Sport is made for betting

I have just returned from several days in Prague at the iGaming Super Show, an industry trade show where I helped out a couple of my clients. Competition for affiliates these days is intense, with all sorts of gimmicks going on. Cake Poker Network were giving away aprons and oven gloves, Jetbull had David Coulthard signing autographs as their 'brand ambassador' and one firm was giving away tiny bottles of vodka with the promise of a 350ml bottle of Jack Daniel's for every funded acct you sent them! And of course there were promo girls everywhere. Product-wise, one firm was touting MahJong as the next online phenomenon in a p2p format like poker, OddsMatrix were announcing some recent new customers for their automated sportsbook solution, Kyoogi were showing off a brilliant iPhone odds comparison application and there were rumours about which poker network Betfair would be joining soon.

At the International Gaming Exhibition in London this week, I've been looking closely at some of the modern bookmaking systems. Companies such as BetRadar supply real-time odds feeds from over 250 bookmakers spread around the world, and then you can generate your own odds from that. Set your margins, choose the bookies you want to follow, post the prices, turn on the monitoring which tracks market changes from as few or as many bookies as you like, and you're done. Very few bookies do not take this service, although most just use it to keep an eye on the opposition in real-time, and use it to track mistakes (alerts pop up when a match start time is different to other firms) and potential arbitrage/sure bet opportunities. Dozens of smaller firms - the ones listed on odds comparison sites but you never see any of their marketing etc - do all this with virtually nobody at the controls. Other companies like Entraction and Odds Matrix can offer you a 'bookie in a box' produc...