[h=1]The next frontier of Daily Fantasy Sports is here: In-game wagering on a play-by-play basis[/h]
The next evolution of sports gambling is already happening.
While it took almost 30 years for the fantasy sports industry to evolve with the help of the Internet and smartphones and the introduction of daily fantasy sports, the next wave of how we engage with and bet on sports is coming much faster.
DFS sites like FanDuel and DraftKings disrupted the traditional fantasy industry by offering a product that requires a shorter attention span and pays immediate rewards as players don't have to wait until the end of the season to find out if they've won anymore. And they're easy to access. DFS products, like on-demand television programming, cater to contemporary media consumption habits and make it simpler and faster to play fantasy games.
Similarly, the traditional sports betting industry is also evolving. And just like DFS pays off more immediately than season-long games, traditional sports bettors don't even have to wait for the games to finish before collecting prizes anymore.
Thanks to in-game wagering, some online sportsbooks allow you to bet on games within games.
In theory, depending on where you live, you can now place a bet with an online sportsbook on a game before it starts, you can set your fantasy lineup before it locks and then while the game is being played, you can continue to predict what's going to happen in real time and make bets all along the way.
In-game gambling, also known as live wagering or in-play betting, allows players to fill in the gaps during stoppages or commercials of most nationally televised games by placing bets on what they think is going to happen next. For example: Are the Jets going to score a touchdown on this drive? Will Eli Manning throw a completion or an interception here?
Welcome to the new world of sports gambling, where players can binge on bets like they devour seasons worth of television on Netflix in a single sitting. As lawmakers debate the merits of legalizing DFS games on a state-by-state basis and also begin to tackle the larger question of regulating universal sports gambling, Americans could soon have even more legalized betting options at their fingertips.
"It's extremely dangerous," Sal LaFemina, the director of the Gambling Treatment Program at Community Counseling Services of West Nassau, told the Daily News.
"When a person has problems with self control and compulsivity, they tend to try to win back their debts and it costs people a lot of money," he said. "People blow hundreds of thousands of dollars on online betting."
LaFemina said these games seem to be popular among younger players and sports fans, which is exactly who they're marketed to.
According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, the characteristics of modern sports betting, which essentially allows everyone to walk around with a casino in their pocket thanks to all of the outlets available on their phones, there may be a higher risk for addiction connected to these games.
Characteristics associated with greater odds for compulsive behavior include the high frequency of contests, the large number of entries permitted, high entry fees and more frequent payouts. NCPG concludes DFS players are more likely to have gambling problems than non-players.
Gamblers Anonymous, which declined to comment on this story, added fantasy sports to its list of activities it defines as gambling.
"Daily fantasy sports websites are anonymous, easy to access, and even easier to hide," Dr. Timothy Fong, a psychiatrist and director of the UCLA Gambling Studies program, wrote in an April op-ed. "Anyone could place thousands of dollars at risk with a click of the mouse, and no one close to them would know. This is where the risk to develop addiction is highest. There is no maximum amount of money to be lost, and there are no consumer protections like there would be inside brick-and-mortar casinos."
NCPG has called for added consumer protections and age verification for DFS sites, safeguards which are currently in place. Additional protections have also been added to protect against compulsive behavior, such as FanDuel monitoring the activity of players and actually calling those who play more than others to confirm they do not have a problem.
"Gambling disorder … is a psychiatric condition that affects 2 percent of the population," Fong said. "It's characterized by addiction: continued gambling despite harmful consequences, even after defeat. Similar to alcohol or drug addiction, it can be devastating financially, socially and psychologically. And gambling is often more readily available."
Today, that's the case now more than ever before. And players can constantly place bets on sporting events, even while the games are being played.
You can also bet on in-game lines and the over/under, which are constantly adjusted during the course of a game. Bettors have a constant, all-you-can-eat menu of ways to play, play and play some more.
"It's already past the point of growing popularity. The future has already happened," Scott Kaminsky, the sportsbook director of TheGreek.com told Covers, a wagering website. "I first saw it in 2001... It's been around a long time. It's just taken a while to filter to the North American market, which is always slower to react than the European market."
Covers estimates only up to 15% of legal sports betting in Las Vegas sports books is the in-game or live variety. Bovada, Betfair, BetOnline Sportsbook, 5Dimes and SportsBetting.ag are just a few online sports books that offer it, but the product is growing in popularity.
In Europe, it is estimated that more than half of all soccer betting, which is legal and regulated, is conducted in-game.
Both NBA commissioner Adam Silver and Washington Wizards and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis have spoken favorably about in-game wagering as part of their overall support of legalizing sports betting.
