Opinion: How in-play finally found its audience on mobile

We are seeing growth in mobile betting in-play, In line with general trends. Simply put, more people are now getting involved in the markets whilst on the move, at an event or whilst at home on a mobile device so that’s where we have to be working to ensure our in-play product and market set is as appealing as they can be.

I think in-play is an ideal product for the channel. You can see that in the popularity of minute market betting, with people following the action on a second screen and dipping into the markets as the action unfolds. Even the dullest of bore draw matches comes to life when you can bet on what will happen within a one minute window.

Quite a lot of value is added via animations and stats. We want to provide relevant information that a customer will find useful to have before placing a bet and we want to provide it at the point of bet placement.

Our football in-play offering has had animated scoreboards and accompanying commentary feed info for quite some time and we’ve recently added in new messages to support minute market betting such as Thrown In and Free Kick. We’ve also delivered a new animated darts scoreboard and in general we will look to roll that functionality into new scoreboards where possible.

It’s important to keep people up to speed with sporting events. You can get a sense of how an event is unfolding by watching the animated scoreboard and looking at the headline stats for a match or a particular market. All this information is useful to have if you can’t see the live pictures. It can only help a customer to make an informed decision.

We are pleased with how our new ‘minute to win it’ markets have performed and activity levels in general. We haven’t put a great deal of marketing weight behind ‘Minute to Win It’ just yet but we’ve assigned the market a prominent position in our in-play setup and customers have been getting involved in decent numbers. It’s a promising start and looks good so far.

I think these new markets are a hint towards what’s to come. I’m not sure you will see a wholesale change because a lot of pre-event markets are also very popular in-play and I’m sure they always will be but I think there is definitely a place for minute markets and the challenge now is going to be to develop the best offering and give customers the best experience we can.

Fast automated and accurate settlement is a really important element and in time we will look to broaden the offering too.