Racecourse Media Group’s innovative new in-play betting service welcomed by bookmakers

Early performance indicates in-play betting service can grow turnover on racing by 5%

Racecourse Media Group’s (RMG) new in-play betting feed has been successfully launched with BetVictor and its other brands, Parimatch and TalkSPORT BET, along with William Hill, with RMG already seeing promising incremental turnover.

To provide the feed, RMG relies on the award-winning GPS tracking service, Coursetrack, which has recently launched a second-generation GPS tracker to provide enhanced accuracy and reliability. GPS co-ordinates are produced 20 times a second for every horse in every race from RMG’s 34 racecourses.

In-play prices are then generated from the GPS data by RMG’s pricing partner Pythia Sports and served to bookmakers via the Press Association. This service is complemented by RMG’s ultra-low latency streams (c.400 milliseconds) via Phenix Real Time Solutions and STATSPerform, which RMG introduced for its streaming services in June 2020.

Adam Barnes, Director of Product at Bet Victor said: “Bet Victor is delighted it can now offer in-play betting for horse racing. The key is having highly reliable and accurate tracking data to create confidence in pricing, both for us as operators but also for our customers – and the Coursetrack technology provides that. We’re very pleased with the results we’re seeing. Of course the bigger meetings have been popular but this isn’t just about increasing turnover on the marquee events, there’s a wider benefit for racing given the interest we’re seeing from customers on midweek meetings.

“We’re looking forward to continuing to work closely and innovate the product with RMG. Using our performance data and customer insights we can better understand how to enhance the in-play experience and explore what types of derivative markets we can look to develop and launch in the near future.”

Racecourse Media Group also welcomed William Hill to the in-play betting service in mid-February, and further bookmakers are in the process of integrating the service. The new in-play pricing service is being made available to all fixed-odds RMG streaming customers as part of its recent contract extensions.

Martin Stevenson, Chief Executive at RMG, said: “RMG has been asked to lead on the broadcast elements of the BHA industry strategy, and innovations such as in-play data and betting represents a real opportunity for our racecourses and the sport. It is finally bringing racing on a par with the data richness of other sports.

“We have been very pleased with the results from BetVictor and William Hill, and the technology is generating additional turnover for the sport, which is much needed after a challenging few years. Since launch, engagement and betting turnover have grown consistently and point towards in-play betting being able to grow turnover on racing by 5%.

“We are also considering how best to interpret the data on the Racing TV channel and digital platforms, incorporating the expertise of the likes of Angus McNae and Ruby Walsh, which can only grow the appeal and engagement with the sport.

“We are delighted to be working with our partners to deliver this innovative new service and we look forward to welcoming further bookmaker partners onboard.”

Freddy Galliers, Director at Pythia Sports, said: “We have been really excited about this project since day one. It’s provided a fascinating challenge with many complexities to overcome and working with Racecourse Media Group, to build this product from scratch, has been rewarding for the entire team.

“Pythia’s goal in moving into the B2B space was to work with rights holders to help innovate and evolve wagering opportunities in racing, and this project ticked all those boxes. The culmination has been to see the project go live with Bet Victor and William Hill. We are looking forward to working with more operators in 2023.”