eSports (competitive video gaming) may be the betting success story of the second decade of the second millennium but not 18 months into the 2020s it’s pretty clear Formula 1 betting is going to be the next big thing.
It has been over four years since Formula 1 was bought by American owners, Liberty Media, but changes are still being made to the sport and it is fair to say it is enjoying a re-birth.
Drive To Survive
A whole new audience has been introduced to the sport via the excellent Netflix ‘Drive to Survive’ series, new car manufacturers such as Aston Martin are on the grid and the current crop of drivers represent five continents. Likewise Africa and Antarctica are the only continents which do not host races.
Make no mistake under a new regime Formula One has grown its fan engagement and the public understand the demands placed on the 20 Formula One drivers and ten teams better than ever before.
Now the sport is utilising betting as an opportunity for F1 to boost engagement among its fans through in-race F1 betting odds markets. In an agreement between a company called Sportradar and Formula One the gap between casually watching the racing and engaging with it through placing bets on it in-play is being bridged.
New Data Points
Historically in-race betting markets on Formula One were quite basic, but Sportradar has flipped the script by using an extensive range of data points to create a more exciting product and drive increased engagement among F1 fans.
The exclusive partnership with Formula One has seen Sportradar – who offer their live odds to most of the world’s leading online bookmakers and sportsbooks who in turn offer them to their customers – receive an amazing amount of live data from all 20 cars on the starting grid.
The statistic is 1.1 million data points per second coming from each and every car – that’s 20 million+ pieces of data every second!
Clearly Formula One is a very data-centric, technology driven sport and converting data into probability of an outcome and giving viewers the opportunity to back on those outcomes is seen as a ‘win win’ scenario by everyone.
F1 Betting Markets
So what outcomes can you now bet on during a live Formula One grand prix?
Try these for size:
- Race winner
- Driver head-to-heads
- Top 3 finish
- Winner of a group
- Fastest lap
- First driver to retire
- First driver to take a pit stop
- Grid position (or range) of the winner
- Competitor total overtakes
- Total finishers
- Total overtakes
- Winning team
- Head-to-head teams
- First team to retire
- First team to pit stop
- Total team overtakes
- Fastest specific race lap
- Total retirements
- Race winning margin
…and a number of these betting markets are available for practice sessions and qualifying.
Of course your bookmaker may be one of the 600 online sportsbooks which use Sportradar’s services (in 80 countries) but do not currently offer their live betting lines on all of these markets. But in time, such is the upswing in Formula One betting turnover, they surely will.