Simplebet Partners with FanDuel for the NFL Season

This past week, FanDuel and Simplebet came to a partnership deal during the 2020 NFL season allowing FanDuel customers the ability to make mock in-game bets. Simplebet is an A.I. company and only have a one-year partnership with the sports betting company.

The partnership is a mock trial and will let FanDuel customers make bets on individual players and plays during a game. For example, FanDuel players will be able to make in-game bets on what the next play will be and what a player will do next play.

Although this is a mock trial, this will allow FanDuel to convert customers into betting real money on in-game bets during the season. Instead of betting on a live spread or total, customers can now bet on individual players and plays.

Partnership Goals

This is not a traditional partnership the two betting platforms are creating. This is simply a one-year deal in hopes that Simplebet can extend its partnership with FanDuel into a long-term one.

Simplebet is also offering the free-to-play platform on the FanDuel website hoping to entice new customers into the micro-betting market. The expansion of sports betting is coming and Simplebet, along with FanDuel, could open up a new market this football season.

Even if the partnership does not work out, Simplebet hopes that they can increase their brand awareness with the new product and show people the possibilities of a micro betting market.

“It hasn’t been done before because no one ever made the investment in machine learning and automation that’s required to enable this type of betting,” said CEO Chris Bevilacqua in an interview with CNBC. “These are all micro betting opportunities that are very engagement driven. We’re turning what typically used to be a handful of bets and traditional bets, like over-under and outcome-based bets, where you have to watch the whole game, into a series of minigames throughout a game.”

Can Simplebet Work?

Micro betting is a brand new concept that a majority of the sports betting industry had not ventured into. A reason why is because of the technology. To do live in-games bets every game, a sportsbook needs someone on the pulse creating odds and bets in real-time.

Sportsbooks cannot do in-game bets at retail locations because the logistics make things impossible already. Also, sportsbooks can get hurt on in-game betting depending on the speed of the game. Add in-game prop betting to the mix, and the risk management department will need to expand ten-fold.

Now, Simplebet wants to silence all the haters and create a micro betting market that can turn into a behemoth itself if it is done correctly. Simplebet uses A.I. technology to collect date from sports and from bettors to see what they are betting on.

From there, the A.I. technology creates bets for every in-game situation for players, allowing bettors to be on almost every play. A.I. can risk-manage itself if the software is correctly programmed, and could create another major market in U.S. sports betting.

Simplebet has some big backers like Philadelphia 76ers and San Francisco Giants co-owners David Blitzer and Jeff Mallet, and the company has raised over $30 million to get the product off the ground.

Now, it is time for execution. The idea around a micro betting market is solid. Why wouldn’t sportsbooks want to capitalize on bets every single play of every game? The technology just needs to be top-notch for it to work. We will see if Simplebet has the technology to pull it off.