How sports betting has changed due to technology

Betting on sports is as old as the first formal sporting events. Modern sports betting, though, has its roots in horse racing and can be dated back to the early 18th century. Since then, much has changed about it.

In the mid 19th century, the first formal bookmakers appeared on the landscape. People who wanted to place bets on sports would no longer need to search and find intermediaries, but only visit bookmakers’ shops and stake their money. And again, since then much has changed about sports betting.

In the mid 1990s, the internet revolutionised sports betting. In fact, the first online bet was placed in 1996. This was the beginning of the emergence and growth of online bookmakers. Online sportsbooks began to pop up everywhere around the world, with Malta betting sites being amongst the top online betting platforms at the time.

Online betting

Moving to the online world was the absolute game changer in sports betting. But it was not the only change. The internet paved the way for more transformations to come. And once again, since then much has changed about it.

Mobile applications

After the internet came mobile betting, which offered unique opportunities for the personalisation and customisation of the betting services offered by Maltese sports betting websites.

Mobile apps made betting so much easier and so much more convenient, enabling punters to wager anywhere and at any time. And this caused a surge in sports betting, which was reflected in the enormous growth of betting revenues generated by sportsbooks.

Cryptocurrencies

And then came the cryptos, which spurred further changes in sports betting. Crypto betting soon became a hype, and ever since the launch of the first cryptocurrency in 2009, more and more betting sites - such as those found at stavnice.tv and online casinos - are accepting payments and transactions in Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Dogecoin etc.

eSports

Alongside cryptos, bettors were also introduced to wagering on competitive video gaming. And just like that, eSports betting became a very strong and continuously growing segment of the overall sports gambling market.

Bookmakers and betting sites in Malta have been picking on several opportunities arising from the increasing demand for video games like League of Legends, CS:GO, DOTA2 as well as the staging of several eSports tournaments and competitions.

Tournaments are gaining more and more attention by fans and they are becoming hyped events when it comes to sports wagers.

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality

Besides mobile betting, cryptos and sports digital technology also brought new experiences to sports bettors. With Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), betting on sports became an entirely different thing for punters.

Online sportsbooks can make their users’ experience as immersive and as engaging as possible, with virtual tours in the stadiums or places where games are held and with visual graphics being displayed on the streamlined matches, enabling punters to have instant and real time access to data and information useful for making informed decisions and placing successful bets.

Artificial Intelligence

And on top of all these, artificial intelligence and its tremendous applications are expected to utterly transform sports betting down to its core.

AI already manifests its power and dynamic in the industry, enabling betting sites and land-based bookmakers to develop robust predictive models from aggregate data. This means that they get to set more competitive odds, which are closer to the realistic probabilities of sporting events. But bettors can use AI forecasting models to bet smarter and more efficient.

Meanwhile, AI is also helping bettors sustain a responsible approach to gambling by analysing and tracking down patterns or behaviours that are likely to lead to potential gambling problems.

What lies beneath…

How the future of sports betting is going to be shaped is unknown to us, especially as digital technologies and AI capabilities have the power to turn everything upside down and take sports gambling down roads that we are yet to conceive!