Anyone who has experienced sports betting in Europe knows that the market in the United States of America seriously lags behind in one key dynamic: the quality of live wagering. With the announced acquisition of Banach Technology, PointsBet Sportsbook thinks it may have found a solution.
The tech company’s systems aim to make in-game betting in the US a better product. The proof will be in the betting, though.
PointsBet buys Banach Technology
On Monday, PointsBet announced the transaction. A press release touted the move as a way to accelerate the Australian gambling company’s technology. It could also put PointsBet in a position to be a leader as the live betting industry grows.
“As legalization to approve sport betting accelerates across the US, it has become clear that the in-play opportunity will be very significant, and those with the best depth and breadth of product will win,” said PointsBet Group CEO and Managing Director Sam Swanell in the same release. “Technology is at the forefront of everything we do at PointsBet, and we have undertaken an in-house approach to proprietary technology as the key priority. In Banach, PointsBet has found a like-minded team of technologists, and the acquisition is a preferable approach to developing our in-play capabilities organically, given it allows us to dramatically ramp up our speed to market while still allowing us to own market-leading technology and continue to control our destiny.”
As Swanell referred to, technology is the key to growth here. It’s also a bigger problem than just PointsBet’s systems.
Latency, side-lining, and stadium hardware
Legality isn’t the biggest issue for sportsbooks in the US when it comes to live wagering. Most jurisdictions have few restrictions on that type of betting, often only covering using official data providers.
The bigger issue is the quality of the product. Sidelining is a serious problem in the US when it comes to in-game wagering.
That is the advantage that people who are physically at sporting events have in live betting markets as compared to people who are elsewhere during the events. Because the in-person spectators are watching the event in real-time, they have access to information before other bettors do.
That isn’t the sum total of the issue, however. There is also a latency problem in terms of the time it takes sportsbooks to process live event data.
That often leads to sportsbooks like PointsBet freezing markets, to allow time for their systems to catch up. That, in turn, can result in bettors not being able to place their bets at the time and with the odds they want.
That’s what PointsBet aims to solve with its acquisition of Banach.
Even if it can drastically reduce the lag in processing time, that may not address the issue of sidelining. That will require the intervention of data providers, stadium owners, and other parties to improve the technology at the sites of these events.
Someday, that may happen. PointsBet can only control the quality of its platform. The Banach Technology acquisition may make it the best in the country for live betting.
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