Interactive SIS - HORSES-IN-RUNNING
How racing is clearing the in-play hurdle
Collecting in-running data from horse racing has always been more challenging than it has for other sports, but recent innovations mean a viable product will be on the market soon, says Adam Conway, Head of Trading at SIS
Adam Conway, Head of Trading, SIS
Te advent of in-play betting has led to increased revenues for bookmakers from many sports – but horse racing has not been among them yet. Tere are many reasons for this, but a principal one is the difficulty of creating an accurate, yet cost-effective, real-time data collection mechanism.
Adam Conway is Head of Trading at SIS, managing a team which delivers ante-post, early prices, live and derivatives for a range of horse racing and greyhound content from all over the world. Adam’s experience in the betting industry stretches back more than 15 years and includes leading the in-play team at Ladbrokes. He also worked as a consultant for News UK, helping it with betting products.
A GPS tracker in a horse’s saddlecloth, in conjunction with on-course mapping, produces streams of accurate data showing a horse’s location and direction without the need for prohibitive levels of investment P102 NEWSWIRE / INTERACTIVE /
247.COM
When it comes to football or tennis, you can collect data from streamed pictures or with the help of in-stadium scouting solutions. Racing, however, is a lot more complicated. It takes place on a huge variety of courses, rather than a standard pitch, and there are too many things happening at once to be accurately assessed by a single pair of eyes.
Nevertheless, when you look at the wide range of in-play markets driven by football and tennis, it’s easy to see why bookmakers would be keen to entice new customers and increase revenue by broadening the scope of racing bets they offer their clientele.
Tere have been many attempts to solve the problem over the years but they have fallen at the twin hurdles of prohibitive cost and inaccurate data.
SIS, with its heritage in horse racing content delivery and desire to innovate, has been
working for the last two years on developing a solution. We’ve tried to balance the twin aims of collecting robust, accurate data without incurring huge capital and operational expense.
A GPS tracker in a horse’s saddlecloth, in conjunction with on-course mapping, produces streams of accurate data showing a horse’s location and direction without the need for prohibitive levels of investment.
Tis data, filtered through a complex algorithm and supervised by an expert trader, can be processed into accurate real-time fixed-odds prices.
Creating an algorithm for a horse race is a hugely complicated process, and it has taken a while. We’ve had the help of skilled mathematicians and a large historical data set to develop it to a high level of accuracy. Tis is a process which will never cease, given the need to hone algorithms constantly by adding more and more fresh data.
However, even in this era of automation and big data which helps us to account for factors such as each runner’s form and the history of races at a particular track, the importance of manual intervention cannot be overstated.
Tere will always be a need for an expert eye
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107