And it's LIVE!!
Betting through your TV seems so compelling so why is it always...not? And will DAZN change this? You know the answer here...
Few things have been as consistently dreadful as interactive TV betting over the years. Betting industry darlings Sky Bet were one of the first to the plate and despite a few swings of the bat couldn’t really connect with anything and if it wasn’t for a shift to mobile they would have probably been a footnote rather than a chapter in the history of online gambling.
Europe has been a bit of a graveyard of the concept in fact, although most of the attempts were in the very early days of Smart TV technology and were before the mobile boom. So I don’t think it’s fair to say anyone has really tried yet to bridge the gap between passive and active watch-and-bet experiences on the big screen.
On the mobile device, of course, it’s another story. Watching sport on your betting app is actually a pretty good experience these days. And a whole new world of Azerbaijani football has been opened up to definitely-not-degenerate-problem-gamblers who just bloody love sport and betting at 2am.
Horse racing and tennis work well enough as mobile streamed content and operators and suppliers have really improved the UX over the years, with betting while watching now relatively easy and almost pleasant. But sport is made to be watched on the big screen, and that remains virgin territory for betting. And for good reason.
Over my shoulder
The biggest issue faced by betting on TV is the nature of betting itself. TV viewing is frequently a shared experience and betting remains a very personal one. I’d go as far as saying betting is a secretive experience for most people. Not many people are comfortable with their family or friends knowing exactly how much they are losing, all the dumb bets they are making or all the bad decisions they have made.
The concept of someone placing a bet through their TV, with everyone seeing exactly what they are betting on and for how much and that bet interrupting everyone else’s viewing seems completely absurd to me. For solo viewing I think it makes more sense, and overlays prompting or suggesting new bets also seems good in theory but unless they are deeply personalised it would rapidly become really annoying.
You could say, OK BOOMER who watches TV these days, it’s all about laptop and mobile streaming. Which is fine I guess, but that’s a lot less screen real estate and not that much of an enhancement of the existing user experience. Is having two tabs open really that challenging to most people? Certainly proposing, what is effectively the same streaming experience as exists on betting apps now but with a slightly better UI doesn’t feel revolutionary to me. Even if it might be a good thing.
Lagging behind…
The interactive TV and interactive laptop user experience are worlds apart and technology and cost will remain a big barrier to bringing them closer in the near-term. A TV that is sophisticated enough to run the type of software you will need quickly and smoothly is not going to be what is sitting on most people’s walls and we haven’t even discussed the issues with streaming lag and latency.
It feels very reminiscent of the early days of mobile betting where operators and suppliers were building products that only really worked for the very top end devices, and we may have a way to go before the tech in homes matches the tech that is being built for. Or more realistically the tech being promised in investor decks. But that’s not to say it’s not going to happen, just that it probably won’t happen for a couple of years at least.
In the meantime perhaps it remains a smaller screen affair. And an enhanced mobile or laptop streaming experience with more betting information and prompts overlaid. This will require strong personalization to be effective rather than just an assault on the senses, and then you need to ask yourself the question as to if this is something people really even want?
Sport is pretty boring
The unspoken conceit behind a lot of this is that sport is, basically, pretty boring to watch for large chunks of time. Users head to their phones to “enhance” the experience from being bored to “not being bored”. The escape from boredom is more of a reason than deep immersion in the engagement matrix of gaming entertainment something something blockchain gen-z nonsense you might have been sold.
But where does betting sit within this model of layering additional entertainment over a game? Well there are at least two schools of thought here. One is that betting is a game in itself and users will want to engage in that game to compete to see how much they can win or if they can be better at it than their friends with fast frequent bets on the action using their knowledge and insight.
I guess I buy into that. It’s certainly the basis of some companies offerings in this space, so clearly someone else does too. But it does, for me, oversell the fun and entertainment of betting as a thing in itself. I’m more of the second main school of thought where betting is a facilitator of entertainment or a catalyst of it if you prefer.
Creating your own story
You bet to create a narrative to follow in the game. You establish a new starting point such as “this person will score next” or “this game will have two more goals” and that becomes the action you follow. This also creates a dynamic that is functionally different to the first school of thought where you want to create fast resolutions to your bets in order to keep the action going.
When betting is a facilitator you want your bet to last more than a few seconds. You want a sweat, to follow the action and get the adrenaline pumping. Yes it’s fun to win a 10/1 shot in a few seconds, but you will almost certainly just end up placing another bet to reset the narrative again because the game has become boring again.
And this is a big challenge for interactive TV, or streaming providers wanting to create a mass market immersive betting experience. How do you do that for everyone when everyone’s stories will be different. Perhaps you push enhanced “giveaway” offers such as the big betting operators do? Perhaps you build a community around betting? Perhaps you crack the personalization code?
What should we expect?
But this all feels very complex and difficult. And online gambling tends to not like things that are either of those. It’s far easier to build a bet ticker and some generic bet recommendations isn’t it? Maybe some on-screen graphics that show how rapidly your bet went from 60% expectation to 6%. That’s fun right? Right?
What interactive streaming betting needs is some big ideas and some brave product development, and I really hope that’s what DAZN is going to bring to the market. My worry is it’s just going to be another me-too platform with a few new tricks that caters broadly to existing demand and uses the DAZN brand, wallet and marketing reach to build a business.
There’s nothing wrong with that, of course. There’s nothing wrong with a competent and well executed online gambling business. It’s a rare enough beast as it is. But at this point in the industry’s life cycle I think we all want something a bit bigger, braver and bolder. I’m just not sure that is what we are going to get.