"I think we're living in this real-time, technical trading world, and there's so much betting that goes on. I think this first iteration that we're seeing, with the DraftKings kind of phenomenon and this daily interactive gaming, it makes sense," Leonsis told Sports Illustrated. "You're going to have wallets on your phone. People now are going to start to make wagers in a real-time way. You know, 'I think he's going to make a pass instead of take the shot.' And you'll be able to instantly move money back and forth. So it's better to get in front of it."
One company that's already gotten in front of it, as well as the new "second screen" habit of watching games on TV with a second device like a phone or tablet to monitor fantasy teams, stats or social media feeds is WinView, which will launch in the fall to coincide with the start of the football season.
"We feel that now is the optimal time to introduce this," WinView CEO David Lockton told the Daily News, "based on what's happened in Europe with the very same concept."
Football, of course, is a game with lots of starts and stops and a pace that's tailored for in-game gambling. Baseball works well for betting on the fly, while sports like basketball and hockey, which are more fluid, might not be as popular. In-game betting is hugely popular among soccer fans because of how slow that game is.
Lockton estimates $156 billion is generated each year through in-game betting in Europe, but stresses his product is more about social interaction than wagering on prop bets. WinView, he says, is leveraging the existing behavior of trash-talking friends and relatives and the role of social media in viewing sports now.
WinView was born out of Lockton's Interactive Network, Inc., and AirPlay, Inc., which created platforms to deliver synchronized, real-time two-screen information and entertainment services to consumers.
When it launches in the fall, WinView will be a free game powered by advertising dollars but will eventually move to a cash-for-cash model. That could face some challenges in the United States, where online sports gambling is banned outside of Las Vegas, but Lockton says his is a game of skill rather than one of luck.
That's the same argument DFS operators have been waging in order to gain legal clarity on a state-by-state basis. DFS legislation is currently moving through Albany and up to 30 other states as lawmakers try to figure out how to regulate the industry.
"These are purely games of skill," Lockton said. "There is much more skill in this than a daily fantasy league. Our approach is we want to introduce this in a family friendly way where there's no legal issues, make sure people know how this works, and then at the appropriate time, when we think that we're ready and our market is ready, we'll switch over to the cash games."
And then there will be yet another outlet to place a bet.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/peek-frontier-daily-fantasy-sports-article-1.2662962
The next evolution of sports gambling is already happening.
While it took almost 30 years for the fantasy sports industry to evolve with the help of the Internet and smartphones and the introduction of daily fantasy sports, the next wave of how we engage with and bet on sports is coming much faster.
DFS sites like FanDuel and DraftKings disrupted the traditional fantasy industry by offering a product that requires a shorter attention span and pays immediate rewards as players don't have to wait until the end of the season to find out if they've won anymore. And they're easy to access. DFS products, like on-demand television programming, cater to contemporary media consumption habits and make it simpler and faster to play fantasy games.
Similarly, the traditional sports betting industry is also evolving. And just like DFS pays off more immediately than season-long games, traditional sports bettors don't even have to wait for the games to finish before collecting prizes anymore.
Thanks to in-game wagering, some online sportsbooks allow you to bet on games within games.
In theory, depending on where you live, you can now place a bet with an online sportsbook on a game before it starts, you can set your fantasy lineup before it locks and then while the game is being played, you can continue to predict what's going to happen in real time and make bets all along the way.
In-game gambling, also known as live wagering or in-play betting, allows players to fill in the gaps during stoppages or commercials of most nationally televised games by placing bets on what they think is going to happen next. For example: Are the Jets going to score a touchdown on this drive? Will Eli Manning throw a completion or an interception here?
Welcome to the new world of sports gambling, where players can binge on bets like they devour seasons worth of television on Netflix in a single sitting. As lawmakers debate the merits of legalizing DFS games on a state-by-state basis and also begin to tackle the larger question of regulating universal sports gambling, Americans could soon have even more legalized betting options at their fingertips.
"It's extremely dangerous," Sal LaFemina, the director of the Gambling Treatment Program at Community Counseling Services of West Nassau, told the Daily News.
"When a person has problems with self control and compulsivity, they tend to try to win back their debts and it costs people a lot of money," he said. "People blow hundreds of thousands of dollars on online betting."
LaFemina said these games seem to be popular among younger players and sports fans, which is exactly who they're marketed to.
According to the National Council on Problem Gambling, the characteristics of modern sports betting, which essentially allows everyone to walk around with a casino in their pocket thanks to all of the outlets available on their phones, there may be a higher risk for addiction connected to these games.
