As the Oklahoma City Thunder were on their way to winning the decisive Game 7 of this year’s N.B.A. Finals, a flurry of shadow games were being played on the phones of millions of Americans.
On mobile sports betting apps, nearly everything that was happening on the court was also a chance to win (or lose) money: Which team would score the next basket? By two points or three? How many points would the star player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander score in the fourth quarter? New bets, with new odds, popped up until the final whistle.
These bets — known as in-game or live betting — have become ubiquitous and are one of the fastest growing areas of the sports gambling industry in the United States. They range from wagers on the result of a game while it is underway to what are known as microbets on events that are resolved quickly, sometimes in a matter of seconds, like the speed of a baseball pitch. Others are on outcomes of random events — will the halftime point total be an odd or even number, for instance. Once you are on the FanDuel or DraftKings mobile apps, there are scrolls and scrolls of bets, worldwide, day or night.
For betting companies, or sportsbooks, the popularity of live betting is driving rapid revenue growth. Bets during games accounted for more than half the money wagered on FanDuel and DraftKings in recent quarters, executives at both companies said on earnings calls this year. (Both companies declined interview requests from The New York Times.) In Oregon, a state that keeps detailed sports betting data, in-game betting for DraftKings, the only online sportsbook that operates there, grew about twice as fast as pregame betting from 2023 to 2024, in terms of number of bets made, total money wagered and revenue.
“The end goal with in-game betting is to create a product that is stickier, is more engaging, and results in the consumer spending more time using the DraftKings app or the FanDuel app,” said Chris Grove, a partner emeritus at Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, a research firm, and a managing partner at an investment fund that has backed live betting technology companies.
The post The Seductive, and Risky, Power of Live Sports Betting appeared first on New York Times.
