iGaming Daily

Anaya McDonald (00:02.631)
Good afternoon and welcome to iGaming Daily brought to you by OptiMove, the number one CRM solution for the iGaming market. And today we have a really special episode, something completely different, something I know you're going to find really interesting. And we've got a special guest with us as well to provide some unique insights into the European football landscape. Jeev, I will let you introduce yourselves to our audience. I think an iGaming Daily debut, so yeah.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (00:27.15)
You

Anaya McDonald (00:31.025)
Tell us a little bit about what you do and a little bit about Abelson as well.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (00:31.107)
Yeah.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (00:35.202)
Yeah, thanks Joe. I'm Jim Jartland. I look after the odds compilation business, the Abelson Info Runs, so Abelson Odds at this point. We price up player prop markets for soccer across a whole swath of leagues, very extensive coverage. Been doing this for nearly 20 years as a business, well before...

it was a thing really but subsequently betbuilders really pushed the popularity of player led bets and consequently our business has also grown as a result of that so it's been fantastic.

Anaya McDonald (01:15.167)
Brilliant and you can definitely provide us a really strong insight on what we're talking about today. We're going to talk about European club competitions and how they've changed some significant shifts this year. We've obviously all noticed it. We kind of don't really know what we're watching apart from obviously we're watching some top level football, but we don't really know the importance of the games and we don't really know how this league format is going to play out. It's just been fascinating and

Obviously, it's been really interesting from a betting perspective as well. And I guess it's brought some real challenges as an odds compiler. But before we kind of go into the nitty gritty from a betting perspective, Jeev, I know you're a big football fan. know you watch football from across the globe, all varieties of football. So, yeah, from a fan perspective.

How have you found the new European format, the new kind of, it's kind of an American format with the league instead of the old group style. Have you managed to adapt?

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (02:22.382)
Well after, and I can remember the original, when the Champions League became the Champions League what, 33 years ago. So I've grown up really with the concept of the four team group stage. So I'm not personally that keen on the new format as yet. I think that when you extend, you extend the format by eight games a round, you remove some of the jeopardy that's...

that was endowed in the smaller group stages with the six rounds. And I still think even after match week four, it's hard to take the table too seriously. Still 24 teams are gonna qualify from this.

and there's still four games to go. So there's plenty of time for teams that are struggling to sort it out. And I worry about the amount of dead rubbers that we'll see at the latter stages of the competition here, especially with, you know, there's no consolation prizes. What, 12 teams are going to drop out of contention completely out of Europe by the end of this elongated group stage. And then the other aspect for teams, I guess,

is that they rely on the revenue stream from UEFA for competing and performing in the competition. And that seems to me that it's been overly complicated again, using the points criteria. And actually, if you don't qualify from the Champions League stage, you get six coefficient points anyway. So I...

I know there's additional points to be gained for performances but I just worry that some of the teams that are rock bottom and really struggling are going to be, you know, where's the incentive for them going forward.

Anaya McDonald (04:17.28)
Sorry, can you please repeat that from rock bottom? The dog wagging just kind of interrupted your audio there ever so slightly. Yeah, yeah, of course, no worries.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (04:25.646)
Could I take it right? Put it right.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (04:36.334)
She usually sits very quietly. I forgot she was there, to be honest. So what were we saying? Yeah, so the team...

Anaya McDonald (04:39.366)
No worries.

Anaya McDonald (04:43.395)
No worries. So just pick up from that last sentence.

Anaya McDonald (04:51.798)
worried about the amount of dead rubbers.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (04:54.254)
Yeah, the teams that finish rock bottom are still going to achieve six coefficient points. And I know that there's points to be gained for performance too, but I worry about their motivations towards the latter stages of this group stage.

Anaya McDonald (05:11.8)
Yeah, it's a really interesting point and obviously you mentioned the Jeopardy as well. You know, I'm a Man United fan and I watched us kind of fall short in the opening group games last year when we were in the Champions League and it felt like now is do or die. I watched us again fall short in the opening games of the Europa League this year and it kind of felt like, it's all right, we'll make it up later.

definitely echo your sentiment that some of the jeopardy has gone and yeah it's it's tricking also I think you raise an interesting point where you're not bought into it as of yet because we've kind of got to let it play out at least a couple of years and see yeah you know see how it kind of unfolds and see what excitement does become as a result of these groups this group

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (05:59.468)
I.D.

