Bettormetrics: Major bookmakers losing millions on suspended markets

Research carried out by Bettormetrics, an innovative AI data company providing competitive trading intelligence and insight to the sports betting industry, has revealed that major sportsbooks across the globe have been missing out on a significant volume of wagering opportunity on Premier League football due to poor suspension strategies.

Taking a wealth of data from eight major online sports betting websites, across more than 40 Premier League fixtures, Bettormetrics surveyed a variety of key performance indicators, such as Uptime, Overround, Unmatched Suspension Duration, and Arbitrage Duration, to highlight the potential lost wagering amounts.

According to its research, there is a strong correlation between uptime and margin. Flutter Entertainment brands, Sky Bet and Paddy Power have the highest market suspension time with bet365 not far behind, highlighting the fine tuning of suspension strategy among the UK’s biggest sports betting brands.

By comparison, more Asian-facing brands like Dafabet and SBOBet experience both significantly higher uptimes and lower margin.

From a turnover perspective, Bettormetrics has estimated that despite the relatively performative uptime strategy, the sheer dominance of the global brand still results in more than €100m in lost revenue for bet365. For Unibet, the operator’s poor suspension timing accounts for over €50m in potential lost wagering, holding it back from generating further market share.

From a revenue perspective, all bookmakers analysed are likely to be losing at least €1m in real profit per season due to excessive suspension times across their Premier League 1×2 markets, with this correlating to more than €10m for bet365.

Sabin Brooks, Chief Revenue Officer at Bettormetrics, commented:

Through our analysis, we’re able to put a hard cash value on the deleterious effects of sub-optimal suspension strategies throughout the Premier League season, and the effect on operators’ bottom line is eye watering. bet365’s nine-figure number of lost turnover is the most eye-catching, but the effect on smaller operators is even more damaging. The €15m in potential lost wagering is a significant sum for MarathonBet, who could be reinvesting more trading profits into building market share and avoiding the negative association low uptime has on the punter’s betting experience. While suspensions are both inevitable and necessary in a trading room, especially with the advent of VAR adding even more uncertainty to pricing up big moments, having a strategy to minimise it in line with the array of other factors can clearly have a major impact on a business’ revenue stream in football.

Robert Urwin, CEO and co-founder of Bettormetrics, added:

By exploring a range of factors, and utilising a plethora of data sources, we were able to extract an array of interesting insights into the performance of operators across the globe, and how suspensions can seriously affect the bottom line. With a clear difference in approach between UK-facing bookmakers and Asian-focused operators when it comes to margin, we can see both pricing approach and suspension strategy are vital to protect against lost revenue leakage.

Bettormetrics monitors and analyses thousands of live in-play sports betting events traded every single week. Observed performance and competitive analysis by Bettormetrics has already helped traders and analysts discover and identify deficiencies that directly impact sportsbook revenues and profitability.