As New York State readies to welcome sports gambling this weekend, I thought about all those parking lots just across the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee that will now have less traffic from people wandering across the bridge to place geotargeted bets on their mobile devices now. It will certainly be easier to get a Starbucks or visit H Mart on NFL Sunday mornings for the loyal residents, not to mention for the cyclists who have had to maneuver around people almost in the middle of the Bridge on the Pedestrian walkways who have found the exact spot where they got the OK on their FanDuel or DraftKings app to put their money down. Life in NY for the casual gambler is getting easier.
But how can it get even easier in the coming months I wondered as I was sitting in my living room the other night, next to our TV and not far from our little white audio tower…so I asked…
“Alexa, what’s the betting line on the New York Jets at Buffalo Bills on Sunday?” Sure enough, the voice prompt did a quick search and gave me the over/under and the line, all courtesy of Caesar’s Sportsbook, but that’s where it ended…for now.
Probably not for long. It is pretty self evident that if we can use a voice system to order pizza, pay bills, get the weather, pull game scores, drag up recipes and almost any other piece of info, somewhere soon those interested should be able to sit at their couch or desk and not even need to get a mobile device….they should be able to just ask Alexa…or Siri…or any other audio enabled device to place their bets at a seconds notice, quick and easy.
Even more, just as Alexa asked me at the end of my Jets-Bills question, the prompt will probably be able to supply me with other betting options…other parameters like data, weather, injury reports…that it has complied according to my history…that can make the experience even better…or bettor…that having to swipe or dig for data online.
While not gambling related yet, I remembered a story from this summer written by Jacob Feldman in Sportico about how Alexa, the NHL and Pramana teamed up to provide a seamless audio-driven fan experience. The company, Pramana Labs, sees the value in data combined with spoken commands that makes the access to a deep library of information for a specific audience easier to access, and in a world where information, content and user experience needs to be second to none, partnering to bring the information to consumers via an audio device they are used to speaking into, makes great sense.
So is gambling next for any audio device?
Maybe, but we got to thinking about why Alexa as the first mover. Let’s start with rights both to data and to broadcast. Does Siri’s programmer, Apple, own any rights to the NFL for example? No, but Amazon does, and who programs Alexa? Hmmm… Then lets go the other way, do any other rights holders have direct ties to a spoken data device yet? CBS? Fox? NBC? Even ESPN? Nope. They certainly can partner with one, but they are not a direct rights holder. It’s why when we have looked to streaming as the future for NFL games, Twitch has become a first mover with the NFL. They have the ability to stream the live broadcast and their official data on individual feeds. Yes we love ESPN and the Manningcast on Monday nights, but it still needs a broadcast home for now. Amazon as a first mover for broadcast rights, at least for the NFL, puts Alexa ahead of the competition.
Now to be clear there have been pickem games done for several years tied to Alexa. FanDuel had a Pick six game launched in 2018, but it was for specific scores without details from Alexa or a device, not minute by minute live betting that could be done, with enhancements and suggestions with data made by the device. This is a bigger step forward
So where else is the value here? Well how about those sportsbooks? Alexa found me information from Caesar’s Sportsbook about the line. What if in the future, BetMGM or DraftKings or FanDuel or even the NFL does a deal with Amazon/Alexa so that THEIR customers get the exclusive ability to go right to a real time spoken word betting platform, how valuable is that for both sides. And for Amazon/Alexa, think about the revenue stream that can come in from there as well all not even with a swipe, but with a spoken word.
Now for sure there are regulatory hurdles to climb, and the voice identification system still needs to be able to verify who is doing the speaking if a transaction has occurred. However they figured it out to stop people from ordering prank pizzas for delivery, so why not for betting? The device already has your information in the cloud and is tracking tendencies, so why can it be used as part of an enhanced sports gambling experience. It won’t be tomorrow, it may not even be next NFL season. Maybe it does get tested with another property on a limited basis like the NHL, but the days of speaking to bet in your living room are probably not far away.
