The Houston Astros and Philadelphia Phillies aren’t the only teams enjoying a successful postseason. You can throw the leader in microbetting, Simplebet, into that group too.
After a regular season where Simplebet clients received 40% of their baseball handle from microbets — bets on pitch-by-pitch results as opposed to full game outcomes — the market has accounted for 43% of the handle in the postseason, CEO & co-founder Chris Bevilacqua told SportTechie.
And there’s reason to believe that number could jump even more in the World Series.
“The main driver is what we call island games,” Bevilacqua said of the playoff surge. “There is only one game on at a time. We see that phenomenon in football as well. The three biggest handle nights of the NFL season are Thursday night, Sunday night, and Monday night because it’s the only game on and they’re all on national TV.”
If micro betting is your thing, the state of New Jersey has approved pitch speed betting prior to tonight's Game 1 of the World Series.@DKSportsbook will allow bettors to bet on the over/under of every pitch tonight.
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) October 28, 2022
Bevilacqua called Simplebet’s pitch velocity microbet the “core proposition” of their technology. That specific bet allows bettors to pick an over/under on the speed of the next pitch. The company uses data from official league partners to create real-time odds for these type of microbets, allowing users on client platforms such as DraftKings and Betr to wager on the outcomes.
New Jersey recently became the latest state to allow pitch speed betting when regulators approved it last Friday, just in time for the World Series. Bevilacqua said New York, Virginia and Indiana are the only other states where it isn’t approved yet.
These type of bets are seen by some as a solution to baseball’s pace-of-play problem. They give people a game within the game to distract from down-time. With all eyes on the Astros and Phillies, we’ll get a better idea of just how popular microbetting can be.
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