Micro-Betting Adds Cogent Imperative to Streaming Sports in Real Time

As fast-paced online sports gambling formats like micro-betting take hold stakeholders are approaching a strategic watershed where the best business outcomes will accrue to those who can integrate in-game betting and viewing as a one-screen experience.

While expectations are high for micro-betting, there’s a limit on its prospects imposed by today’s one-way, high-latency streaming environment, which requires bookmakers’ betting-related data feeds to be delivered as second-screen apps. In other words, as things stand now, micro-betting is a niche for enthusiasts willing to live with the disconnect between tracking action for betting purposes on one screen while trying to watch the out-of-sync rendering of competition on another.

Given the infectious social energy attending micro-betting, the incentive for users to participate would be much higher if the activity was part of a real-time viewing experience, which is why industry attention is turning to what can be done to make that possible.

As sports industry consultancy Next League notes in a recent report on sports betting, “The importance of properly architected backends that leverage zero latency approaches to both data and video delivery cannot be overstated, especially within the in-game and micro-betting areas…Micro-betting should play a huge role in the adoption of sports betting as real-time content delivery and the artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities required to quickly deliver smart betting opportunities to fans matures.”

Kelly Pracht, CEO and co-founder of nVenue, a leading supplier of AI-driven intelligence essential to bookmakers’ micro-betting initiatives, underscored the importance of real-time streaming to the future of online sports betting in an interview with the online publication Gaming Today, “Our [data] feed is really close to real-time, but you need real-time video — or near real-time video — to accompany it,” Pracht said.

“The next step for the future of true watching and betting in real-time is leveraging low-latency video,” she added. “That technology exists today, and we look forward to seeing how it is adopted by media and broadcast.”

Explosive Potential

Micro-betting, the in-game wagering format that allows timely betting on imminent outcomes, has burst into prominence as the sports wagering industry’s most promising growth engine. Projections vary, but the consensus among researchers, analysts and suppliers alike is that the prospects are huge.

For example, industry tracker H2 Gambling Capital predicts the global micro-betting handle in 2025 will total upwards of $21 billion. Sports data supplier Sportradar forecasts the global micro-betting total will hit the $20-billion mark by 2027.

Globally, a $21-billion micro-betting take in 2025 would translate to 30% of the $70-billion global online sports betting total projected by Straits Research or to a more modest 18% of the $112 billion projected by Grand View Research. Pracht, in another trade press interview, predicts micro-betting in the U.S. will soon constitute a third of the U.S. online sports betting market.

Participation in the next-gen gambling format is soaring with the leading sports books in the U.S. and many elsewhere now on board. As reported by multiple outlets tracking sports betting, micro-betting is now supported by all the major pro sports operations, including the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, PGA, multiple soccer leagues, and tennis associations, and by some esports competitions as well.

To a remarkable degree, the core data-processing challenges that once stood in the way of micro-betting have been surmounted, thanks to heavy investments in AI-assisted algorithms capable of real-time data aggregation and odds calculations specific to each betting opportunity with instant tabulations of personalized results conveyed to massive numbers of users. As Next League notes in its report, there’s now a supply of “micro-betting products that will allow fans to place wagers on an almost infinite number of sports situations like predicting outcomes on pitches, shots, and saves.”

In one sign of the stakes involved, bookmaking giant DraftKings recently spent $150 million to acquire micro-betting data supplier and odds maker SimpleBet, which has created space for smaller ventures like nVenue and Huddle Tech to serve the many other sports books who were relying on SimpleBet. Another indicator of the disruptive role played by just-in-time betting formats was the 2022 launch of Betr as the first bookmaker devoted exclusively to micro-betting.

Notably, with an investment bankroll now totaling $100 million, Betr in 2024 expanded its play at the cutting edge of market developments with the launch of Betr Picks, which supports another fast-paced betting format known as daily fantasy sports (DFS). DFS participants bet on whether athletes they’ve chosen to be members of their fantasy teams will meet or fall short of in-game performance metrics posted with odds on outcomes by a DFS bookmaker. This is another format that would benefit from integration with real-time viewing experiences.

