AI Helped Sportsbooks Rake in Euro 2024 Qualifying

Artificial intelligence (AI) is being wielded by both bettors and sportsbooks in the never-ending search for an edge and profit.

The books won big during the UEFA European Championship Qualifying matches, specifically those using Sportradar’s Alpha Odds odds suite.

According to a Sportradar release, its personalized odds technology “boosted profits for sportsbook operators by an average of 15%” during the men’s match slate that ran from March 2023 and March 2024.

Sportradar’s assessment was based on analyzing more than 11 million wagers placed across more than 60 Sportradar clients. The Swiss company’s US-facing operator clients include Caesars, DraftKings, and FanDuel.

Alpha Odds uses AI to more accurately predict the probabilities of real-time events, enabling oddsmakers to manage their risk more effectively. This helps operators create risk-reducing odds more quickly, specifically for teams that were heavily favored.

Alpha Odds’ success could be taken as a sales pitch to those gambling companies’ competitors and a hint that bettors may need to analyze what books use Sportradar’s product with UEFA Euro 2024 approaching this summer. That pre-World Cup showcase is expected to generate nearly $70 billion in global betting activity.

Experts expected $35 billion to be bet globally on the 2022 World Cup. The 2026 iteration will include numerous American venues.

Examples Provided by Sportradar:

Alpha Odds is currently only available for soccer and tennis, but the company plans to add basketball this year.

Sportsbooks, Bettors Battle With AI Power

AI enthralled bettors and bookmakers as its usefulness was understood. Savvy gamblers with some coding prowess can replace spreadsheets with lines of code. Gambling companies with budgets for computing power naturally have the advantage. But AI’s design as a pattern-finding tool can quickly get bettors in a position to exploit inefficiencies at sportsbooks that are not fighting back in real-time.

Subscription AI sports betting services have bloomed, selling picks to players.

Microsoft director of sports Jon Flynn told Gaming Today earlier this year that he believed AI would become a much more prevalent tool for casual Super Bowl bettors.

“We focus on AI in-house as well. We try and build AI models, algorithms, the industry’s already quite rich on it,” he said. “So taking basketball as an example, I had products pitched to me, which is like every single player for the last 10 years, where they hit a 3, where they missed a three, so on and so on,” Andre Zammit, Tipico’s US Sportsbook vice president told Gaming Today. “So all this data helps us big time in creating these micro markets because the data’s so rich and the models continue learning game after game. It’s incredible the state of it, but there’s still a long way to go as well of how to convert that data into betting markets.”