Q&A: Game, set, match, rally length? How to transform tennis data as with football

Flutter, Entain and Kambi all highlighted bet builders and same-game multis as key drivers of major growth in their Q2 2021 investor presentations, with the latter attributing 20% of all Euro 2020 operator gross gaming revenue to such bets.

That’s an astonishing figure for many reasons, not least football’s existing dominance leading some to think there couldn’t be room for such rapid transformational change in the sport.

However, according to Stats Perform, not only was the change predicted, but the surface has only been scratched.

The sports content provider recently made its next big people, technology and rights investment in tennis, believing transformational data-led growth is also achievable for this sport.

Stats Perform chief betting officer Andrew Ashenden takes EGR Technology through the reasons behind the success of bet builders and player props at the Euros, and the work to bring its vision for tennis to life.

EGR Technology: Entain’s Myke Foster told us in July that the operator had been “absolutely overawed by the reaction to our 5-A-Side product this summer, from across the whole industry”. Why do you think bets on markets like player shots and tackles have resonated so quickly with bettors?

Andrew Ashenden (AA): We’ve seen first-hand the shift from team- to player-focus right across the sports media industry: from fantasy, to social, to broadcast, and so the transition bettors are making towards player betting is really a natural evolution.

However, for player betting to gain any traction required a universally trusted and authoritative data source, because player-related data points aren’t necessarily clear cut in their nature. For example, a pass could be interpreted as a shot or a cross, depending on the definition and how that definition is applied.

Opta’s player stats have become the established and accepted reference for football since the first Opta Index in 1996 and vitally, the same stats are widely published globally across broadcast, media and official sports portals which means that player bets are settled in line with what customers see across other platforms.

The other crucial piece of the jigsaw is that with confidence in the underlying data, operators have done a phenomenal job of weaving player stats into and throughout their offerings.

Highly sophisticated products like bet builders and 5-A-Side create very simple, intuitive, personalised experiences that bettors love because they’re fun and entertaining for 90 minutes, and they can create their own unique ‘games within a game’.

EGR Technology: Why do you believe similar opportunities exist to transform tennis betting?

AA: We’ve spent 15 years optimising how we collect and supply in-play data for football, basketball and other sports and that definitely informs our opinion, as do our deep relationships with the betting industry.

With tennis, the difference has been that, until now, the global betting industry had been using feeds generated from the umpire’s chair. This data is by its nature not optimised for fans or betting.

At a visible level this manifested itself in the shallow tennis data sets that are seen compared to sports such as football and cricket. Shallow data limits scope for the innovative gamification and new narratives in tennis that have deepened fan connections in other sports, from relative simple metrics like a player’s tendency to shoot outside the box, to AI-powered advanced analytics like xG.

At a deeper level, but critically for sportsbooks and their customers, umpire scoring isn’t built to optimise in-play market uptime or fast bet settlement.

EGR Technology: In practical terms, what changes have you delivered for tennis so far?

AA: Stats Perform signed an exclusive partnership with the WTA in late 2020 to elevate the profile and popularity of women’s tennis.

The first parts of this involved improving access to WTA content through our larger network of betting and media partners as well as increasing the volume of live game video by 40% for our betting streaming partners.

We have now also executed on our vision for dedicated in-play tennis data for betting, and our professional IBIA-accredited team are collecting it courtside at every event.

This involves multiple operational changes around the way the data is collected, faster key event alerts, additional betting-specific data points and deeper shot-by-shot data. It also includes changes to how the data is monitored, supported and distributed, using dedicated systems and specialist personnel who are laser-focused on betting market needs.

With a dedicated betting data feed, we are now looking forward to seeing betting operators apply the same creativity and innovation to tennis as has been applied to football, to create more compelling in-play tennis experiences that unlock the full potential of the sport.

EGR Technology: What differences do you think fans and bettors will notice with your new approach to tennis data?

AA: Our dedicated in-play tennis data feed will help operators maximise market uptime, reduce bet delays and settle bets more quickly. All are vital to maximise bettor trust and create world-class experiences.

Bettors will also see a wider variety of betting offers powered by our collection of player shot-by-shot statistics, such as player props and same-game multis, that incorporate shot types and rally length.

Ultimately, we expect to replicate what we have seen in football, where deeper statistics across media and betting generate broader interest in player playing styles, richer commentary and analysis on these elements, and ultimately greater bettor and fan engagement with the sport.