There's been four games, there's been four weeks, so it's far too early to make a judgement. And actually, my sentiments aside, I did conduct a poll of some of our customers, but also some my friends, punters, etc. And actually their opinion was...

was different to mine in that they were more positive about the change and they felt that the old format had become very stale and that they feel that this is potentially a step in the right direction with some interest further on down the line. So maybe it's just me being a stick in the mud.

Anaya McDonald (06:39.109)
No, I'm with you. We're both kind of stuck there. But I guess it's interesting that you say from punters, because I guess from a betting perspective, the number of big teams clashing, we see more big clashes now earlier in the tournament, that can really boost betting engagement.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (06:57.794)
It can, but again, I surveyed some of the customers about, have we seen improvements in stakes? Have we seen increase in interest engagement? And actually the feedback that came back was that...

Total bet's almost identical for this stage. Small increase in total stakes. Margins increased, but I think that's probably more to do with a few friendly results and the fact that bet builders still continues to gather steam. And obviously the margins on bet builder are higher than margins on singles. The average stakes per fixture was slightly down, but I think that's to be expected given we've got an extra eight matches per game week.

The big teams clashing early. It's difficult, I think, to get too excited about the likes of Arsenal vs PSG in match week two because neither team, honestly, neither team needs to win. So how can you become too excited? If you lose there, you lose there, but you've got seven other matches to pick up what? don't know. 12 points. Is that going to?

Should get you in the top eight, I don't know.

Anaya McDonald (08:15.428)
Yeah, that's it. think again, kind of that's a really important point is we don't know right now. We don't know the implications of drawing your first two matches. So I think once we kind of get a grip on the impact of these results and after a few years, I think it will become more important. And you mentioned player markets as well. Do you think we could see kind of because we're essentially dealing with a tournament before the tournament here?

Do think we could see some player markets and player innovations come off the back of this league format? yeah, how can operators kind of tap into that?

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (08:54.794)
It's again, player markets. If we think about player markets from a standard Premier League match, it's the player markets are as extensive as they could be at this point in the technical time that we're in. The opto-fast data feed is as good as we can do at this point. it's hard to see how...

how there could be additional or different player markets for this particular competition, especially given that we've got some teams from leagues that are less well represented generally in terms of statistical markets such as the Swiss league, Serbian, Slovakian league. So actually it can be considered a bit harder to do some of the in-depth player markets for that. But I think what operators will tend to do is really hone in on some

some key matches where they have full confidence in the stats that they have and the pricing that they have and then really go to town on those matches. A lot of pre-camp bet builders, a lot of stimulation stuff in towards pushing people towards the key matches within a week.

Anaya McDonald (10:10.152)
Okay, and how about anti-post markets or even, yeah, anti-post overall markets? I noticed you could bet on who's going to finish very bottom of the table. Could we see, yeah, do you think we're going to see some innovations around anti-post markets, maybe even anti-post player markets?

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (10:30.55)
So, well, antiposed outright markets are interesting whenever you change a format because...

the different eligibility criteria. the amount of teams that can qualify and the way they can qualify has changed. And we haven't seen this type of league format before, right? So actually that provides opportunity for punters, sharp punters, also for, provides a challenge for operators to price some of the markets up, especially the, qualify or to finish bottom or what we call the banded markets where you're betting on teams to finish

within the first eight or eight to 16 or 16 to 24, right? And from the feedback I had, these...

these banded markets had proven interesting for punters with lots of ARBs available, mainly due to uncertainty from operators about how to correctly price some of these markets. So I think, yes, that's interesting from a player point of view, you have your standard goal scorer markets, and yes, you could in theory do other.

key stat outright markets but really the player stuff is very much on a per game basis that's where the real interest is. Anti-post betting as a whole has really suffered a little bit because of people because of live you know people want to bet live they want to be able to see the stuff they don't want to they want to tie their money up and you see that across horse racing too.

Anaya McDonald (12:15.734)
Yeah, so it's kind of a shame because, you know, nothing beats kind of waiting for a bet to come in for that long period, you know, kind of feels like an investment and then you're in for the whole thing. And I do wonder if the league format lends itself more to that or less to that. I'm not quite sure. You know, it was always good to pick somebody to go through from each group and then you kind of had interest across the board. But yeah, an interesting one.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (12:28.067)
Yeah.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (12:41.1)
Yeah, that's a good point. The group outright as a multi were a popular bet. And obviously that opportunity has been removed. I guess you can do multis across teams to qualify. But yeah, I imagine there'd be some very defensive pricing around that at this point.

