One future New Jersey sports betting app that goes all-in on treating sports bets as commodities has truly fitted itself out with all the bells and whistles necessary to present sports betting in that format. Sporttrade New Jersey will have similar capabilities to monitor trading activity as one of the world’s premier stock exchanges.
In a new partnership with NASDAQ, the first true exchange for sports bets in NJ will have access to the same technology that NASDAQ uses to avoid integrity threats. It’s a reminder for bettors in NJ of just how similar betting on sports is to playing the market.
Sporttrade New Jersey employs NASDAQ system
This deal is all about using NASDAQ’s SMARTS technology for surveillance. No, that doesn’t mean Sporttrade staff will be in a van outside your home.
NASDAQ uses SMARTS as a watchdog for trading on its exchange. Through event recording and machine learning, the system can alert the user to irregular patterns typical of insider trading.
Given that it all happens in real-time, that allows NASDAQ to stymie market manipulation attempts before they take effect. When Sporttrade goes live in NJ, it will possess the same capabilities.
“Today marks another important step in fulfilling our mission to elevate the sports betting industry with proven capital markets technology that will monitor our platform and protect our user base,” said Alex Kane, founder and CEO of Sporttrade, in a press release. “Adopting NASDAQ’s industry-leading market surveillance technology is essential in Sporttrade’s promise to our participants – to advance fair, transparent, and efficient open sports betting markets.”
While this might look like a lot of technical jargon that signals Sporttrade’s platform could be over the head of casual bettors in NJ, that isn’t true at all. In fact, even the most novice bettors can grasp this concept quickly.
How Sporttrade’s platform will work
Think of an exchange as a kind of enhanced in-game experience. If you’ve ever placed any bets at other NJ sportsbooks before, you’ve already used a similar system.
While the entertainment of betting on sports is certainly part of what you’re paying for, you’re also buying a commodity. Consider your betting slip as your “stock certificate” (back when physical versions of those were still a thing).
Just like with a stock, you buy in hoping the value of the wager grows with time as events happen. In this case, those events are athletes or teams performing in the appropriate contests.
Then, at the pre-arranged time, you can present your “certificate” and collect your profit provided things went the right way. Sporttrade puts you in charge of when you can make that exchange.
Many NJ sportsbooks already give you early “cash-out” options for bets. Sporttrade builds on that premise by allowing users to move in and out of positions freely, just like investors on the NASDAQ exchange.
Just like with NASDAQ, there is risk
Sporttrade also puts you in control of what price you sell that position at. Therein lies the risk of the platform. If you sell your holding too early or late, you might miss a better price at another time.
Another way you will determine the fate of your investment on Sporttrade is with which events you buy into, similar to purchasing shares of the most desirable companies on NASDAQ. If you buy into a game in which the favorite is blowing out the underdog by a large margin, you probably won’t get much for your position.
Thus, it’s still imperative for long-term success to do your homework. The most successful users of this platform will be the most knowledgeable.
When might New Jerseyans get to try out the app? This move keeps the Philadelphia-based company on track for a fourth-quarter launch this year. The app will take wagers in NJ under Bally’s Atlantic City license.
When it launches, users can invest with the same confidence they put in NASDAQ securities. Whether you profit or not will only come down to your handicapping and those unpredictable ball bounces going your way, not artificial manipulation.