With betting launching in New York on January 8 with the biggest names in the industry introducing apps to the NY market, what does this mean for innovators in the industry?
The sports betting industry is in desperate need of innovation. Even in Nevada where sports betting was legal for decades, the industry was so constrained by regulation that it had little room to innovate. However, newly legal sports betting markets mean that startups can offer new features for new generations of sports bettors.
New York is in a unique position. Innovations and startups don’t necessarily have to launch in New York for bettors to gain access to them. New York’s proximity to New Jersey will give bettors who still place some of their bets across the Hudson access to New Jersey startups.
So, bettors who are willing to travel could bet at betting exchanges like Sporttrade and Prophet Exchange. Bettors could even gain access to curated live bets and hologram messages as back-end startups expand their partnerships with larger sportsbooks.
BetMGM Sportsbook NY is the most recent sports betting app to join the roster in New York.
Here’s a snapshot of some startups at different stages that are either positioned to or currently innovating traditional sportsbooks.
Locker
Locker is an early-stage startup focused on putting sports news, stats, and sportsbooks in the same place. Bettors will be able to log into Locker and customize their news feed like other news apps. But Locker sets itself apart by allowing bettors to also add links to their favorite sportsbooks. So, bettors can go to one place for their news and betting.
Locker currently has no publicized state-by-state launch plans.
Rush Sports
Rush Sports describes itself as the TikTok of sports betting. It offers bettors curated in-game prop bets in yes or no questions like:
- Who will score on this power play? Isles or Kings?
- Who gets first on the scoreboard? Lebron or Harden?
- Who shoots on net first? Barca or Madrid?
These bets are available for about 90 seconds each. So, team apps can offer this as a free poll for fun. But in the future, sportsbooks could offer bettors more wagers that settle even more quickly than live moneylines and spreads. This will improve sportsbooks’ abilities to draw bettors to live in-game betting and keep them there.
Rush Sports already has a partnership with the New York Islanders. So, New Yorkers should watch for this feature in the Islanders app and for the real-money version of this service in sportsbooks over the course of 2022.
Triggy
Triggy offers several different products to sportsbooks that make choosing and placing bets easier for bettors. These include Triggy’s NextBets platform, which offers bet suggestions to bettors. Triggy has a partnership with Venuetize that will give users of the Memphis Grizzlies app the option to place suggested bets on WynnBET.
Triggy also has a partnership with 2mee, which will allow it to send hologram messages to bettors. These hologram messages increased the chances of users opening the message by up to 80% in company tests. So, they’ll be great tools for sportsbooks that want to leverage their team partnerships to get players to bet.
SnapOdds
SnapOdds scans games on TV like QR codes and brings up odds from partnered sportsbooks. It has a stand-alone app, but it can also be embedded in sportsbook apps, blogs, and other third parties. Its founders plan to target the New Jersey and New York markets in early 2022. So, New York and New Jersey bettors should watch for SnapOdds’ expansion into their states.
Sporttrade
Sporttrade is an upcoming betting exchange that will launch in New Jersey in 2022. It allows bettors to buy wagers priced between $1 and $99. If bettors win, then they’re paid $100 for every wager they buy. But if bettors are wrong, they get nothing.
Bettors can also place limit orders, which allow bettors to set their own prices and submit them to the exchange. If another bettor wants to take that bet, then the wager will go through. This allows bettors to set their own odds on their wagers.
Sporttrade is unique because its platform allows strategies that often result in player profit, like yield-skimming. It’s also one of two betting exchanges launching in New Jersey. It has no immediate New York launch plans. So, bettors interested in betting at Sporttrade will have to hop back aboard the Staton Island Ferry.
Prophet Exchange
Prophet Exchange is another betting exchange launching in New Jersey in 2022. Like Sporttrade, Prophet has no immediate New York launch plans, making a trip to New Jersey necessary for interested bettors.
On Prophet, bettors can set their own odds and submit them to the platform. If another bettor takes that bet, then the wager goes through. This allows bettors to bet against each other rather than against a bookmaker.
Unlike Sporttrade, Prophet looks like a traditional sportsbook with buttons to select odds. However, Prophet operates dramatically differently from a traditional sportsbook. By allowing bettors to make their own odds, Prophet is expected to offer better odds than traditional sportsbooks. It could make New Jersey a continued destination for New York sharp bettors.
Access, Live Betting, And Choice
These startups are at different stages of development and offer diverse solutions to common industry problems. Despite their differences, they have a few things in common. The main problems they’re addressing are:
- Faster access to odds, news, and analysis
- Improved live and in-game betting tools
- Greater choice in how bettors choose to gamble on sports
Locker’s content curation app will put everything bettors need to know to place a bet in one place. Rush Sports, Triggy, and SnapOdds will make it easier to find betting lines and place the types of bets that bettors want to place. Finally, Sporttrade’s and Prophet’s dueling betting exchanges in New Jersey will give customers new ways to place sports wagers. The outcome of competition between these two exchanges will also say a lot about what customers want out of their sports betting experiences and their apps in general.
Whether a startup offers new features in New York or neighboring New Jersey, New Yorkers are joining the sports betting industry at an exciting time.
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