The popularity of in-play betting has “exploded” in recent years and on the latest episode of iGaming Daily, Motti Colman, VP of Revenue at Optimove, detailed how the company’s latest feature, OptiLive, will help to revolutionise the sector through the use of real-time data.

Speaking to James Ross, SBC’s Multimedia Editor, Colman explained that the solutions will harness real-world data, such as shifting odds due to a goal being scored, to communicate with customers.

“It’s just a really interesting angle,” Colman enthused. “It brings together the world of historical data, understanding customer profiles, real-time data from the customer perspective and what they’re doing right now.

“It also brings together global events, real-time actual betting information and real-world events that are taking place. So combining those three different data sources together becomes a very powerful triumvirate.”

According to Colman, the value of in-play betting to an operator can be almost twice that of pre-match betting in many territories. Some estimates suggest that by 2035 the in-play betting market could reach a value of £19bn.

However, Colman warned that operators shouldn’t be looking to put all their eggs in the in-play betting market. Instead, a more holistic approach would be more valuable in the long term.

He said: “We’ve always seen that when you’re talking about customer preferences, the best type of customers in terms of longevity are customers that mix and match their preferences. [Previously] mobile exploded but you don’t want to move all your customers only to mobile as a web and mobile customer is more beneficial to you as a business.

“It’s the same again with betting. In-play is the valuable piece but when you’ve got  customers that bet pre-match and in-play, the sort of longevity you get from a customer because they’re more exposed to the various parts of your product is just significantly better.”

During the episode, Colman also reflected on the long development process of OptiLive. 

He explained that the initial concept was dreamt up by Optimove’s Co-Founder and CEO, Pini Yakuel, who envisioned a tool that would allow operators to send customers real-time information on crucial moments of a sports contest – such as the odds of an NBA player making a game-winning free throw.  

Looking ahead to how such messaging can be scaled in the future, Colman spoke about the vital role that AI will play in achieving this aim.

“One of the big things that AI allows us to do is remove or shorten that bottleneck in terms of content generation,” explained Colman.

“You can have every single moment that’s taking place but if you can’t get a message out to a customer at that moment, then it’s impossible. AI massively bridges that gap in being able to build prompts that will pull data [and offer] insights and interesting pieces of information.”