Anaya McDonald (13:01.1)
Yeah, yeah, agreed. And you touched on it before that we've we've sort of seen the impetus from the big sides, from the clubs that you would, you know, take as favourites that might show some real impetus late in the tournament. It hasn't quite been there. And I just wonder if the longer format has kind of diluted the importance of some of these early group games. There's really been a lack of urgency from

big clubs early doors you know we even see some of them kind of lingering in the middle of the table now and they may be confined to a playoff match.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (13:37.238)
No, I absolutely agree. The dilution is, let's be honest, it's for greed, it's for money, it's for gate receipts, it's for TV money predominantly. UEFA, to be clear, aren't interested in how it affects the betting operators or indeed our industry. But it's for sure to be said that, as I said, you cannot get excited about Arsenal PSG in that second week.

Anaya McDonald (14:03.277)
Hold on, I'm just gonna have to butt in there a little bit. Just hear the dog barking.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (14:05.718)
Is there a duck? I can't... for God's sake. Squirrel. Squirrel. Hold on. Do you me to sort it out? Yeah, she's just...

Anaya McDonald (14:10.689)
No worries.

So many squirrels. Yes, please. Thank you.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (14:23.534)
Bye!

Stay

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (15:29.688)
you

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (15:57.762)
So sorry about that.

Anaya McDonald (15:59.611)
No worries, no worries. diluted, it's kind of diluted the importance of some of these games and it's made it tricky. We've seen a lack of impetus from the big teams early doors.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (16:15.17)
Yeah, absolutely. It's very hard to get too excited, as we said, about key matches in early match days because it can easily turn round. And given the nature of the draw, there's not an even bias to the fixtures that each team will play. So when you look at the lead table right now, it's not fair to say it's an accurate reflection of how it's going to look at the end at all.

Some teams will have played better teams already, some teams will have those teams to come.

Anaya McDonald (16:50.63)
Yeah, it's a strange looking league and kind of obviously really emphasizes the challenges for you guys and for betting operators. you know, I look at that Villa-Bian game specifically where it was a massive game for Villa, understandably. was historic. It felt landmark. They were, you know, this was potentially season defining in a sense. This is one that we'll look back on. For Bayern, who play seven other group games, the

didn't really get out a second gear and that showed I guess that makes it really hard to price and to be a betting operator approaching that game.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (17:30.318)
Yeah, mean, you know that Villa-Park, that's the biggest game they've had in, well, since they won the Cup back in the 80s. So it was going to be a huge game for them. And yeah, as you say, Bayern used to it, right? But Villa showed up, Bayern didn't. It's still a shock. The odds are still, you factor a small piece in for home advantage, you would anyway, right?

equally, still an upset. So I don't think there's huge shifts in that respect to pricing these matches but it definitely gives, for me it favours the perceived stronger teams because they've got more chance to get out of trouble.

Anaya McDonald (18:20.542)
Yeah, and I think, you know, we've kind of, yeah, we've more than kind of touched on the negative impact, but I think one of the positive impacts of this, and one thing I'm really looking forward to, is that eight to 24, whatever it is, the teams, and we know there's going to be some big hitters in there that miss out on that top eight, that end up in the playoffs.

even against potentially other big teams or against teams that have kind of overachieved. And that is going to create some really spicy ties, right?

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (18:56.96)
It should do, absolutely. Yeah, and in fact, those play-offs, should be, they're potentially going to be the most exciting part of the whole tournament, honestly. There's an argument to say the last few game weeks are going to throw up some very interesting ties, and that's true, but I fear there will be lot of dead rubbers in the last few game weeks as well. And the last thing you want is a team like Real Madrid.

who could be in trouble if they lose to Liverpool on match day five, go into Salzburg who've got nothing to play for, or playing at home to Salzburg who've got nothing to play for, and then if they choose to focus on the league campaign as opposed to the Champions League, then you've got integrity issues, but you've got competitive issues, then it could be a bit...

leave a sour taste for some people if those kind of things happen but yeah it's the playoffs for sure will be will be very exciting.

Anaya McDonald (20:02.739)
And you've kind of mentioned it because of all the dynamics, kind of anything could happen going into that final couple of games. How challenging is that going to be to price in terms of qualification markets?

