The Fully Autonomous Sportsbook

Artificial intelligence is making a driving transformation across a number of industries from self-driving cars to internet search engines.

Now it’s changing sports gaming. AI is being used in a number of different ways. One major way it’s changing sports gaming is by using artificial intelligence to set lines and odds in real-time, especially for in-play gaming. InPlay Innovation uses AI to do this.

The other less-discussed way AI is changing sports gaming is by managing risk.

Traders in Smoke-Filled Rooms

The way most sportsbooks and daily fantasy operators still manage risk is with a team of people—also known as traders—watching their markets. These traders oversee all the games and markets that a company is offering. If they see something off or they see their risk rising too much, they move their lines or odds. This can expose operators to massive risk. 

InPlay Innovation has taken a different approach. We’re managing all of our markets using machine learning and artificial intelligence. We’re using technology assisted by humans rather than the other way around.

Enter Artificial Intelligence

To manage risk better, we’ve built a technology product we call AI Trader. This product manages risk across all our markets and games. It handles individual markets and games to ensure that there is not too much risk on a particular market or game, and it adjusts those lines and odds automatically.

We’re managing all of our markets using machine learning and artificial intelligence. We’re using technology assisted by humans rather than the other way around.

For example, if the interest on the over on a particular market jumps above expectations, AI Trader will automatically decrease the odds on the over or increase the line. This ability to automatically react to events in real-time is critical in today’s environment. There are a whole host of events that can happen that cannot be predicted. That’s where AI Trader comes in.  For example, injuries or injury news can have an immediate impact on the action on a game. With AI Trader, we don’t have to just depend on identifying injuries or news about a player. AI Trader can quickly respond to markets as they move. 

In addition, today’s markets move extremely fast, and AI Trader can respond across games and markets faster than even a large team of traders can. 

Meanwhile, for overall risk across the company, AI Trader also manages risk across sports and markets—taking a holistic view of all the risk that our company is holding. Then it can adjust accordingly to keep our risk at levels that are appropriate. While some other companies may not have a clear handle on all the risk that they are holding, AI Trader allows us to automatically manage that risk.

Like autonomous vehicle technology, which has improved tremendously in recent years, automated trading has benefited from major technology advances and is developing towards full autonomy in which no human intervention is required. Some autonomous vehicles are already testing in full autonomous mode on U.S. streets. Meanwhile, autonomous trading has already reached the equivalent of Level 4, which means it can operate on its own—and is not far from fully on its own.  

We’re still in the very early innings of this move to automation of sports gaming using vast amounts of data. But the data will only get better and the algorithms will only get better.

Why AI?

The growth of markets and the speed that information is distributed today means technology can do the job better than humans. It can do it better, faster and generally cheaper. 

This is especially the case for micro-markets. Because micro-markets on multiple players change every second, there are approximately 6 million unique markets in the NBA every day alone. That makes it all but impossible to manage markets even with an army of traders. And even then it may not be possible.

More Data, More Smart

This ability to ingest data and immediately incorporate it into algorithms is only going to improve as technology gets better. Meanwhile, there are more and more forms of data, such as computer vision data, becoming available and being accessed by sports companies every day.

We’re still in the very early innings of this move to automation of sports gaming using vast amounts of data. But the data will only get better and the algorithms will only get better.

Full stack

InPlay Innovation is building a full-stack technology company. That’s where AI Trader fits in. AI Trader manages risk across all markets. Meanwhile, while other companies grab lines and odds from others, we also use AI to create our own lines and odds.  

Rather than depending on other companies for each part of your business, we believe in building a full stack of technology for every core aspect of our business. 

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