Sports fans are more educated and well-equipped than ever before, requiring stakeholders to ‘up their game’ with regards to content, according to Paul Every.
In a discussion with Insider Sport, Stats Perform’s VP of Media Products provided a breakdown of the firm’s recent enhancements to its PressBox offering, covering the PressBox Live, PressBox Graphics and PressBox Video applications.
Although many of PressBox’s key clients are sports broadcasters and media publishers, the content creation opportunities the vertical presents are wide reaching, Every argued – with potential for sportsbooks also.
“We hear from our sportsbook partners all the time that they want to become content hubs, to be more than just the transactional side of betting,” he explained.
“With the tools PressBox provides, we’re empowering sportsbooks to do exactly that more effectively, more quickly with better content than ever before.”
Delving into PressBox’s sports betting possibilities, Every detailed that by utilising Stats Perform’s Opta Data – described as ‘the core ingredient’ behind the operation – the firm is able to enhance props betting, a fast growing market.
“Opta Data is the common ingredient,” he stated. “In a time pressured environment customers don’t have time to dive in, and PressBox provides content in a ready to use way. At its core, it is about making the lives of customers easier.”
With regards to the role AI has played, the VP outlined how there were two parts to this process. Firstly, the recommendation engine sits behind PressBox Live, querying the vast Opta database and generating storylines by pulling noteworthy stats, milestones and insights.
In addition to this, the company’s specialist AI knowledge is used to create new models and metrics – this covers a range of areas relating to sports data, such as win probabilities and season stimulations.
For betting firms, Every detailed how PressBox Live allows trading teams to settle these markets quicker and more accurately by having access to the data they need via its user interface.
Further features provide sportsbook marketing, CRM and social teams with tools to assist with the creation of messaging that includes insights, graphic assets and data.
These metrics can then be subsequently matched up to relevant betting markets and prices, enabling sportsbooks to create more interesting, engaging customer comms in less time.
“There is increasing demand for in-depth metrics,” Every reiterated. “Some of the new predictive metrics have a lot of interest, like expected goals in soccer has now become a common feature in live coverage.
“It’s about evolving storytelling and the narrative around a game to make it more sophisticated than ever before, and I see that as a trend in the industry.”
“That’s very key to us as a business and very key to PressBox. All those metrics that our AI team produces are delivered to our customers through PressBox, and that’s how we make those consumable to our users.”
Noting that sports fans are ‘more educated’ and have access to a wide range of resources, Stats Perform has incorporated NFL and NCAA American football data into PressBox live, whilst launching a new mobile app for the graphics product and a flexible pay-as-you-go model has been introduced for Video.
“Sports fans are more and more educated than ever before,” Every continued. “They have access to a wealth of data and statistics, and that puts more importance on content creators, media outlets, publishers and broadcasters to up their game.
“The demands for content are higher than they were previously and there is no hiding place for media publishers. PressBox can help them inform their clients, keep them engaged because there is an ever growing appetite for data and insight.
“But the challenge for Sports Media is firstly how to identify the key storylines amongst the huge amount of content available to them, and secondly how to convey that to their audience in an engaging way.
“By unifying our three applications into a single platform, we’ve not only built technology that surfaces the key stories and narratives, but also gives users the tools to seamlessly publish them to their audience in engaging ways.”
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