And it’s also important to recognize that streaming live sports in real time can benefit how traditional online sports bets are set up. For example, when it comes to tying bets on horse racing to real-time streaming. betting prompts can appear on viewers’ screens right up to when windows close at the track, eliminating disparities between the online and in-venue experience.

Building on Real-Time Benefits Beyond Micro-Betting

Obviously, as micro-betting consumes an ever larger share of the sports betting handle, the competitive upside will belong to the sports books that opt to marry betting to the viewing experience. The most versatile, cost-effective and future-proof way to do this is through implementation of streaming infrastructures based on Red5’s Experience Delivery Network (XDN) architecture.

Significantly, along with enabling the integration of micro-betting and other formats with sports video streaming, XDN architecture allows sports producers and sports betting books to leverage these hot betting modes as revenue-generating justifications for creating streaming environments conducive to video-rich approaches to socialization and feature personalization.

Such capabilities will be crucial to keeping younger generations of users engaged with mainstream sports. And, speaking of youth-oriented use cases, it’s important to note that with micro-betting taking hold in esports, there are also major benefits to be gained with implementation of real-time streaming in that domain.

Clearly, decision makers on multiple fronts have a lot to consider in their choices of streaming platforms beyond the basic requirements of micro-betting. In fact, even without the betting component, the capabilities of the AI-enabled data processing engines fueling micro-betting can be brought to bear with real-time streaming to enhance sports viewing engagement via apps that invite viewers to compete for bragging rights to predicting what’s next or accumulating points over time with in-game predictions and answers to trivia questions.

Just what such interactivity-inducing capabilities can mean to fan engagement can be seen in a recent NBA experiment utilizing the capabilities of nVenue to support micro-betting-like interactions without the betting. As described by the online publication Team Marketing Reports, an NBA Launchpad proof-of-concept initiative involved working with nVenue to provide NBA International League Pass subscribers a non-betting inducement to interactive engagement during the 2023 NBA Finals.

At key moments during four games, League Pass users participating in over 70,000 viewing sessions acted over 280,000 times on invitations to predict which team would be the first to score the next 15 points. Data feeds using nVenue algorithms to calculate ongoing shifts in outcome probabilities with every score allowed fans to keep track of how their predictions were faring moment by moment, just as they would if they had bet on the outcomes. With no reward other than notification they’d won or lost, these viewers registered average viewing times that exceeded non-participant viewing times by 60%.

Another perspective on what’s doable through interactive fan engagement comes from recent results registered by the regional sports broadcaster YES Network, whose YES App is now offered under the Gotham Sports banner in a joint venture with the other New York regional sports outlet MSG Network. A wide range of user experiences supported by the YES App have been offered with games and other streamed programming related to the New York Yankees, the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets, the WNBA’s New York Liberty, and Major League Soccer’s New York City FC,

One well-received Yankee games feature known as “Pick-N-Play Live” was launched in 2022 to allow users to score gift-redeemable points posted on app leaderboards for things like predicting individual player and team performances during the game. YES reports this and other interactive features offered with Yankee games led to a 39% increase in average unique viewers in 2022 with ongoing viewership gains in ’23 and ’24.

XDN Implementation and App Development Versatility

These early experiences with micro-betting and fan interactivity offer a vivid picture of what’s in store for sports producers and bookmakers who bring real-time multidirectional streaming into play on the Red5 XDN platform. With implementation of XDN architecture, there’s no perceptual delay between what’s happening at a venue and what viewers see. No matter how many users are engaged or how far away they are from the action, end-to-end latencies registered by XDN users are consistently at or below a 250ms lag time that is undetectable in human interactions.

Critically, XDN architecture is designed to ensure this latency performance prevails with video streams generated by end users as well as the primary event production. With everybody viewing the action in sync, any number of people can engage in watch parties or other video-rich social experiences while they participate in micro-betting or other activities triggered by interactive apps.

