During the 2022-2023 NBA season, the B2B microbet provider Simplebet offered a five-way possession market to the U.S. sports betting operators it counts among its clients. Gamblers on these mobile sportsbooks hardly noticed – except those wagering at bet365.
While other sportsbooks privy to Simplebet's NBA possession offering buried it in a static tab on their apps, bet365 “actually put that market at the very top when it was relevant,” Simplebet COO Mark Nerenberg told Sports Handle.
“It did like 25 percent of our volume, whereas with other customers it did nothing,” he added. “Our special teams markets are similar — bet365 does a good job with those, too. As these operators get better with surfacing the right markets at the right time with all users, we’re going to see our markets grow and microbetting in general.”
Indeed, microbetting has been growing, albeit maybe not as rapidly as the likes of Betr (another Simplebet client) might have hoped when it launched a product that emphasized the niche form of in-play wagering. Relative to the 2021-2022 season, microbetting on the platforms Simplebet services was five times bigger in 2022-2023, while such wagering in the more established MLB and NFL micro-markets doubled.
While the latter two sports offer natural breaks in their action, the NBA has long – and correctly – been viewed as a tougher nut to crack, what with its high-scoring, fast-paced nature. Latency – the time difference between when something actually happens and when a viewer sees it onscreen – has gotten better, but still isn't as good as it could be, Nerenberg said.
“Basketball is tough,” he conceded. “Once you can actually watch these games in the same latency in synch with the betting, I think there’d be exponential growth there. The experience is still not great, and I think our results are in spite of that. When more fans are watching through low latency, that’s when in-play and microbetting really take off.”
Customers coming along
For the NBA season that tipped off last week, Simplebet is offering several new variations on the popular “first field goal scorer” markets, including “first field goal scorer exact.” In that, a bettor picks who will get the game's first bucket and what type (two-pointer or three-pointer) it will be. There’s also “team first field goal scorer exact,” where the bettor guesses who on a given team will notch the basket (and whether it’ll be a two or three).
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These additions were fueled both by client demand and the popularity of “next field goal” markets last season.
“Last year was the first time we offered those for every basket in every game for NBA,” Nerenberg said. “The year before, it was just during breaks — commercials or free throws. Forty-two percent of our volume came live, during play, but our volume increased like 3x. Having them always available increases the volume even during breaks. That’s important for our [MLB] pitch-by-pitch markets as well.”
Looking forward, Nerenberg said he'd like to see sportsbooks reduce their vigorish on microbets, which he believes would increase handle. But he went on to praise some of the innovations Simplebet's clients have implemented to increase microbet volume.
“Some of our newer customers are investing pretty heavily on their end, like Caesars with Fire Bets — showing you the most relevant microbets going on,” he said. “DraftKings has a very player-centric navigation, so we’ve seen a boost in our player prop micros from that.”
Nerenberg also sees an opportunity to grow microbetting's customer base if operators are willing to highlight more early-game microbets – like whether LeBron James' first shot will be a made three-pointer – before events begin.
“With NBA, I think by later in the season, some operator partners will be able to execute on that and convert some pre-match players to in-play, and we’d see our player markets grow,” he predicted. “Player-based markets are going to see growth this season, but we may not see it until the second half.”