Bettormetrics: “Sub-optimal suspension strategies” leading to lost operator turnover

Bettormetrics has suggested operators could be losing out on millions of pounds of Premier League turnover due to “sub-optimal suspension strategies”.

The AI-powered firm, which is led by former Ladbrokes and Unibet trader Robert Urwin as CEO, studied 40 Premier League games in April last season on a variety of metrics.

The research, which focused on 1X2 markets, involved eight online operators and an exchange to compare in-play trading performance.

Bettormetrics compared each operator’s respective up time, overround and unmatched suspension duration while also using arbitrage duration and potential lost wagering based on exchange data.

Unmatched suspension duration is defined by Bettormetrics as “periods of time when a sportsbook appears to be suspended in isolation. This suggests that the suspension was anomalous and unlikely to be driven by any event during the game”.

The business noted a “strong correlation” between up time and operator margin, with Bettormetrics also drawing out comparisons between Europe-facing and Asia-facing bookmakers.

However, the standout statistic from the data was Bettormetrics’ extrapolated estimated turnover losses for leading operators in the UK.

Using an internal metric of “lost wagering”, Bettormetrics took the wagering volumes from betting exchanges and, from there, estimated the expected proportion of turnover that each bookmaker could be losing due to respective suspension strategies.

The firm said that based “on a combination of Bettormetrics and publicly available financial metrics for each sportsbook” it was able to compute what the lost wagering percentage would translate into real terms.

Bet365, with an up time of 90.9% and an unmatched suspension time of five seconds, was calculated to have a lost wagering percentage of 4.5%.

Bettormetrics noted this would translate to estimated lost turnover of €136.2m (£116m) and estimated lost revenue of €10.9m.

Bettormetrics said: “While we cannot exactly know lost revenue, we can estimate the shortfall based on the opportunity cost of deficient up time and the observed wagering profiles on the exchanges and direct evidence through our clients.”

In comparison, Flutter Entertainment’s Sky Bet and Paddy Power brands had the strongest up times – 93% and 95.5%, respectively.

With unmatched suspensions of 18 seconds for Paddy Power and 30 seconds for Sky Bet, the assumed lost turnover would hit €17.9m and €32.6m for each operator, respectively.

Kindred Group’s Unibet brand, with its up time of just 89.9% and unmatched suspension time of one minute and 21 seconds, would see it lose out on €50.9m in turnover.

In terms of the Asia-facing bookmakers, up time was down significantly against the Europe-facing books, with unmatched suspension time also soaring.

Urwin, Bettormetrics CEO and co-founder, said: “By exploring a range of factors, and utilising a plethora of data sources, we were able to extract an array of interesting insights into the performance of operators across the globe, and how suspensions can seriously affect the bottom line.

“With a clear difference in approach between UK-facing bookmakers and Asia-focused operators when it comes to margin, we can see both pricing approach and suspension strategy are vital to protect against lost revenue leakage.”