Moreover, XDN architecture enables real-time delivery of personalized feature overlays precisely time synced with each viewing session. For example, along with the micro-bet prompts received by all participants, each user can be kept abreast of their betting results or fed real-time updates on their fantasy team players’ performances as part of the primary viewing experience.

Adding to the variety of engaging options open to sports streamers, Red5’s TrueTime Multiview application running on XDN infrastructure makes it easy to allow viewers to trigger an instantaneous full-screen display of any camera feed appearing in a sidebar array of real-time thumbnail screen renderings. Uniquely with TrueTime Multiview, in contrast to any other multiviewing system available today, not only is the viewing experience seamlessly delivered in real time as the user jumps from one camera feed to the next; there’s no limit on the number of viewing options that might be provided from camera outputs within, outside and above a venue.    

Another major benefit that’s unique to working with XDN architecture is Red5’s support for all modes of instantiating streaming infrastructure. As depicted here, these include:

·  Turnkey approaches to implementation through the Red5 Cloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS) running on the global Oracle Cloud Infrastructure,

·  The Red5 Pro DevOps-oriented approaches to implementation in seamless orchestration across any combination of cloud computing infrastructures,

·  An approach to utilizing XDN architectural components that’s optimized for the open-source development community.

In all cases, XDN architecture can be applied in both B2C use cases as exemplified by micro-betting and the other consumer applications discussed here and B2B use cases where real-time interactive video operations over backend connections enable a vast array of distributed production scenarios. These include remote production capabilities that promise to greatly reduce the costs while increasing the versatility of live sports productions.

For sports streamers who prefer a turnkey approach to implementing real-time streaming infrastructure, there’s nothing like the combination of efficiency, comprehensive functionality and developmental versatility embodied in the Red5 Cloud PaaS. With global autoscaling enabling sub-250ms interactive streaming involving any number into the millions of end users, the PaaS supports all the capabilities XDN architecture is known for, including advanced transcoding, frame-accurate metadata syncing, comprehensive encryption and authentication, including tie-ins with multi-digital rights management (DRM) platforms, and much else.

Customers are able to implement their XDN infrastructures in a matter of minutes by responding to dashboard prompts aimed at designating numbers of streams to be ingested and their bitrates, the destinations to be served, the scale of the receiving population, the scale of participants that will be generating video, and some other basic parameters. At the same time, customers have the latitude to configure operations precisely to their needs through access to the Red5 Pro compendium of SDKs, extensive third-party API integrations and multisector-optimized TrueTime MultiView, WatchParty, Studio, and DataSync application toolsets.

In contrast to utilizing the Red5 Cloud service, customers who choose to go the DevOps route with Red5 Pro or take the open-source approach can capitalize on the unique cross-cloud orchestration capabilities of XDN architecture by building their real-time streaming infrastructures on any combination of multiple public cloud platforms and private cloud resources. 

Configuration of node instantiations for cross-cloud operations is supported by pre-integrations with numerous cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers, including AWS, Digital Ocean, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and OCI, and through engagement with any of more than a dozen other IaaS providers whose facilities can be quickly tied into the XDN via the widely used Terraform multi-cloud toolset. In addition, the Red5 Stream Manager can be manually integrated to work with the APIs of any cloud provider that isn’t integrated with Terraform. 

XDN Architecture and Operational Orchestration

A brief overview of XDN architecture provides insight into what makes all the unique capabilities cited here possible. A much deeper perspective can be found in extensive documentation on the Red5 website.

XDN infrastructure is based on dedicated hierarchical clusters of Origin, Relay and Edge Node servers. One or more Origin Nodes in a cluster serve to ingest and stream encoded content out to Relay Nodes, each of which serves an array of Edge Nodes that deliver live unicast streams to end points in their assigned service areas. In cases serving a small geographic area or very few end points, content is streamed directly to Edge Nodes without the use of Relay Nodes.

