All 51 games of the postponed Uefa European Championship are to be offered as a simulated reality betting product by sports data and content company Sportradar.
The tournament is the latest competition to be covered by the company’s AI-driven product, which aims to make up for the lack of sport during the Covid-19 pandemic by providing bookmakers with a range of pre-match and live betting opportunities on simulated matches.
The Simulated Reality product draws on Sportradar’s database of football matches to create a number of different game situations, outcomes and gameplays to generate an unpredictable outcome for football fans.
Since its was developed in the space of ten days in March, it has been used to ‘complete’ and offer betting markets on the top leagues in Germany, England, Italy, and Spain, with other competitions in progress.
The company indicated it has added a new live video replay function to the product to improve fan engagement. The function will offer a short replay of significant moments within each game, such as goals being scored shots on target, own goals and penalties being scored and missed, but it will not show entire matches.
Additionally, the simulated product will automatically generate match reports at the end of each game, providing a summary of the game alongside match statistics and analysis.
Overall, the company indicated more than 50 pre-match and live betting markets will be available for each game, staring with Turkey versus Italy on 12 June and ending with the final on Sunday 12 July.
Werner Becher, managing director, US Betting, at Sportradar said: “In the short time that Simulated Reality has been on the market, it has established itself as an authentic and credible alternative to traditional sports betting covering a range of sports including football, cricket and tennis. Now more than ever, it is important that we closely listen to customer feedback so that we can continually improve and enhance our product range.
“The new features we’ve introduced at this time create further opportunities for our customers to engage with football fans and create a unique way to enjoy top level tournament football this summer.”
The dearth of live sport during the Covid-19 pandemic also motivated IMG Arena, the sports betting arm of the IMG agency, and ATP Media, the ATP Tour’s international media-rights sales and broadcast production arm, to develop a virtual ATP Masters 1000 tennis product for the betting market in April. More recently still, the company developed a virtual betting product for the Nascar US stock car racing series.
In May, the International Betting Integrity Association warned of the increased prevalence of betting manipulation during the Covid-19 pandemic, as data suppliers have sought to fill empty sportsbooks by offering betting markets on lower-level football leagues in less heavily regulated countries.
The IBIA has called for a set of industry standards to be developed by different data suppliers to protect the credibility and reliability of the industry.
