Don’t Let Latency Be the Death of Your Sports Betting Strategy

The Real-Time Game Speed Experiment

Sitting at Rogers Arena and, at the request of her boss, an inplayLIVE team member takes out her phone to record the action. Founder and CEO of inplayLIVE, Andrew Pace gave her one simple task - to capture the game as it happens in real-time. Their team, which includes Pace, and professional sports bettor, Kenny Huber, wants to see just how latent sports broadcasting can be.

While she enjoys the Canucks in person, Pace and Huber sit in front of their respective televisions and wait. Pace has a side-by-side comparison of two sportscasting options: coaxial cable and an Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) stream. He is in his home in British Columbia, Canada while Huber tests his IPTV feed in Pennsylvania, USA.

That's when the Canucks get the puck and race into the Dallas Stars' end. One of Pace's TVs is to show what Sabrina has already witnessed. The Stars are on defence as the Canucks take a shot on net.

From the moment her camera rolls to the time it registers on one of Pace's TVs, there has been about a 15-second lag.

TSN 1 with a coaxial cable is the winner.

At the same time, Huber is on a FaceTime call with the team. Though Huber is watching the same game using ESPN Plus, the fastest hockey feed in the US, he waits about 30-40 seconds before he sees the shot on goal.

Back in Pace's Vancouver-based apartment, the team concludes its experiment. Pace's Sportsnet Now (the Canadian equivalent of NHL.tv) stream is the last to register the play with a 90-second latency.

When many people think of latency in sports broadcasting, Pace explains, often people think his team is worried about a few seconds of lag. "No, we're talking about a significant time and many people that aren't even sports bettors have found this out the hard way where they didn't know that they were watching something delayed."

What is latency and why does it matter?

Latency is the delay between an action occurring in a live game and when it’s broadcasted to the viewer. As demonstrated by the Canucks game, latency varies depending on your provider. Some may be as low as seconds while other providers may have a lag time of up to two minutes.

This delay may catch the average sports fan by surprise.

Have you ever experienced a situation where someone texted you that your favourite team scored at the Superbowl before you had seen it yourself? Or maybe playing fantasy football, and being so engrossed in watching the game to track every point - when suddenly, an alert pops up telling you one of your players has just scored even though it hasn't happened in your feed yet? Or do you live close enough to a field when you hear the crowd go wild, but as far as you can see at home, the pitcher still has the ball in his glove?

This can be both frustrating and disappointing.

For sports bettors, the cost of latency can be far greater

Whether you're an amateur or a professional bettor, latency can cause bettors to miss out on valuable opportunities. Or even worse. In-play betting requires that bettors understand the true state of the game. So if the play they are watching has already occurred it can lead to high stake errors.

Pace says even the most educated bettors can be misled by the impression of live-action TV. Within his own home, he will point to the portion of his screens broadcasting IPTV games. "I'll have to say to them... 'We could be dealing with anything from 30 seconds to two minutes of latency.' People will acknowledge that I have said that to them, and they nod their heads.”

"Even though they know that they've been told it's delayed and they make a wager and a snap decision immediately based on what they just saw. Little do they know the next play is an interception, so they saw value based on plays that hadn't occurred yet. As a result, they make costly mistakes.”

Bettors need to take into account the changing dynamics of the game. Live sports are unpredictable and, because of this, the knowledge and understanding of the bettor need to be as accurate as possible.

Cord cutting will make latency a greater issue

As the world makes a rapid shift from coaxial cable TV to streaming services, cord-cutting has become a growing trend among sports fans. The convenience, cost savings, and, often picture quality are appealing.

Naturally, sports broadcasts are moving to IPTV.

In 2022, Amazon became the first streaming service to reach a deal with the NFL. Starting this year and running through to 2033, it is the exclusive provider of "Thursday Night Football."

More recently, YouTube secured the rights for the NFL's "Sunday Night Ticket" which will start the 2023-24 season.

Though deals like these are exciting, latency is a concern.

In addition to their test on NHL broadcasts, the team at inplayLIVE also ran latency tests on March Madness and PGA Arnold Palmer Invitational respectively. When comparing college basketball broadcasts, YouTube TV came in last place at over 30 seconds latent. However, with golf, YouTube TV was speedier than Fubo by about 3-4 seconds.

When talking about most of these platforms, Pace says you're really talking about which is the worst of the worst.

As more on-demand sports streaming services sign with professional sports, the more this will be a concern. Not only are YouTube TV and Fubo lagging, DAZN another service provider recently signed a 10-year deal to provide international streaming of the NFL. Currently, they are operating at about one-minute latent.

