Marc Thomas, managing director of Algosport, echoes the sentiment.
“ The trend is clear in European football and has certainly accelerated over recent years,” he says.“ Player props now feature much more heavily than previously.”
Thomas notes that the 2024 Euros and Copa America tournaments acted as catalysts.
“ These tournaments were almost perfect for in-play bet builders,” he explains.“ We see no reason why the proportion of bet builders struck in-play versus pre-match will not continue further, becoming the dominant revenue driver in the near future.”
At Algosport, Thomas says, the infrastructure is in place to support this trend.
“ We allow end-users to truly turn their opinions on a particular match or player into a bet that can test their knowledge and opinion against the bookmakers’ odds,” he explains.
INNOVATION AT THE EDGE
Beyond traditional props, operators are exploring even more granular experiences. Tomash Devenishek, CEO at Kero Sports, says the future lies in contextual, AI-driven betting markets.
“ Imagine a scenario where a player goes on a scoring streak, and the betting platform instantly offers and elevates a prop like‘ Player X has scored 14 points in four minutes – will he score over 25 in the half?’” Devenishek says.“ At Kero, we’ re pioneering this approach, delivering real-time, contextual micro markets.”
Devenishek sees this as the natural evolution of the market.“ It makes the popular offering more relevant and contextual while reducing the search effort on the user’ s part,” he explains.
While some platforms attempt to achieve this manually, he says the only scalable solution will come via automation and AI.
CHALLENGES AND CONSIDERATIONS
Despite the promise, challenges remain.“ It’ s not good enough to try and fudge the pricing with a priori guesses at correlations anymore,” Daniel warns.“ Modern sportsbook architecture must be robust enough to handle large numbers of SGP requests, each requiring hundreds of thousands of simulations of games.”
Risk management is also a hurdle.“ Modern systems can detect potentially large payouts across similar but nonidentical SGP bets,” he says.“ But not all the challenges have been overcome.”
Danzer adds that while the logic of personalisation and demographic targeting is sound, the data is still emerging.“ It seems logical that younger people are playing more on player props,” he says.“ But whether it is true, we will find out.”
Danzer is cautious about overestimating player props’ role in customer acquisition.“ I’ m not sure whether it is more efficient than other ways,” he admits.“ Advertising in the right environment, understanding the fans and giving them corresponding offers has a significant uptick in terms of performance – that again is logical.”
THE ROAD AHEAD
If current trends continue, the dominance of player props will likely only grow.“ Operators like parlays; margins are better for a start,” Danzer notes.“ And this is where player props are interesting.”
With the convergence of technology, personalisation and fan behaviour, the future of sports betting may lie not in the final score, but in who scores it, how, and when.
SCOTT LONGLEY is managing director of And More Media. Scott has been a journalist since the early noughties covering personal finance, sport and gambling. He has worked for a number of publications including Investment Week, Bloomberg Money, Football First, eGaming Review and Gambling Compliance. He also helps produce the Earnings + More betting and gaming sector newsletter.
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