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (20:17.682)
As I say, it comes back to some of the outright stuff with the bands, but once we get down to the nitty gritty of once we know who's qualified and in which position, then we know that the teams in the first...

side of the playoffs so from 8 to 16 they get home advantage second and that's essentially what you're playing for within that 8 to 24 bracket is a home advantage in the second leg. Is that enough of a motivation to...

to say your mid table of one of those, we consider the league to be three, four tables, but three tables of qualification in terms of the top eight qualify, then eight to 16 are a playoff with an advantage in terms of, perceived advantage in terms of.

where you play the second leg and then you've got the third table with the teams that are of scraping into qualification. Is there a huge incentive to make that eight to 16 if you're comfortably in the 16 to 24? And that's the bit, that really is an unknown and we don't know how teams will approach this, what motivations they'll have to really try and push on and see if they can reach that next bracket or if they go, okay,

need to focus elsewhere. We feel we're comfortable, we're going to qualify comfortably in that third league and that's enough for us at this point. We'll take our chances in the play-offs, two-legged play-off. It almost seems you play eight games to decide whether you're going to get into the playoffs and then you have a two-legged play-off to decide your future in the competition. It almost feels like you have this long, elongated process and then you rush the...

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (22:17.538)
You do all that to get there and then you've got a, you know, two-legged tie. It could be anyone's, know.

Anaya McDonald (22:24.768)
Yeah, I hope you're not quietly lobbying for another group at the end of the group because Premier League managers will be on to us and they won't be happy about the fixtures.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (22:28.451)
Ha

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (22:31.982)
Well that's the other element of the playoffs right? If you think about the teams, especially the teams in the top European leagues, the last thing they need is two games in February. Additional games that their rivals may well not have to play.

So, but obviously by that point, you've either qualified in top eight or you are in the playoffs or you're out of the competition. And obviously none of them want to be completely out of the competition. They'd rather be in the playoffs, but it will be interesting because no one's going to want those additional two matches. That's going to take it to 10 before you've got to the true knockout stage.

Anaya McDonald (23:08.036)
Yeah, and you're going into kind of February, as she said, a look at I saw there was a Rangers Man United game from the draw at Old Trafford, quite an exciting one. had a look when it was and I thought they'd skipped it from the calendar. But it's at the end of January. European group games at the end of January is a strange prospect. But yeah, here we are. And it has been a strange group thus far, a strange league, if you like. You know, we've seen really

some crazy performances from some teams we've seen Villa, Brest, Sporting or battling at the top of the league if you like and then teams like PSG who are kind of lingering in the middle. Before the tournament PSG they might not have been favourites but they certainly would have been ahead of Villa, Sporting and Brest. How do you think pricing for the tournament winner has changed?

because of the league, if you know what I mean. Like how much have you read into the league performances?

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (24:09.516)
Yeah.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (24:13.102)
Honestly, very little. If you look at the outright markets, Real Madrid, who we mentioned, in theory, they definitely haven't performed to their expectations, but they're still second favourite. Man City, okay, should qualify comfortably, but got hammered by Sporting. Man City is still a strong favourite for the tournament. And as I said before, it's slightly skewed because

the strength of the teams that teams have had to play isn't necessarily even across four match days that we are. So for example, if you take, we use the example of Brest, Stab Brest. So they're fourth, but they've had favorable fixtures relatively. But the next four fixtures, they've got Barcelona, PSV, Shakhtar, Donetsk away and Real Madrid. So that's...

It's unlikely that they'll be scrapping for qualification for a playoff spot, you'd think. But on the table now, you look and go, my God. But they've had an easier ride than some of other teams. It's difficult to make comparisons yet at this point.

Anaya McDonald (25:33.457)
Yeah, it is a crazy dynamic. It's really hard to anything into it at all, especially when we've kind of never really seen it play out. one thing that I do really enjoy from this, consequence of this new format is nobody from the Champions League fails in the Champions League and drops into the Europa League anymore. And likewise, I don't think anybody from the Europa League, I mean, I'm going deep cut here, but...

Nobody from the Europa League drops into the Conference League, which they previously did. How much of a benefit to those tournaments, both in the sense of just engagement and also, you know, being able to price the winner of that tournament? Like, now, you know, the teams in that tournament are in there. There's not going to be some rogue Inter Milan fly into the Europa League. How much of a benefit is it to price that tournament knowing that's the case?

