bet365 continues to out-point its rivals from an in-play perspective
Wednesday July 25,2012 : BET365 TOPS IN LATEST GAMBLING DATA REPORT
GamblingData’s In-Play Tracker Summer 2012 survey finds that bet365 continues to out-point its rivals from an in-play perspective
The latest GamblingData In-Play Tracker (IPT) study has seen bet365 regain the top spot in football events from Ladbrokes, which dropped down to third in the Summer 2012 survey.
This is the third quarterly report for the year and the first to have taken place during a major football tournament, with bet365 topping the poll with 287 individual football events. Sportingbet took the runners-up spot with 217 during the survey period, while Ladbrokes were third with 189 and 12Bet fourth with 163.
The survey ran in designated 10-minute betting windows between Friday 8 June and Sunday 1 July to cover the European Championships in Poland and Ukraine, as well as one week of the Wimbledon tennis tournament. It covered 11 of the leading sportsbooks, up from eight in the previous two studies, and found that bet365 were 79 percent ahead of their nearest rival Paddy Power with 748 events compared with 418 for the Irish firm.
The same two companies occupied the top two spots in tennis where the Stoke-based firm’s performance was particularly impressive with a total of 256 events compared with Paddy Power’s 162. Bwin was third with 123.
Football still the backbone of in-play
Away from the obvious big games at Euro 2012, the Summer 2012 IPT found in-play football offerings to proliferate around the clock even if there was still something of a post-season slump evident.
Of the 3,903 events tracked by the survey, 44.6 percent were found to be football games. This compares with 67 percent in the Spring 2012 survey and 69 percent in the Winter 2012 edition, each of which took place when the European football season was in full swing.
But tennis fills the gap
The Summer 2012 survey was timed to capture the first week of the Wimbledon tennis tournament, but from the total events of 1,098 captured it is clear that the leading firms looked far beyond what was happening in SW19 for matches to entice their punters.
In total, 24 sports were covered across the 11 sportsbooks in the Summer 2012 survey, including the in-play debuts of boxing and darts. A total of two operators covered boxing while eight of the eleven covered darts.
The survey shows that 10 sports from the Olympics featured among the in-play offerings of 11 sites tracked for the Summer 2012 report. Alongside the obvious favourites of football and tennis, the Summer 2012 survey found badminton, basketball, beach volleyball, boxing, cycling, handball, table tennis and volleyball being offered to punters in-play.
Historically, bookmakers have all but ignored the summer Olympics, as there was comparatively little punter interest, but, with the inclusion of football and tennis – two of the most popular betting mediums – in the Games, and with the rise of in-play, Olympics betting is now poised to come to the aid of the bookies during a relatively quiet summer lull.
