The Brave New World Of Sports Wagering In Real Time

Boston Red Sox batter Bobby Dalbec stepped to the plate with the bases loaded and no outs in the bottom of the sixth inning at Fenway Park, his club tied 6-6 with the despised division-rival Yankees and Cuban reliever Aroldis Chapman on the mound.

The left-handed Chapman — who routinely throws in the triple-digit range — needed only five pitches to dispatch of Dalbec, and the Sox infielder swung at the final two offerings, 99 mph fastballs, before returning to the dugout.

Plenty of sizzle during that at-bat for the 37,291 in attendance, but now, a broader legion of diehard and even casual baseball fans have a means to create another layer of drama for real-time moments during a game. Chris Bevilacqua, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Simplebet, says his company’s technology opens a new, innovative door to how fans engage with and wager on sports events.

“You can watch a Yankee game and bet on every single (moment). ‘Is Gerrit Cole’s next pitch going to be 94 mph or higher? What is Aaron Judge going to do during this at-bat? Hit a single, a home run, or strike out?’ It’s a completely different experience than, for example, betting the Yankees plus-150 to win the game,” says Bevilacqua. “Simplebet allows for an interactive wagering experience in those micro timeframes.”

Two decades ago, Bevilacqua, 59, was one of the pioneering faces behind a 24-hour college sports news cycle, when he helped found College Sports Television (CSTV), the all-access destination for a sports fan’s NCAA fix. The groundbreaking network was eventually acquired by CBS in 2006 for $325 million, and CSTV helped launch other facsimiles like Fox College Sports and ESPNU.

“We had a programming service which we sold to distributors, who then made it available to users,” says Bevilacqua. “At the end of the day, there were a lot of cable providers, but only five that mattered. The five that mattered had 80% of the market.”

Bevilacqua says, in a way, that type of business model has come full circle with regard to his latest endeavor: there are a half dozen sportsbooks that dominate the market, including FanDuel and DraftKings. Simplebet, through its technology, offers users to bet on sports in real time in what Bevilacqua calls “micro markets.”

“You take a two or three-hour baseball game, and (Simplebet’s technology) turns it into mini-games, like a slot machine,” says Bevilacqua. “For someone who maybe watches a couple innings, this technology can create more fan engagement.”

Simplebet just completed a deal with the YES (Yankees Entertainment and Sports) Network in May, a business partnership that Bevilacqua calls a “first of its kind.”

“Our technology is integrated in pick-and-play,” he says. “‘What happens in the next at-bat?’ You make those bets right then. You don’t have to wait around until the end of the game.”

There seems to be no sign that the sports wagering business is slowing down, four years removed from the landmark Supreme Court decision that lifted the federal ban on legal sports betting in states. According to PlayNY, an outlet that tracks the online gaming industry in New York, the state made $607.2 million in revenue from sports wagering during the first six months of this year. New York state sports bettors wagered $8.5 billion during that same stretch, according to the site.

PlayNYSix Months In, How Can NY Online Sports Betting Improve?

With options like Simplebet, those numbers only stand to grow ever larger.

“I still consider it to be the top of the first inning,” says Bevilacqua. “We’re only four years since PASPA (Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act) was repealed. Every time a new state comes on (to launch online sports wagering), everybody has to reallocate engineering resources, create a product roadmap to go live. It’s not like one size fits all. On the flip side, what drives the industry forward is product innovation. Simplebet technology, we think, is driving micro markets. That’s where we believe the industry is going.”