Blog: Get ready for the first betting Olympics
With just 10 days to go before the opening of the Games Mark Maydon, commercial director at the Sporting Index Group, contemplates whether London 2012 will see a step change in Olympics betting.
We are now less than two weeks away from the biggest global sporting extravaganza and, while the eyes of the world are certain to be transfixed on London, many in the betting industry are wondering to what extent punters will be getting stuck in.
Traditionally, the Olympics hasn’t been a particularly big business for UK bookmakers but there are a combination of factors that suggest things could be different in 2012.
Firstly, Britain is a nation of gamblers and is, by some distance, the most sophisticated sports betting market in the world. Betting parlance has become inexorably interwoven into the media coverage of all sports “ and the Olympics will be no different. It’s not just “X is the favourite to win this event” “ increasingly betting-savvy commentators are quoting actual odds.
There are a number of sports at this year’s Games which are already established from a betting perspective, most notably football and tennis, but the popularity of sports like basketball, volleyball and handball, particularly among the European betting community, are on a steep growth curve.
We also have the fact that bookmakers will be offering prices on each of the 36 sports for the very first time. Our B2B trading services arm, Sporting Solutions, is supplying a number of operators around the globe with a full fixed-odds Olympics pricing solution covering more than 300 events, so it is clear that sportsbooks are taking the Games seriously.
The relentless march of technology also continues to facilitate increased betting opportunities. The BBC alone will have no fewer than 24 additional channels available online as well as on cable and satellite networks, while they have booked channel 304 on Freeview for additional Olympics-only broadcasting. They are also streaming live coverage to mobile devices, having just launched a dedicated app for iOS and Android smartphones.
When you add this to the boom in mobile betting, and the fact that London 2012 will be the first ever Olympics to offer public WiFi access inside the competition due to a new high-density network from BT, the scope for the public to have a bet on anything from the 100m final to the taekwondo heats will be like never before.
So that’s the supply side addressed. As for demand, well, both the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG) appear to believe this Olympics will attract unprecedented levels of betting turnover. LOCOG has even gone to the lengths of issuing specific guidelines to the UK betting industry as to the dos-and-(mostly)-don’ts in respect of this year’s Games. A read not for the faint hearted.
At Sporting Solutions we too are predicting that London 2012 will be the first Olympics to attract a significant jump in betting turnover. That’s why we have been making the most of our inherent pricing and trading heritage, with our traders, data analysts and modellers hard at work for the past 18 months preparing for the Olympics. It’s been a marathon, but the finishing line is in sight.