More in-play betting activity taking place than ever before

Within the 10-minute betting windows over the two weeks of the survey, the IPT recorded the busiest Saturday ever with nearly 700 events being logged during the window on September 22, smashing the previous record set in March during the Spring 2012 survey.

Bet365 the market leader
In terms of total volumes, bet365 topped the survey for the fourth consecutive time with 778 events captured during the 14 betting windows, comfortably ahead of nearest competitor Ladbrokes which clocked up a total of 603. Next came Bwin with 567, and William Hill with 547.

Bet365 was also the leader in terms of sports offered, covering 23 of the 24 sports that were noted in this survey. This put them well ahead of Ladbrokes with 17 and Paddy Power one sport back at 16.

In the metric of average markets per event, William Hill retained its market leadership with a rate of 56.3 markets per event, surpassing bet365’s average of 27.4, Paddy Power with 25.1 and Ladbrokes with 24.3.

The soccernomics of in-play
With the new football season under way, the degree to which in-play owes its living to the sport is all too clear. Football dominated the in-play offerings of all 11 sites that are tracked by the survey, making up 74 percent of total events. This was the highest proportion of observed over the four quarterly surveys to date.

Tennis proved again to be the second most popular sport with 13 percent of the total, followed by basketball with 3 percent and ice hockey, again with 3 percent.

Drilling down into the football numbers, the battle between the top two is closer with Ladbrokes this time pipping bet365 with 474 games logged against 466 for the Stoke-based firm and 426 for third-placed Bwin.

But the greatest growth rate in football events captured is shown by Unibet. Compared to the first of GamblingData’s quarterly surveys, carried out in November and December 2011, Unibet’s football total soared by over 100 percent to 331 events.

Activity Index results
IPT’s proprietary in-play activity analysis – revisited for the first time since the Spring survey – shows that bet365 very much hammers home its advantage in off-peak betting times. It registers a weighted average 20.1 percent share during the quieter periods of the betting week whereas in busier periods it logs an average 14 percent share. Ladbrokes, Sky Bet and 12Bet meanwhile all increase their share of events during busier periods.

Daniel Stone, head of content at GamblingData, said: “When we first launched IPT earlier this year, it was immediately evident how important football was to the leading in-play offerings. But this Autumn survey – featuring activity from the early weeks of the new football season – just goes to prove how important the sport truly is. We are calling it the ‘soccernomics of in-play’ – without football, we wouldn’t have this explosion of in-play activity.

“Moreover, the rise in the volume of in-play betting across the spectrum of offers is also of note. All the operators are upping their game in the face of the continued pressure from market-leaders bet365 to offer more sports, more events and more markets.”
The fourth quarterly In-Play Tracker (IPT) survey, produced in association with Sporting Solutions and ONEworks, released in November tells subscribers:
•         Who leads the way in sports
•         Who is ahead in terms of events
•         Which operator averaged the most markets per event

Looking at the top 11 sportsbooks: The Autumn 2012 IPT survey covers the in-play offering of 11 of the leading sports-betting operators, comprising 12Bet, Bet365, Bwin, Ladbrokes, Nordicbet, Paddy Power, SBOBET, Sky Bet, Sportingbet, Unibet and William Hill.

The sports, the events and the markets: The Autumn survey was designed to capture, during a 24-day period, the in-play offerings of each participant during designated 10-minute betting windows. During these betting windows our analysts capture which sports are being bet on, how many events each operator offers and how many markets are attached to those events.

Around the clock survey: As with the three previous surveys, the timing of the betting windows was designed to get a glimpse of the extent of the in-play offerings during off-peak hours, including early on a Monday morning and late into the night elsewhere during the week.

The sporting world in miniature: Alongside the more obvious events such as football, tennis and basketball, the IPT also shows how in-play betting is opening up the world to more minority sports, from beach volleyball to padel tennis.

The Autumn 2012 survey is the fourth of a series of quarterly reports. The first survey for release in 2013 will be taking place in December and will be released in the New Year.