SVG Sit-Down: SimpleBet’s Chris Bevilacqua on the Need for Sports Productions To Embrace In-Game Micro-Betting

He foresees a ‘truly personalized experience’ for the bettor

This May will mark six years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act (PASPA), opening the door for states to legalize sports betting. Since that moment in 2018, the sports-betting market has grown exponentially, and all expectations are this trend will only continue.

That same year, sports-media vet Chris Bevilacqua launched his own sports-betting company, Simplebet, with an eye on what many expect to become the industry’s golden goose: micro-betting. Instead of betting on the final outcome of games, SimpleBet’s products allow fans to wager on individual moments in a game.

SimpleBet’s Chris Bevilacqua: “The betting experience could be entirely different by 2030 as well. Who knows if people will even be looking at a big, old television screen by then.”

As an enterprise-software B2B data and technology company, Simplebet sells its technology to consumer-facing businesses with its main vertical being in online sports betting. Simplebet’s real-time betting technology allows every pitch and every at-bat in a baseball game, every play or drive in football, or every shot or possession of a basketball game to become an actionable wagering opportunity for users. The combination of data, technology, and automation delivers gamification around live, in-play wagering for the company’s online sportsbook partners.

SVG sat down with Bevilacqua, who made his name launching the first 24/7 college-sports network (CSTV) and negotiating groundbreaking sports-media–rights deals, to discuss the increased popularity of micro-betting, how it can be better incorporated into live broadcasts, the impact of latency, the future of “betcasts,” what can be learned from Europe’s sports-betting market, and what sports broadcasts will look like in 2030 as it relates to sports betting.

Have you seen the popularity of in-game micro-betting in the U.S. grow over the past year? Two years? How much do you predict micro-betting will grow over the next 12-18 months (and beyond)?
Yes. As a matter of fact, it has grown quite rapidly in the little over three years that we’ve been live. One of the ways that we track growth of our micro products is by observing our percentage of the live Gross Gaming Revenue handle of any of our operator partners. When we first started, there were extremely limited offerings that could be categorized as micro-betting. We were a very small percentage of the live GGR handle for any of our operator customers at that time.

Now, a few years later, as in-play [betting] overall is growing in the U.S., we’ve seen data [showing that], depending on the sport and customer, we’re now between 15% and 20% of their live GGR; in some sports, there are cases when we are almost 40% of live GGR. This has all happened over the last 24 months, and we see that trend continuing to increase over time.

Have you seen streaming outlets and/or broadcasters make a more concerted effort to integrate betting (especially micro-betting) into their live-game presentations over the past year? If so, what is a good example?
We’ve seen it quite a bit. We have two “innovation partnerships.” One is with LIV Golf, where this year we’re going to be rolling out a product which will have low-latency video together with our live, in-play micro-betting markets. This is a cool innovation that we will continue to see more of. We’re doing something similar with the Indoor Football League (IFL), which we did last year and will be doing it again for them this coming season. Also, for the past two seasons, we had a very successful single-screen watch-and-bet “free-to-play” experience available in the YES Network app during Yankees games.

More broadly, the NFL and Genius Sports, with their new BETVision product, are offering live, low-latency video to all of their sportsbook customers in the live betting environment. It was just rolled out halfway through this season. We’ve seen Caesars using it, and they’ve been featuring our micro-markets below the live, low-latency video in the Fire Bets feature of the app, which saw solid traction this season.

Next year, you’re likely to see that most of the major sportsbooks have a low-latency video in their apps with live markets underneath the video, so the user can have a true “single-screen experience”; before, it has mostly been a second-screen experience where you are watching video somewhere else and have latency issues. I think we will continue to see innovation around that feature in not just football but also baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, etc., as the technology becomes more widely available.

What is your opinion of the “betcasts” that have been produced on both a regional and a national level over the past few years? Do you believe these types of alternative broadcasts will continue to become more popular, and, if so, how can micro-betting be more deeply integrated into them? Do you think they hinder the evolution of betting in the main broadcast by “ghettoizing” the betting angle?
In my opinion, this is where a lot of future innovation is going to come. Obviously, each sport is different: the cadence of a football game is different than the cadence of a soccer game. I think, over time, we’re going to see a lot of innovation and a lot of experimentation. At a high level, we’re moving from a mass-media world (one broadcast for all) into what I would describe as personal media (broadcasts tailored and customized to the individual).

Betting and in-play gamification around live sports is where I think we will see a lot of continued innovation, which allows a truly personalized experience for the end user. That doesn’t mean just for sports betting; rather, it will be around all kinds of other interactive features, like VR, AR, commerce, and audio. I don’t think it will be a one-size-fits-all; at the core will be differentiation around customization, event presentation, and marketing to various disparate audiences depending on their likes and dislikes.

How do you see the growth of micro-betting impacting the way sports broadcasts are produced (and the way fans view/consume these broadcasts)? And how does the rise of micro-betting change things from a storytelling perspective for the production team?
If you just stay on the personalization, what we’ve seen with in-play betting in general and, in particular, micro-betting is the intense level of engagement. It’s not a surprise to me that every genre of programming on TV, outside of live sports, has fewer people watching it. Over the past year, the NFL ratings are up across the board; it’s defying gravity. In a world where fragmentation and consumption are splintered, the fact the NFL keeps aggregating larger and larger audiences is astounding.