Even if you haven't cut the cord, Pace warns that often what they're watching may still be streamed through cable providers. "Even on coaxial feeds a lot of specialty services... things like NHL Centre Ice, NFL Sunday Ticket, NFL Red Zone, NBA League Pass, the MLB package [are] first picking up an IPTV TV feed and then distributing it to you." Or viewers could be watching streamed sports as a result of their cable provider replacing traditional coaxial boxes with IPTV ones.

The sportsbooks are good, not great

On average, sportsbooks are on par with a good coaxial feed, which is about 5 to 8 seconds latent. As such bettors may be tempted to get their live information from them.

They have the score, they're updated throughout each game. But they should not be your source for real-time sports data, Pace says. "Not only are they wrong constantly. But they'll be wrong to the extent that that same error goes to multiple books at the same time..."

This isn't malicious or intentional. Simply, the books are error-prone.

Based on this, sports bettors may be tempted to ditch the broadcast altogether.

Is courtsiding the answer to latency? Pace says that's a big no

To gain an edge, many professional bettors are tempted to attend live sporting. Doing so may mean a bettor can lock in a bet a split second before the books resulting in a winning wager. Pace says it could be something like "...you see an ace in a tennis match that closed out the game. You would never wager on something like a minus 2000 game. But you saw the ace occur and you got in 1/10 of a second before the sports books locked on that particular market...”

"But if it works. You've just put a big target on your back..." Pace says you may make a bit of money in the short term, but then "The gig is up." The sportsbooks will catch on quickly and close your account. It also begs the question of ethics and whether or not courtsiding is simply cheating. Long term, Pace says, "You'll make more money value betting."

By following certain strategies, bettors can work against the effects of latency

Not everyone has the opportunity to run latency tests or try multiple service providers. So this begs the question, how can sports bettors avoid the consequences of latency when live betting?

Pace says first and foremost, "The answer is to never make a decision based on latent information." Bettors must ensure they have the most up-to-date data and that their data is coming from multiple sources.

"This is the beauty of inplayLIVE. We have the lens of, you know, hundreds of people all across North America in different areas, some that have the game live so that we can ask them what happened and they can type in and say, 'It's this teams ball with this much time left. It's on a timeout right now and they're currently reviewing this.' And we know exactly what the situation is because of that."

It is also crucial that bettors manage their money well. Never deploy an irresponsible amount of money based on latent data and then lose that money.

An additional strategy, Pace suggests, is to use timeouts in the game to your advantage. Especially if the timeout turns into a commercial break, bettors can get caught up and make more informed and impactful decisions.

Finally, there are additional options to cable and IPTV that bettors may want to explore. For instance, an Over the Air (OTA) antenna can provide low-latency sports broadcasts.

IPTV may be lagging, but the future of low-latency streaming is promising

While streaming sports providers like YouTube TV and Fubo TV are seriously lagging, others are putting in the work to get it right. Jeff Bezos, for example, recognized the issue latency posed to sports. In 2018, he announced the goal will be to create low-latency streaming that would be better than a coaxial feed. He wanted to have no more than five seconds of latency. 

The 2022-2023 season marked the first with Amazon's "Thursday Night Football."

Pace says, "It was nothing short of spectacular. It was two-to-three seconds latent." It's important to note, however, that the device sports viewers stream on is also critical as is the speed provided by your internet provider. "So if you have an ethernet cable wired in with one gig of internet and you're watching it on an Amazon Fire cube, you were going to be ridiculously live."

But it's not just Amazon

In the US, Caesars Sportsbook Live offered live viewing of the NFL primetime games for NBC subscribers. They provided a low latency feed with only a 2-3 second lag.

The technology exists and IPTV overall has improved significantly. Pace says, "It just hasn't gotten to us yet."

Conclusion

Latency can be an issue for live sports betting and will be different based on coaxial cable, IPTV providers, and sportsbooks. Because of this, it's important that bettors are aware of latent their sports are and make informed decisions based on that.

Shane Mercer, host of Behind the Lines podcast advises listeners, "If there is any kind of discrepancy, [be] aware of it and you can at least take a moment to say, 'Okay. Wait, there's something wrong here. I can't base my decision on that particular bit of information... I need to take the opportunity to just evaluate the situation..."

Pace remains optimistic about the future of IPTV and low-latency streaming.

"I can't wait to have nine super fast two-second delayed feeds in my living room. That's so exciting." He only sees latency in sports broadcasting improving from here. He has hope that "YouTube TV has this ready to rumble for NFL this season." 

AK Pace

AK is a writer who’s been published in HuffPost and other renowned online platforms. When she isn’t studying as a full-time student or taking care of her three kids, she creates content for natural brands (including her brother’s value investing sports business 😉)