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (26:18.989)
Yeah.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (26:29.472)
It's certainly easy, haven't got any others that's favourite or something like that. But I think that honestly the Europa League competition as an outright model it's...

it's never had great traction. think you'll find that the research I did suggested that the UK operators report that there's a standard bias towards betting on the UK side. So the books lopsided towards UK winners as you'd expect. And that'll be the same across, you know, Spanish operators, et cetera. There'll be bias towards Spanish teams.

I think it's better for the teams involved in the Europa League for sure to know who the competition is and that may impact how seriously they take the competition, especially at this stage, because they can see, well this is it now, this is who we play, there's going to be no, as you say, there's no Inter Milan dropping in, no going to be some surprises that are immediately going to become a favourite for the league, for the competition. So I think it gives strength, I think it's generally a better move for sure.

And then the other part about, we can price Champions League matches, Everyone knows the Champions League teams really, those are well-known teams, even your Bratislava's are well-known within the Slovakian league. But as you go further down through the European pyramid, then you've got a lot of, you've got your likes of your FC, Noah.

and those teams can perform or they can get absolutely hammered like they did last week. But one thing that on the pricing side of it, the traders have found it easier to rate the leagues and teams against each other because of the format you see more variation between opposition. So opposition's from different leagues playing.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (28:25.151)
different teams. Everyone's playing a different team all the time as opposed to playing home in a way, the same team. So it actually allows you to build up the rankings, the ratings a bit easier. you can compare, there's more examples to compare of, this team played a team from Italy and now they're going to play away here. It becomes a lot easier to actually compile the actual 1X2s and things like that.

Anaya McDonald (28:26.438)
Okay.

Anaya McDonald (28:50.119)
Yeah, that is really interesting, even looking at like the New Saints versus Shamrock. How do you price that? The Welsh league against the Irish league? Who knows the levels there? It's interesting, but I guess you've got a lot more data to kind of weigh against them now.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (29:04.416)
Yeah and games like that, historical data does bear an important thing. You're looking at how teams in Ireland have favoured against teams in the Welsh league in the past and a lot of that comes into that.

Anaya McDonald (29:18.983)
Yeah, makes a lot of sense and really quickly, G, before we sign off, anything else from the research, obviously, yeah, kind of good, good that you've done some research going into this and on this, on this, yeah, on these new formats, any other big takeaways from the research.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (29:36.078)
Just back onto the outrights we touched on before about, and we used stab breast, you can still bat them at 500 to 1 to win tournament. It's very much a case of, and for me the outrights are symptomatic of how the tournament has become slightly bloated and elongated in that actually the impact from even four match days.

isn't necessarily registered through to the outright market in any meaningful way. The top teams, even though they may not be in the qualification eight spots at this point, are still strong, strong favourites and that's not likely to change until the final game weeks where they really are.

next on the line and I think that's the worry I have that there's just not enough jeopardy within these games and they are just, I don't want to use the NBA as an example because I think it's unfair but the have so many games right in the NHL.

that some of the games, they lose their focus. in fact, the NBA introduced a mid-season tournament just to try and break up some of the, trying to give the team some impetus to actually, just to perform in a knockout style event. And they have that competition, don't they? That would never happen in the past. And that's just to try and, there's too many games. And I'm not saying that we're in the phase of playing 84 games a season, but for me, they've gone, there are too many games, but it's money.

money talks and unfortunately in my opinion that's where we are.

Anaya McDonald (31:24.165)
It's going to be interesting to see how it develops and I understand the point completely about kind of the comparison to, although it's very different, we may get a regular season NBA feel to some of these games, especially at the end when we get some really quite unique dead rubbers between teams from Europe that just aren't big teams and also the motivation factor important as well.

I get what you're saying there where, you know, if you're a Real Madrid and you need the points and you're playing a team that are less well known who don't need the points, well, it's going to be very one sided, isn't it? But, thank you so much for your time today. Really interesting discussion. And yeah, we ran over time as it was. It was so good. We went over time like the Champions League format. So good stuff. And I appreciate it. yeah, maybe have you back on when the

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (32:00.994)
Yeah.

Anaya McDonald (32:21.169)
the tournament has played out or looking into next year kind of a reflection on how it went and how, yeah, what we learn, I guess, because I think there are going to be lessons to be learned from this Champions League format.

Jeevan Jeyaratnam (32:33.388)
Yeah, love to. Thanks very much, Jack.

Anaya McDonald (32:35.857)
Brilliant, thanks, Jeev.