ALT Sports Data looks into the future of sports betting innovation
ALT Sports Data, a company that’s definitely on a roll and wants to make “sports betting as fast and immersive as video games,” is attracting various partners and investors.
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ALT Sports Data - Formula 1 - bet365 Partnership
In February, the Carlsbad, CA-based firm partnered with Formula 1, and by extension, 750 million worldwide racing fans, to accelerate Formula 1's presence in sports betting.
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Sports betting is an increasingly important part of the global fan experience, and Formula 1 is committed to delivering new and entertaining ways for our audiences to engage with the sport. We are delighted to partner with ALT Sports Data, whose expertise in bespoke sports betting markets and analytics makes them the perfect partner to help us drive forward in this exciting new chapter. –Emily Prazer | Chief Commercial Officer at Formula 1 |
In March, ALT announced a global partnership with bet365 to “bring innovative sports betting experiences to a broader audience by leveraging ALT Sports Data’s official sports partnerships and bet365's extensive reach and market expertise.”
The book said that at that time, it expected to gain access to “a wide range of new betting opportunities and audiences” by using ALT Sports Data’s analytics and real-time information.
Those two announcements made it no surprise when ALT announced the successful closing of a five-million-dollar seed round in April, which was “significantly oversubscribed due to overwhelming investor interest.”
Alternative Sports Markets
So, what is everyone, including recent partner X Games, fired up about? The CEO and founder of ALT Sports Data spoke to SIGMA News.
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ALT Sports Data is more than a data provider — we’re becoming the connective tissue between next-gen sports, sportsbooks, and fans. With our growing portfolio of rightsholders and partners, we’re creating the infrastructure driving new revenue and deeper engagement across the entire value chain. –Joe Dunnigan | CEO & Founder of ALT Sports Data |
In ALT’s version of the real-time sports betting future, odds are live, and wagering is personalized to each bettor.
“We believe that the real opportunities within iconic sports like F1 are the things happening within the race,” said ALT co-founder Michael Jordan. “Whether the fifth-position car will overtake the fourth-position car on an turn is way more engaging than who is going to win the race in 90 to 120 minutes.”
To thrive in a world of short attention spans and multiple screens, ALT sees profit by focusing on emerging and alternative sports. Skateboarding? Sure. Surfing? Definitely. Motocross? Of course. Disc golf? Bull riding? Whatever you want.
A vision that started at GoPro
ALT Sports Data’s founders come from the world of alternative action sports. They built relationships while working at GoPro, which changed the world of sports visuals.
“We recognized that sports betting was becoming legal in the U.S.,” said Jordan. “But fans of alternative sports didn’t have any way to engage in it with the sports they loved. There was no gaming experience available, and we wanted to change that."
“We also wanted to boost the economy of these sports for the players. These athletes put it all on the line, and almost all have full-time jobs to themselves. We want to build up our league partners to the point where athletes earn enough without a second job.”
Cresting a wave toward an untapped market
In 2009, Jordan built a fantasy sports game for professional surfing, eventually purchased by the World Surf League, and also created Surf Stats, a database of surfing performance styled after MLB-style data.
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With Surf Stats, we had invented all these performance metrics for surfing, things that had never been tracked before, and we were using predictive analytics to price surfers in the fantasy game, that became the foundation for what we’re doing now with alternative sports betting. –Michael Jordan | ALT Sports Data Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer |
Recognizing that the fans of what are considered alternative sports are individually few but collectively many, the light bulb went on.
“There’s no outlet for these fans,” Jordan said. “But there are tens of millions of them. And they want in.”
“The vision is second-by-second betting,” added Director of Data Science Tim Wall. “Betting by the millisecond. We want the fan to be fully immersed, watching the event live and placing bets as the action unfolds. They want to be part of every moment, not just the final score.”
Making money from data
Wall and his colleagues are creating predictive models for sports that no one has thought of before: the conditions on a dirt racing track at different times of day, whether a skateboarder will make a trick - the potential list seems almost endless.
So, a partner like Bet365 can take these new odds and offer betting markets where there were none before.
“Some of those conversations can take a year or even longer,” Jordan said, negotiating with the big books. “So, in the meantime, we built a full product suite. Access to this product suite allows sportsbooks to browse our live markets and the latest odds quickly and seamlessly, opening the door to smaller sportsbook partnerships that don’t come with the long integration roaps.”
On the broadcast side…
Jordan envisions a future in which every bettor is immersed in his AI stream. He listens to his broadcast, which re his last wager and offers voice-activated betting, with the commentator speaking directly to him.
“I see it as a holistic stream,” he said. “Driver cams, dynamic views, personalised narration, all based on what you’ve bet on historically.”
