How Live Data Providers Influence The Flow of Sports Betting Markets

If you have any particular interest in the machinations of sports betting, even beyond the usual value that it brings to your entertainment set-up, the realities of live data are some of the most important. Not only are they inevitably influential to the daily operations of sportsbooks, but they also set the pace in how odds change.

At first glance, a layperson may think that the data that influences line movement is the same data that bookmakers gather from watching the game. As soon as something happens, they would introduce the data point into their calculation formula and make sure that they get to change the odds as soon as they can.

However, it doesn’t work like this, and the main reason is that this method is slow and rudimentary. There is a level of delay between what happens at a game and the broadcast that distributes the visual data that you expect from watching something live.

By the time the live data sets update, there will be a delay between what happens on the field/court and how the odds move.

This is where the live data trackers come in. They have the right technological infrastructure in place so that they can collect data with very fast recognition and almost instantly communicate it to affiliated sportsbooks.

This is why BetBrain’s odds comparison tool registers differences in how quickly bookmakers update their odds during live events.

In this article, we will discuss which type of data these trackers can collect and how exactly their influence permeates into the product that you can access as a live bettor.

The live data that these services collect

Let’s begin by discussing the exact information (data) that moves around.

Firstly, you need to understand what kind of data sportsbooks need to work it. During live betting, also known as in-play betting in certain parts of the English-speaking world, you can wager on more than just the final result.

The most popular type of betting is 1×2, which translates as home team win, draw, or visiting team winning. In other sports, where the draw is not an option, it’s just the win-lose scenario.

Every piece of sports context matters in how a bettor decides. Scoring plays, bookings, ejections, penalties, and even weather have varying degrees of significance in how a game’s momentum can shift.

Moreover, these factors can turn into next-gen stats, otherwise known as advanced metrics, which are a more geeky, sample-size-based style of looking at the dynamics of a sports event happening live.

For all these details to work, they require live data entries. The butterfly effect of it is how these stats move around a sheet, and how the calculations turn into synthesized metrics.

As such, live data trackers collect everything. They calculate the time of possession based on what they see on the field, accounting for every sports move happening on the field, successful or not. With that, they can understand everything that is going on and turn it into data points that they can later communicate.

As long as there is any happenstance going on within that live playing sequence, they will add it to their data set and communicate as fast as their technological model allows. In short, they have exclusively direct access to information, turning it into data as soon as the event happens during play.

The collection process of this data

This is a bit more complicated to relate because each data-tracking company tries to keep its cards as close to its chest as possible. It’s their prerogative to do so, and they usually leverage their model to the company/shareholders of the league/organization that they are able to convince to partner with.

For example, a partnership between the NCAA and Genius Sports, a live data tracker with an immense say in the industry, shows that the higher-ups of college sports have selected their partner strategically.

The service that collects data needs to leverage its ability to satisfy the competition whose data it collects, but also the bookmakers that have their own partnerships with the sports competition.

Naturally, they need to have extremely competent servers that can transmit data without noticeable delay. From the moment that an event turns into a data point, they need to transmit it to the other partners, which go beyond the sportsbooks, even though they are a major actor in this story.

Broadcasters also have their own dealings with the organizers of an event, and they require the communication of this data for their own product. As such, delays, also known as latency, are out of the question.

The most interesting part of this process is how exactly sports data trackers transform in-play events into data entries. From what we know, they use state-of-the-art visual gear, sensors, and, now more than ever, AI-powered recognition systems that have the ability to spot patterns and turn them into data points.

Once the event turns into a data point, they rely on a cloud service that stores that data and transmits it as soon as it happens. For that, they need the tip-top line of internet connectivity. It needs to be stable and fast for the sake of information transmission.

The interactions that it has with online gambling platforms

We need to say that not all online gambling operators receive exclusive data from such a tracking company. Usually, we’re only talking about the big-name operators that have the financial leverage to partner with the league that organizes the particular sport, which means they receive the fastest level of data transmission.

Virtually all the major sportsbooks have a proprietary formula that dictates the overall calculations that generate odds.

While relatively different because of factors that one can attribute to momentum swings, the calculations behind these odds are relatively the same. This means that they use the live data that these trackers feed them, so they can actively shift their odds.

Things are relatively simple from this point because we are also dealing with a trickling effect. Smaller sportsbooks are those that have influenced prices by larger, sharper books.

This means that they use the prices set by these major oddsmakers, using their own formulas or vig calculations to influence these prices to a reasonable degree.

Ultimate effects on your sports betting experience

As far as the influence on your betting experience goes, you’ll realize that your overall access and enjoyment of a bookmaker’s product depends on that data as well.

We’ve already talked about the direct influence of data tracking on these bookmakers. When you access their feeds, these bookies also leverage live data as part of their ability to make you choose their product.

They can market their highly effective access to live data, which, in turn, provides you with updates odds that you can consider based on your own access to updated data feeds, not just the latency-riddled broadcast that you may be using, depending on whose broadcast it is.

If you want the sharpest level of bookmaking, you may want to look into who a league partners with in terms of sportsbooks, but also who partners with them when it comes to live data feeds. This is how you’d know that betting on that certain league would be at its best as far as fairness and access to fair odds go!

Conclusion

To conclude, there is an insurmountable effect that trickles from live data operators to your betting sessions. The sharpness of the odds and your access to data that can influence your decisions have their roots in these details.

As such, please be mindful of them, especially the deals that they complete. If you are a betting person, don’t forget to do so responsibly!