Information is power: how BetitRight's data-rich approach boosts customer engagement

C&N Sporting Risk launched the gaming arm of its company, BetitRight, in November last year. The product brings together predictive models with live event feeds and bookmaker price feeds to create engaging in-play bet prompts on all headline fixtures.

Here, C&N Sporting Risk director Henry Newman talks to Jo Herbert about how its gaming arm offers contextualised data to customers and the USP of BetitRight’s in-play product.

EGR Technology (EGR): Can you tell us how C&N Sporting Risk was founded?

Henry Newman (HN): Myself and my business partner Rory Campbell have operated a betting syndicate for coming up to the end of our seventh season. We have a team of data scientists utilising raw on-field data to generate our predictive models, the outputs of which are utilised for the syndicates. We founded C&N Sporting Risk at the end of our third season. After a strong year, we saw the potential to utilise some of the outputs of our modelling to generate engaging content for other sectors. This saw us upscale, take on more staff and enter the gaming sector.

EGR Technology: Why did you decide to launch the gaming arm?

HN: Available content, particularly on bookmakers’ websites, is very market focused, with little supplementary or complementary information in the form of written content or statistics/data. Yes, the bookmakers offer a large range of markets and endeavour to give users a seamless betting experience but there’s a distinct lack of information available to actually assist users to make informed betting decisions. C&N has data and modelling outputs covering over 100 leagues, and we saw an opportunity whereby we could enhance engagement for users across the bookmakers’ websites by providing contextualised information to aid betting decision making.

EGR Technology: What does your newly launched in-play product BetitRight bring to customers?

HN: BetitRight joins together three different feeds of information to generate bet prompts across a range of over 45 different betting markets. The first feed is the output of relevant betting information from our modelling. The second is a live-event feed which provides all the key events that occur in-game. And the third is the price feed that we receive from the bookmaker.

When key events occur in a game, those three pieces of information combined together generate relevant data and automated sentences – either via an API or a plug and play widget – that can advise and influence consumer betting decisions across different markets. For example, say Man United have taken the lead in the first 15 minutes of a game (which they rarely do nowadays), our product will reference how frequently they have done this, BTTS ‘Yes’ or United -1.5 on the handicap, has come in. The engine will then make a bet recommendation off the back of this data.

BetitRight can even go as granular as some of the 10-minute markets you see on Sky Bet for example, and provide relevant information such as shots on goal, cards or team to score all based on historical data. It also gives consumers breadth across markets in terms of league coverage that may not be in the forefront of news or bookmaker websites on a day-to-day level. For instance, there might be consumers who want to have a bet on Bundesliga 2 as well as the Premier League but they don’t have the information at their disposal to help them decide which bet to make. BetitRight’s In-Play Bet Prompt product helps them to do this.

Essentially, BetitRight does two key things: it provides relevant pieces of information to help the consumers bet better, and it enhances engagement by broadening the consumer’s reach across multiple leagues and markets that they might not have engaged with otherwise.

EGR Technology: How does BetitRight differ from its competitors?

HN: Firstly, its sheer scale in terms of the league coverage. Secondly, the volume of markets it covers from the main markets such as 1X2 markets, handicaps and goals markets to the more specific markets like corners and cards. Thirdly, the depth of our information database is as extensive as you will find anywhere in the industry, and lastly, and most crucially, we’ve got sophisticated contradiction and price logic in place to ensure our bet recommendations are always relevant – you won’t see one recommendation in the first 10 minutes and then the opposite recommendation 10 minutes later, or a bet that is priced at 1.1. All of these elements are considered across the breadth of our data science team to deliver a well-polished finished product with attractive bet recommendations for the end user.

EGR Technology: Can you tell us more about your plans to offer in-play commentary, feed and enhanced visuals?

HN: One of the products we’re working on is a live text commentary tool. As opposed to simply telling users what’s happening in a game, like ‘it’s a free kick’ or ‘there’s been a shot on goal’ etc, we will find interesting pieces of information about what’s happening. For example, if Lucas Moura receives a yellow card inside the first minute of the game, our tool will inform you that it’s the fastest yellow card in the Premier League this season. Or, if Harry Kane registers three shots on goal in the first 15 minutes of the game, we’ll tell you that the last time he did this he went on to bag a hattrick. Plus, it provides the information instantaneously, generating on-the-spot engagement: interesting facts to tell your mates. It also has potential to be an aid to other media outlets – a reference tool to push sticky content out to their audiences.

EGR Technology: How did your JV with Spotlight Sports Group (previously the Racing Post) feature in the decision to launch BetitRight?

HN: The JV was a pivotal moment in C&N’s development as it opened our eyes to the market for in-play products and content offerings as well as reinforcing the strength of our product. Through building an in-play product for Spotlight to market and sell, we saw the opportunity for our own gaming arm, with options to expand into products like live text commentary and in-play data visualisations. We knew it was a market we could excel in.

EGR Technology: Betfred leverages your bet prompt and in-play service. What does the collaboration mean to both parties?

HN: Betfred signed up to a three-year contract for the in-play bet prompt offering. They’ve got full market coverage and are taking approximately 10 leagues from us as well as some additional competitions.

Across a number of data spots we’ve worked on, throughout any point over a 12-month period, bookmakers are seeing an increase in activity of approximately 5%. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that for tier-one and tier-two bookmakers who have users in the hundreds of thousands, that the product is engaging for the consumer and revenue-generating for the bookmaker.

EGR Technology: What’s next for C&N Sporting Risk and BetitRight over the next 12 months?

HN: C&N is still new to the gaming market and we are keen to penetrate some tier-one bookmakers with our offerings. We have a number of trials set up throughout 2022, Sky Bet and ComeOn to name two. We will definitely expand deeper into live text commentary and in-play data visualisations and have also already started the creation of similar in-play bet prompt products for both basketball and esports. Once we’ve solidified our foothold in the UK market, we plan to utilise our in-play product to expand into foreign markets, particularly the US mass market where soccer and basketball are real data-rich sports. This will give us the opportunity to generate really engaging, enhanced content that we believe will be very well received.