Bet builders have become a battleground product for sports betting operators, but BetVictor’s Director of Sportsbook & eGaming Eoin Ryan says one key factor is still holding them back.

Ryan discussed both the popularity of bet builders and revealed where the product can potentially grow on the latest episode of the iGaming Daily Podcast.

The issue with bet builders

While Bet builders have been at the forefront of football betting for customers, other sports haven’t established the same relationship with the product.

The increased access to data statistics in football has helped push this new trend of betting but it hasn’t taken off in other popular sports, such as horse racing or rugby. 

Ryan cited the main issue for the growth of bet builders in other sports as being a lack of available data, as the BetVictor Director gave his prediction on how it can move forward.

“It’ll be led again by the data providers themselves and the level of granularity that they can get down to. And once that data becomes available to operators, they can set about modeling that and coming up with new markets.”

With the product thriving in a football setting, the main issue is finding a way to bring bet builder success to other sports.

Ryan said: “How could you apply BB modules onto the racing product? This is a conversation that we’re having and we have been having for a number of years. 

“Horse racing is a landscape that’s fragmented in terms of who is supplying the data. It’s quite a limited product at the moment. I could see that emerging and being quite popular, but we’re not there yet.”

Football popularity 

It exists as a popular and trending product for football, appearing in promotions and advertisements frequently and Ryan explained how football goes hand-in-hand with bet builder products.

“Customers are increasingly wanting to place those types of bets. They don’t want to simply have a bet on who will win the game. They’re much more interested now in who’s going to have the shots on target, who’s going to have the passes, the fouls, the tackles.”

For now, it stands out as the trending product and it is something that all major operators are focusing on improving for its customers and the focus is on making it a more intuitive product and easier to use to supply the growing demand. 

“Clearly customer demand is there. It’s really shaping and defining the roadmap plans, I think, for operators in the space, it’s a battleground product.

“In some cases, it is the lead product. It’s literally where customers are landing when they navigate to the match that they’re interested in betting on.”