I think a lot of the causation there is what happens as a game is going on. If you’re wagering and betting on a game, you’re more likely to watch longer. It’s not only more people watching; it’s more people watching for longer amounts of time that drives overall ratings and overall consumption.

Sports betting is exactly that, because you have a vested interest in the outcome of not only the game but of a particular player or a particular event in a game, such as a play or drive. On top of that, there are the very popular same-game parlays, where you are stringing together a bunch of correlated instances and a fun wager can turn into a lottery-type experience.

These two things go hand in hand. Ultimately, if you’re a league or a team and you own the IP, you want people engaging with the product for longer amounts of time because the vast majority of the economics that come through any of these industries are going to come through the increased value of media rights. It all works hand in hand, and engagement is at the core of it.

Do you believe that more low-latency, highly interactive experiences for viewers are necessary for in-game micro-betting to continue to grow? From a technical standpoint, how big an issue is latency in preventing these types of real-time sports-betting/viewing offerings from being successful? Are there new technologies (ATSC Next-Gen TV, advanced streaming protocols, etc.) that could solve this issue?
In general, all the technology that would be required or needed to reduce latency between the video stream and the actual interactive wagering experience currently exists. The biggest impediment to employing that technology is the preexisting rights agreements between the sellers of the content rights and the distributors, meaning the networks, cable companies, and the digital platforms that carry it.

I think a lot of these rights are going to get untangled. The NBA, for example, is in the process of negotiating its new long-term deal. We will be seeing a lot of those issues get sorted out, so the next cycle of content rights that come into the market will likely follow a similar blueprint. Innovation is going to occur in and around all these new agreements. There’s going to be a hyper-focus on the move from mass towards personalization, and in-play wagering and all of the innovation that comes around all of that — latency, in particular — will be addressed.

One other thing to point out: even with some of the limitations on latency today around live video, we have still seen massive growth in in-play wagering, in an environment where there are issues in latency between the video and data feeds, because you can now create game-state innovation without video that informs the user exactly what is happening on the field, court, or ice in real time.

This experience resembles the single-screen experience except it doesn’t have video. There’s no way we would see the results that we’ve seen with our quick–time-frame micro-markets products, if latency was that big of an issue to the user who is betting in-play. The product experience today is certainly adequate for in-play wagering and micro-betting, but it will only get better over time as more and more live video comes via low latency.

With the RSN business undergoing a tectonic shift, do you see betting’s playing role in the future of local sports broadcasts?
It’s going to happen and continue to happen. The technology already exists, and what’s happening now in the RSN world is almost like a forced renegotiation of all those preexisting rights agreements that didn’t allow all of these things. While it has been a bit messy, certainly with the Diamond Sports bankruptcy going on right now, it’s starting to feel like there is a path, because the leagues have worked out interim agreements, which will see them take back rights over time. It appears thus far that the leagues will clear title to in-market streaming rights to a substantial number of franchises across multiple sports. Within the next year or two, it should allow a sizable reset. This is where I think you’ll see a lot of the opportunities enhanced for in-play wagering on a local level.

Since the state-by-state legalization of sports-betting began, what have sports broadcasts done right in your view? What have they done wrong?
With PASPA being six years in the rearview mirror now, it was not a surprise that the early years were a bit messy, especially because of the state-by-state approach with regulations that are not quite uniform. If you’re on the broadcasting side, you’re dealing with that patchwork, and, from the beginning, most companies in the media landscape decided, due to the disclosure requirements around licensing (if you own 5% you are subject to all disclosure), to stay out of it. FOX Bet dipped its toes into the water, but that obviously didn’t end well.

The media companies at large decided to stay away from the ownership side and getting into the business of taking bets. Instead, they decided to focus on the sponsorship side and advertising aspect. They were content on taking a sportsbook’s money to develop their brands within the ecosystem and the industry. We’ve since seen literally billions of dollars of customer acquisition that’s being spent, and the media companies are a great beneficiary of that.

I do think that, over time, legislation may change some of the ownership and disclosure. There’s clearly more of a coming together between online sports betting and media companies. ESPN just did its deal with PENN. While I would still call that more of a massive marketing and customer-referral deal, I do think, over time, we will continue to see closer ties between media and online sports betting. There’s going to be a lot of consolidation both in media and, separately, in online sports betting. It would not be a surprise to ultimately see media companies buying a sports-betting company or even the other way around! I do think that we are still in the early stages, and there’s going to be some interesting tie-ups as we look into the future.

Please take out your crystal ball and predict what sports broadcasts will look like in 2030 as it relates to sports betting.
We will be seeing a lot of personalization, gamification, and interactivity, and there will be less friction as well. I think we’re eventually going to see a very limited number of sportsbooks, as there will have been massive consolidation. I wouldn’t be surprised if there is a combination between a media company and a big online sports network.

There will also be massive changes in how artificial intelligence is used for bet recommendations or contextual product offerings: in other words, surfacing the right bet to the right viewer at the right time with a lot of the friction taken out of the experience for the user.

The betting experience could be entirely different by 2030 as well. Who knows if people will even be looking at a big, old television screen by then. Video will be available everywhere, instantly, and it’ll be up to the person to determine how and where and on what device he or she wants to consume video, and it will be very easy to place a bet. Perhaps Elon Musk’s Neuralink company will have technology where you will just have to think of a bet and it will get placed right away!

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.