2009 saw live betting come of age. 2010 will see it mature nicely and we'll see it really start to fire on all cylinders. The real time web is here and in play betting fits in nicely with web developments. We'll see a lot of innovation, a better customer experience all round and hopefully increased revenues as a result.
What's it been like for Boolabus? We did a lot of good foundation work in 2009 on the Betstream framework and we are now working on extending it in interesting ways and onto other platforms.
We call it live betting but in the wider web development world, real-time search and real-time applications are the new black. It's nice to know that betting and gaming are ahead of the curve...
Twitter have released a widget that searches on specific tags. It's interesting to see what is happening when you search on live betting OR bet in play. Mainly affiliates twittering away to themselves and occasional offerings from the big boys. Take a look...
On Thursday (9th July) I am moderating a panel session at the Gaming Executive Summit in Madrid. The panel is looking at the relationship between the sports industry and betting, or specifically "exploring how a harmonised marriage between gaming companies and the sports industry can be created". This seems to suggest a bit of disharmony but in reality the two sectors work very well together. You can see it in the recent shirt sponsorship deals by gaming companies (now accounting for 25% shirt sponsors in the premier league. There is at least one more on the way).
There are thousands of podcasts available focusing on all areas of business and the broader entertainment sector. The betting and gaming sector has never really had something that can be held up as a serious contribution to the podcasting world. That is until now. Ronan Tighe has been publishing a series of interviews with the good, the bad and the ugly of betting and gaming.I qualified in the latter category I think.
Betfair have been attracting attention for what is a very simple idea - Betfair Predicts. Anyone involved in sportsbetting knows the power of commercial exchanges and their ability to predict event outcomes (OK, except on horses, greyhounds and occasional 4-4 footie matches). Betfair have created a standalone site that flips the price of each selection into a probability, gives it a fancy graph and creates a widget that you can add to your blog. They have had very good press, especially on American Idol preditcions. Mentions include Techcrunch and ABC news.
We recently launched a nice little live application that drives punters to live betting and really highlights the events with streaming video. It may not seem like rocket science but it's a smart little app and it's doing exactly what it set out to do. It's live on some of Ladbrokes' European sites.
Saturday, January 2, 2010 at 5:52PM 
Brian MacSweeney