Sports Betting
Sports Betting
Guide
Gambling

The Role of Technology in Modern Sports Wagering

Betting online rather than in shops or racetracks and using a smartphone are just two of many ways in which technology plays a part in modern sports wagering. Here are some others.

James Pacheco
James Pacheco

Last Updated: 2024-07-08

A. Tzamantanis

5 minutes read

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The late nineties saw a huge shift in sports wagering from customers getting on their phone to their bookie or walking into bricks-and-mortar shops, to doing things online.

 All customers needed was access to a laptop or desktop and an internet connection and fast forward a few years, access to a smartphone, making it even easier. In fact, these days most customers at the best betting sites actually prefer to do such things as deposit, withdraw, place bets and claim bonuses straight from their phones, rather than using a computer.

Payment Options – Quicker, safer

It’s not unusual to find at least 10 or 15 different payment options at any given Sportsbook including such ones as debit cards, e-wallets and even cryptocurrencies.

 These days deposits are normally instant (depending on the method) while withdrawals are much quicker than they used to be, with most methods taking just 1 to 3 hours for you to receive your money. 

Technological features such as face recognition and Touch IDs make transactions faster and safer than ever before.

More sports, more games, more markets

Offering 30+ different sports and 1000s of matches every year on those sports is pretty much the norm now.

 One of the reasons for that is to do with how much quicker bookmakers can collect and crunch data these days, thanks to technology.

 Entering lots of stats, results and data points into computer programs using algorithms means they can price up far more markets than before and much quicker than before, which is why there are so many more events to bet on.

In-game live Content

Live betting has gone through the roof these last few years in terms of the drastically
increased availability of it (see above). 

But there’s also far more live content to help you with your betting decisions. Bookies have seen the value of providing free live streaming on such sports as horse racing, football, tennis and many more so punters can watch events in real time with high quality pictures while they bet live on the event. 

Other than livestreaming, advancements in tech have led to far more detailed real-time stats or graphic demonstrations of what’s happening in the event, also to help live betting customers with their choices.

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Image Credits : Unsplash

Virtual sports

If there isn’t any live sport on for whatever reason or you just fancy this instead, virtual
sports allow punters to bet on such sports as football, basketball or horse racing.

 Virtual sports sort of work like video games being played by robots. The game is played out in front of you based on algorithms like those used in slot machines and you bet on what might happen, at fixed odds, like you were betting on a real football game or tennis match. 

The big advantage is that they’re available to bet on 24/7.

Bet Builders

Up until a few years ago, it wasn’t possible to place complex accumulator bets around the same event, such as a football match. You could bet on a team to win and for there to be three or more goals in it but not much more sophisticated bets than that. The reason was that it was very difficult to work out the odds on events that were connected. Such as a particular player scoring a goal, that player’s team winning and the number of goals in the match. 

But advances in the technology that allows bookmakers to set odds, means they now allow punters to place accas with as many as 8 or 10 selections in them around connected events, in the same match. These same-game accas are known as Bet Builders and have become incredibly popular over the last few years.

Responsible Gambling tools

In the past the onus was very much on punters to keep their own gambling in check when it came to responsible gambling, normally just through self-restraint. 

These days thanks to technology, betting sites give their customers a number of responsible gambling tools for them to use in a bid to promote safe gambling. 

These tools allow customers to set limits on: how many deposits they make a month, how much they deposit, how much they lose in a week, day or hour and how long they’ve been logged onto their account. 

In other words, thanks to technology players are in a good position to protect themselves. 

Technology linked across multiple betting sites also means that if you choose to self-exclude, you can do so from all UIK-based GAMSTOP betting sites at the same time, with the press of just one button.

James Pacheco
James Pacheco Sports Betting Editor

James has been writing about cricket, football and tennis betting for the best part of 20 years for some of the biggest operators, websites and publications in the industry. Heroes and heroines include Paul Scholes, Chris DiMarco, Anastasia Myskina, Richard Gasquet, Nat-Sciver Brunt and Kumar Sangakarra.