Australia’s biggest gambling firm Tabcorp unveiled plans to deploy artificial intelligence (AI) to strengthen its sports betting business as it competes with major rival operators like Ladbrokes and Sportsbet. The multi-billion sports wagering and lotteries group will roll out an artificial intelligence programme that will carry out computer simulations to predict the possible results of US football matches.
This will enable the operator to take wagers on more elements of each match. Despite being the country’s largest gambling company, Tabcorp has recently started to lose ground in the highly competitive sports and race betting market to rival firms like Sportsbet. The coronavirus pandemic is a major contributing factor for this since it has accelerated the shift to digital wagering at the expense of Tabcorp’s landbased outlets.
By investing in the advanced AI programme, Tabcorp will try to consolidate its market position following its decision to split its sports betting and lottery units into two individual publicly listed companies. The Aussie gambling giant has built the proprietary programme over the span of a year.
It is capable of processing data points from past matches and running 10,000 simulations per second to determine the possible performance of any two football teams and their individual players. David Beirne, the company’s General Manager of Trading, is confident the programme’s implementation would increase the number of betting markets for individual NFL matches from 60 to over 120.
The AI Programme Will Calculate Odds for NFL, NBA, and Tennis Games
Mr. Beirne said this would enable the company to expand its range of NFL products, which would be a great outcome for Tabcorp. Sports fans can already wager on the performance of individual players from popular leagues like the Australian Football League (AFL). However, the new artificial intelligence programme will enable Tabcorp to offer such wagers on hundreds of football players without allocating substantial resources for odds calculation.
The company’s betting team plans to carry out the simulations using live data feeds of matches while they are still in progress. This would allow Tabcorp to quote highly accurate odds on the results of the next play immediately before it takes place, be it a touchdown, a field goal, et cetera. The sports betting company plans to debut its new simulator in time for the start of the NFL season next month.
Additionally, the bookmaker will run similar simulations for tennis matches and NBA games. According to the company’s Chief Information Officer, Francoise Russo, Tabcorp has poured several million dollars into data modelling and automation over the course of the past several years. Analytics and data would become more and more essential to Tabcorp’s business in the years to come, Russo said.
Last month, representatives of the company announced it plans to split its sports betting and lotteries divisions into two individual companies. Tabcorp also declined the takeover bids from the UK gambling giant Entain, the BetMakers technology group, and the private equity firm Apollo Global Management. The demerger of Tabcorp’s sports betting and lotteries units is expected to take approximately ten months.
- Author
Olivia Cole
