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Saturday 30th July 2022
   
A Brief History of In-Play Betting and Horse Racing

In-play betting has revolutionized the way punters bet on sports and has, in many instances, handed the power back to those who typically enjoy wagering on sporting fixtures. But how is this the case and what does live, in-play betting involve? 

Perhaps we can go back in time to understand how far we’ve come with regards to betting on sports. Indeed, during days gone by, you would have to make your way down to your local high street to place a bet at the bookmaker closest to you. These days, it seems like an exhausting and entirely complicated way of going about placing a bet but that’s what you had to do if, for example, you wanted to place a wager on the Glorious Goodwood festival. This process was about to get easier though with the winds of change beginning to seriously blow in the first half of the 1990s.

Indeed, the internet arrived and began to change everything when the first online betting site popped up in 1996. At the time it didn’t seem like a major event but it would be the most significant development in the history of betting up until that point. Essentially, life was on the brink of getting a lot more convenient if you wanted to make a bet and, of course, had a desktop. 

Six years after that, the landscape was to change again when live online betting was first introduced to the market in 2002. This is when tectonic shifts of change were taking place as broadband was also beginning to replace dial-up internet connections which meant that live sports betting was no longer a pipe dream but an enthralling new reality. Of course, there were some teething issues as there always are with any new landmark breakthrough in technology. The complaint at the time was that the experience was clunky and not streamlined enough to successfully bet on live sports. Whilst that was a legitimate summary of the experience in the early 2000s, it couldn’t be further from the truth today with in-play betting now a faultless experience that brings punters closer to the action.

In particular, the sector has been revolutionized by innovative software that has allowed it to flourish and improve from those heady days of 2002. One of those companies responsible for the in-play betting revolution is Sportingtech who has built a leading iGaming platform for betting companies to use. Indeed, after spending 18 months developing technology that is reliable and scalable to any betting operation, Sportingtech has now established a winning formula. Needless to say, the benefits of this innovation are felt by punters who wish to enjoy a seamless in-play betting experience and find localised odds.

Perhaps most remarkable of all and as a way of showing how far this live market has come over the last two decades, consider that in-play betting now caters for horse racing as well. Naturally, in-play markets won’t have odds on the shorter races owing to how quickly the contest concludes, but the longer National Hunt racing does feature on the in-play markets. 

With all the seismic change the industry has seen over the last 20 years, it is only natural to wonder what in-plat betting will look like in the next 20. Only time will tell.

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