Characteristics associated with greater odds for compulsive behavior include the high frequency of contests, the large number of entries permitted, high entry fees and more frequent payouts. NCPG concludes DFS players are more likely to have gambling problems than non-players.
Gamblers Anonymous, which declined to comment on this story, added fantasy sports to its list of activities it defines as gambling.
"Daily fantasy sports websites are anonymous, easy to access, and even easier to hide," Dr. Timothy Fong, a psychiatrist and director of the UCLA Gambling Studies program, wrote in an April op-ed. "Anyone could place thousands of dollars at risk with a click of the mouse, and no one close to them would know. This is where the risk to develop addiction is highest. There is no maximum amount of money to be lost, and there are no consumer protections like there would be inside brick-and-mortar casinos."
NCPG has called for added consumer protections and age verification for DFS sites, safeguards which are currently in place. Additional protections have also been added to protect against compulsive behavior, such as FanDuel monitoring the activity of players and actually calling those who play more than others to confirm they do not have a problem.
"Gambling disorder … is a psychiatric condition that affects 2 percent of the population," Fong said. "It's characterized by addiction: continued gambling despite harmful consequences, even after defeat. Similar to alcohol or drug addiction, it can be devastating financially, socially and psychologically. And gambling is often more readily available."
Today, that's the case now more than ever before. And players can constantly place bets on sporting events, even while the games are being played.
You can also bet on in-game lines and the over/under, which are constantly adjusted during the course of a game. Bettors have a constant, all-you-can-eat menu of ways to play, play and play some more.
"It's already past the point of growing popularity. The future has already happened," Scott Kaminsky, the sportsbook director of TheGreek.com told Covers, a wagering website. "I first saw it in 2001... It's been around a long time. It's just taken a while to filter to the North American market, which is always slower to react than the European market."
Covers estimates only up to 15% of legal sports betting in Las Vegas sports books is the in-game or live variety. Bovada, Betfair, BetOnline Sportsbook, 5Dimes and SportsBetting.ag are just a few online sports books that offer it, but the product is growing in popularity.
In Europe, it is estimated that more than half of all soccer betting, which is legal and regulated, is conducted in-game.
Both NBA commissioner Adam Silver and Washington Wizards and Capitals owner Ted Leonsis have spoken favorably about in-game wagering as part of their overall support of legalizing sports betting.
"I think we're living in this real-time, technical trading world, and there's so much betting that goes on. I think this first iteration that we're seeing, with the DraftKings kind of phenomenon and this daily interactive gaming, it makes sense," Leonsis told Sports Illustrated. "You're going to have wallets on your phone. People now are going to start to make wagers in a real-time way. You know, 'I think he's going to make a pass instead of take the shot.' And you'll be able to instantly move money back and forth. So it's better to get in front of it."
One company that's already gotten in front of it, as well as the new "second screen" habit of watching games on TV with a second device like a phone or tablet to monitor fantasy teams, stats or social media feeds is WinView, which will launch in the fall to coincide with the start of the football season.
"We feel that now is the optimal time to introduce this," WinView CEO David Lockton told the Daily News, "based on what's happened in Europe with the very same concept."
Football, of course, is a game with lots of starts and stops and a pace that's tailored for in-game gambling. Baseball works well for betting on the fly, while sports like basketball and hockey, which are more fluid, might not be as popular. In-game betting is hugely popular among soccer fans because of how slow that game is.
Lockton estimates $156 billion is generated each year through in-game betting in Europe, but stresses his product is more about social interaction than wagering on prop bets. WinView, he says, is leveraging the existing behavior of trash-talking friends and relatives and the role of social media in viewing sports now.
WinView was born out of Lockton's Interactive Network, Inc., and AirPlay, Inc., which created platforms to deliver synchronized, real-time two-screen information and entertainment services to consumers.
When it launches in the fall, WinView will be a free game powered by advertising dollars but will eventually move to a cash-for-cash model. That could face some challenges in the United States, where online sports gambling is banned outside of Las Vegas, but Lockton says his is a game of skill rather than one of luck.
That's the same argument DFS operators have been waging in order to gain legal clarity on a state-by-state basis. DFS legislation is currently moving through Albany and up to 30 other states as lawmakers try to figure out how to regulate the industry.
"These are purely games of skill," Lockton said. "There is much more skill in this than a daily fantasy league. Our approach is we want to introduce this in a family friendly way where there's no legal issues, make sure people know how this works, and then at the appropriate time, when we think that we're ready and our market is ready, we'll switch over to the cash games."
And then there will be yet another outlet to place a bet.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/peek-frontier-daily-fantasy-sports-article-1.2662962
