Sports Betting Apps as Valuable Additions to the Viewing Experience

For better or for worse, enjoying and following sports has transformed from an activity that was all about keeping in touch with it. From watching it or even listening to the play-by-play on a radio transmission, it has become even more interactive than it used to be, which is a fascinating development.

We’re phrasing it with an air of ambiguity because its current status is far from ambiguous. While sports used to be all about passion, loyalty, representation, and community, their current nature brings factors like narrative-pushing in the wider social media discourse, trolling, parasocial relationships, and, to the point of this article, betting.

The opening of the floodgates across various markets around the world has created a lucrative global sports betting industry. It rakes in billions upon billions, showcasing an absolute level of enthusiasm toward it from the point of view of the consumer. As such, gambling is at the forefront of the shift in how people relate to sports.

This highly influential space has created an environment in which online gambling operators are leveraging technological models that have a strong bearing on the current field. The ensuing, unmistakable result? Betting is becoming the source and effect of the second-screen principle, leading to additional motivations for following sports and a distribution of attention.

In this article, we will discuss how sports betting platforms, as technological solutions, can have a positive and enhancing role for the overall experience of enjoying sports!

Sports betting has become a close companion to the overall experience

Building on the points that we’ve made earlier, sports betting is the type of activity that has become intrinsically tied to living sports. It is a source of money when you win, a source of anguish when you lose, but it’s, very importantly so, a source of validation.

It may sound like a cliché, but the idea that social media fosters a culture of attention-seeking behavior is true. If you’ve ever been on such a platform, you just know that it’s true. Sports betting can generate financially lucrative receipts that show that, when successful, your predictions were correct, giving you a sense of validation and confirming your understanding of the sport. Even luck is something to brag about.

This sense is why the combination of winnings and validation is such a strong, unifying, and highly social phenomenon.

As such, it has become inescapable, creating both outcry but also a billion-dollar industry. With every step in this ascension, we see a higher demand (per the integration of such features, as observed by BetOnValue), and the connectivity between watching the sports and betting on the sport becomes more important.

This is why integrating both sides of the experiences and creating a model based on fusion is such a strong response to this symbiosis.

Apps and sites bring innovation and creativity

Whether we’re talking about dedicated apps or just carefully constructed websites, the model that leverages sports betting is the real source of value in how the experience goes about.

Apps may be a bit less streamlined in their approach, while instant betting in browsers is easier to use, but real progress via integration generally requires a proprietary platform that can implement all kinds of functions.

The overall medium matters less, especially given that mobile betting has already started to feel like the peak device that attracts usage. Since mobile apps can integrate excellent features that are easy to implement on a PC, this is the field that we’re referring to.

Now that we’ve set the stage, it’s time to talk about these features and how exactly they are able to enrich watching experiences.

Data feeds and personalized suggestions

While it’s true that modern broadcasts, including streaming, are able to provide exclusive data points through official partnerships, the same type of commercial relationship provides big-name gambling providers with the same data, as collected and distributed through authorized data handlers.

Using such data feeds as integrated elements within a sports betting platform is what exactly allows the watcher/bettor to understand the connection between numbers (metrics and statistics) and what they’re seeing.

Since the consumer can consult this data directly from the gambling operator, they remain on the platform, generating active traffic and increasing the likelihood of them placing an in-play bet, based on what they see as watchers.

Moreover, personalization is the herald of data analysis and AI integration in the overall operation of a sportsbook. With this kind of intuitive automation, the sportsbook’s software can understand what the player prefers, what they may want, and what exactly to recommend.

This is a pure method of streamlining the player’s experience, but it’s also a fascinating application of the principle of targeted marketing. Giving the bettor what they want, all while placing the tools to actually make decisions and act upon that decision-making.

Highlights, replays, and direct analysis

If, as a watcher, you’ve just seen something somewhat controversial or simply something outright amazing, you’ll see it quite a few times during a broadcast, but you’re still at the discretion of the broadcast director, which can impede how often you can see said highlights.

Sometimes, you want to pause the sequence or watch it in ultra slow motion. You need a place to do it. If the bookmaker’s application has the right via an intellectual rights deal, it can give it to you as an in-app element that can be very valuable in how you interact with the sports-watching experience.

Sometimes, the near miss of something that you thought was closer, or even the idea of watching an event unfold during VAR (and during the freezing of the odds caused by VAR), you can judge the replayed and highlighted event to a degree that it influences your decision to bet on that game.

As for direct analysis, this is yet another place where AI can be useful. Its interpretation skill, based on actions turned into prompts that explain the situation to it (if visual recognition isn’t a thing), may be helpful in your own understanding of what you see. This is especially helpful if you’ve just started getting into the sport that you’re watching.

Gamification: quizzes, challenges, and leaderboards

If you want your experience to feel as dynamic as possible, you’ll want to things: interactivity and socialization.

Starting with the latter, socialization provides the value that we talked about when it comes to social media, but a social element within that gaming platform feels more intimate because it’s a direct method of discussing the shared experience provided by that platform. We’re talking about aspects such as global chats and forums.

Gamification is all the rage when it comes to interactivity and increased dynamics. As for the part where we’re talking about its implementation in gambling, it’s a method of going beyond the pure act of guessing an outcome correctly.

Quizzes, especially those that have something that can generate winning-wise, are particularly popular because they allow you to test your knowledge in a quick, social, and highly entertainment way.

Challenges of any kind, such as clearing a certain type of multi-leg parlay, are useful because they bring an additional sense of purpose. If these challenges are provided in a competitive way (with the use of leaderboards, for example), they become even more valuable tools in integrating dynamism into the idea of watching sports.

Conclusion

To close out this article in a way that is relevant, we need to mention that distributed attention may dilute your awareness of what is actually going on with your expenses and behavior. This is why, for the sake of your mental health and finances, you should always focus on gambling responsibly!