers, we’ve expanded our group of partners adding key U.S. brands such as Caesars Sportsbook, ESPN Bet and Hard Rock Bet.
We also announced new league partnerships -- as the official innovation partner for LIV Golf, powering microbetting opportunities for every shot from key players during LIV events. We’re extremely excited proving how microbetting can engage and grow a fanbase through deeper collaboration directly with a league.
Lastly, after partnering with Betr in 2022, we were able to launch their online sportsbook in three states during 2023, not only providing odds and trading, but also a regulated betting engine and native sportsbook app all tailored for in-play betting.
Q: For the average sports bettor wanting to understand what microbetting is, how would you describe it?
A: The “micro” in microbetting refers to the underlying timeframe of these betting markets.
Especially with U.S. sports, each game consists of many micro events that fans are already accustomed to engaging with. Predicting outcomes of drives or plays in football, pitches, at-bats in baseball, and possessions and next field goals in basketball have all proven to be popular and continue to grow.
Simplebet’s technology, with predictive models powered by machine learning, creates instantaneous markets and odds for these moments as the action unfolds in real time.
Once a micro event is complete, the bets result instantly, providing a short feedback loop and a level of engagement consumers crave that cannot be replicated pre-match.
Q: How did the concept of microbetting come about, and how did it become so popular?
A: Betting on micro events within a sporting match has been around for far longer than Simplebet. Betting on corner kicks or whether there will be a goal in the next five minutes in soccer has been available for years.
Betting on point and game winners in tennis has probably been the most popular form of “microbetting” over the past 10+ years as sports betting has migrated to online.
At Simplebet, we are driving the growth of microbetting. Before Simplebet, “microbetting” was not really worthy of its own category, accounting for less than 5% of in-play volume, whereas now we are seeing 25%+ of our partners’ in-play volume coming from micros.
Our hypothesis in 2019 when we decided to focus on micro timeframes was that existing offerings lacked the coverage and availability for user adoption and stickiness.
It is technically challenging to set accurate odds for so many micro-markets in real time, so after significant investment and focus we have been able to prove our hypothesis to be correct.
While we still have a ways to go, we have proven product-market fit for the category, which we expect to be the predominant form of betting in the future.
Q: What are the most popular microbets?
A: In football, the most popular micro market is a four-way “Drive Result Exact” market (TD | FG | Punt | Turnover). This market does more than half of all microbetting volume for college football.
With the NFL, we launched new markets that have grown in popularity this year, resulting in a more spread-out distribution of volume across micro markets: “Player to Score a TD this Drive” and an eight-way “Drive Result Granular” market where users can predict specific outcomes like passing TD, rushing TD, interception, along with five other options.
While we offer markets for every play, like Rush or Pass, First Down, etc., thus far our drive markets have been the most popular, with play markets only accounting for a combined ~ 15% of microbetting volume.
Interestingly however, in baseball and basketball it is the most micro of timeframes that do the most volume. In baseball, about half the microbetting volume comes on pitch-level markets (e.g. Ball | Strike | In-Play) and in basketball ~3/4 of the volume comes on predicting the next made basket (team and/or type).
Our platform enables us to offer these micromarkets for every single pitch and every basket of every game, whereas other offerings only offer for the first pitch of an inning or first basket of a quarter.
Here we are seeing evidence that consumers need continuity. They need to know the bets are offered and will be accepted in order to stick around and continue to bet.
Q: What is next for Simplebet?
A: In addition to LIV Golf, we have started development on an NHL offering and are considering other sports/leagues as well. Low- and mid-tier leagues are intriguing when low-latency video is available and matches occur during off times (when top-tier sports are not live).
Indoor Football League is an example where we partnered directly with the league to deliver in-play markets along with live streaming for a single-screen experience that allow fans to watch and bet at the same low latency.
Additionally, we will be leveraging some of our models as part of an effort to create full-game simulations that can run at low latency. These sims will power market offerings beyond just micros. Most significantly, this will enable us to provide both pre-match and live SGP offerings to partners, starting with MLB in 2024.
Despite the strong adoption and volume we have seen in recent years, the microbetting user experience still leaves a lot to be desired. Watching live sports is still on a delay compared to live betting markets, and with short windows between micro events, there is currently very little content and marketing around in-play.
In 2024, we will be rolling out low-latency game tracking visualizations to ensure users know exactly what’s going on in the game when they are looking to place live bets.
Furthermore, we will be providing data and tools to enable partners to surface more bet-stimulation content to the live sports-betting experience.
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