Many capabilities supported by XDN architecture, such as MultiView and personalized feature support discussed above and ABR session configuration discussed below, rely on Edge Node intelligence that enables selection of streams precisely frame synchronized for last-mile delivery on a per-user basis. Multiple streams delivered from transcoders or directly from production centers are ingested by Origin Nodes and transmitted through Relay Nodes to Edge Nodes. There they are parsed and selected for delivery to end users based on factors such as personal profiles, types of devices in use, network conditions and stream choices made by users.

The automated node configuration and routing capabilities of the XDN architecture enable servers in all node locations to be turned up as needed to provide support for streaming content in any direction. Thus, any node location can be equipped to provide Origin Node support for ingesting content from proximate users with routing executed from there across the most direct node paths to targeted destinations.

Set-up configurations and ongoing orchestration of all the nodes are performed by the platform’s Stream Manager. The intelligent management system works in real time as it processes live stream information, applying automated scaling mechanisms to add or lower virtualized server capacity in response to fluctuations in traffic demand or the need to add new broadcasters and end users.

Cluster-wide redundancy essential to fail-safe operations is enabled by the Stream Manager’s autoscaling mechanism through platform controllers designed to work with the cloud provider’s API. With comprehensive performance monitoring, the Stream Manager executes the load balancing essential to persistent high performance across the entire infrastructure without manual intervention. And in the event of a malfunctioning node component, it can instantly shift processing to another appliance in that node.

No matter what the use case might be, the XDN architecture maximizes versatility across multiple transport modes in both the ingest and distribution phases of platform operations.

At its core, XDN architecture relies on the real-time communications capabilities of the Real Time Transport Protocol (RTP), which underlies IP-based voice communications and is the foundation for both WebRTC (Real-Time Communications), originally developed for peer-to-peer video communications, and RTSP (Real-Time Streaming Protocol), a one-to-many video streaming alternative to HTTP widely used in IP camera outputs and for video transmissions to as well as from mobile devices.

Along with ingesting any content delivered via WebRTC or RTSP, the Red5 Pro XDN can ingest video formatted to all the other leading protocols used with video playout, including Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP), Secure Reliable Transport (SRT), Zixi Software-Defined Video Protocol (SVDP), MPEG Transport Protocol, and HTTP Live Streaming (HLS). On the transmission side, the XDN selects the transport options best suited to reaching devices on a per-session basis.

WebRTC is the most used transport mode owing to the client-side support provided by all the major browsers, including Chrome, Edge, Firefox, Safari and Opera, which eliminates the need for plug-ins or purpose-built hardware. XDN architecture has been designed to overcome the scaling issues widely associated with WebRTC, enabling real-time streaming at any distance to any number of end users.

Alternatively, if a mobile device with built-in client support for RTSP is receiving the stream, the platform transmits via RTSP. The client-optimized flexibility of XDN architecture also extends to packaging ingested RTMP, MPEG-TS and SRT encapsulations for transport over RTP. This occurs when clients compatible with these protocols can’t be reached via WebRTC or RTSP. And in the rare instances where these variations in real-time transport can’t be used to reach a device, the XDN can be set up to hand off content for conventional streaming over HLS.

Customers can stipulate avoidance of reduced bandwidth impediments to persistent throughput through activation of multiple adaptive bitrate (ABR) profiles in real-time XDN transport. This can be done through ingestion of the streamed content in multiple profiles produced by an external transcoder or with reliance on Red5’s high-speed transcoding capabilities running on cloud servers adjacent to Origin Nodes to generate the multiple versions dictated by the ABR profiles. Either way, the content is streamed in multiple bitrates to Edge Nodes, from which the content is streamed in profiles matched by node intelligence to each session in accord with client device characteristics and access bandwidth availability.

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From all the foregoing, it’s clear that whether sports producers and books want to focus strictly on delivering a viewing experience with on-screen integration of micro-betting options or make micro-betting part of a broader set of applications conducive to interactive video engagement, Red5’s XDN-based solutions offer an unparalleled approach to driving viewership and revenues. To learn more about the opportunities contact info@red5.net or schedule a call.