Now that Euro 2024 has drawn to a close, how does Sportradar reflect on the tournament as a whole?
Overall, the tournament was good for us. We saw a very low-scoring tournament, particularly from some of the most favoured teams. I don’t even think France managed to average a whole goal out of the games. I think they averaged around 0.67 goals a game. The same thing with Cristiano Ronaldo not scoring many goals in open play. In fact, from a betting perspective, they probably were the two of the heaviest-backed teams and individual top goal scorers in the competition. I think, in one of the games, Ronaldo had a goal expectation of 3.6 with the number of chances that were created, he wasn’t able to convert any and then missed a penalty – which didn’t help. I think that was one of the main things we noticed; England also averaged around 2.22 goals for the competition, where we were expecting about 2.5 goals.
There was an underperformance in goals. We also saw a lot more draws than we would normally expect in the competition
Those were the talking points for Sportradar this time around – a lack of goals and the increase in number of draws, particularly low-scoring draws. All in all, I think there were about 19 draws in the whole competition. Low-scoring draws were about 13. I don’t think people expected as many low-scoring draws so there were some heavy returns there.
Belgium’s 1-0 defeat to Slovakia was said to be a lucrative game for operators – can you give us an insight as to why? Were there any other standout moments from your side?
I think it’s fair to say that was the biggest return. It was probably the biggest shock of the tournament in terms of results, too. However, it wasn’t the only one. England vs Slovenia – as you would expect, we saw a lot of interest in England winning that game. There was also an expectation of more than 2.5 goals in the game, and it just didn’t transpire.
What low-scoring draws mean in the knockout stages, of course, is games going the distance through extra time and beyond; what did that mean for the bookies and the players?
From a punter’s perspective, they got more football to watch. For us, it didn’t seem to affect the cost of trading. In other words, it wasn’t a case of additional time, additional money. As we know, we went to penalties a couple of times, too. However, it was often another 30 minutes of no scoring or draws at the end of the game, which goes back to what we were saying before. Still, that does give us another opportunity, another dynamic.
I wouldn’t like it to run out like the Copa America where there isn’t extra time and it’s straight to penalties.
A lot of pundits tipped England as favourites, despite Spain and Germany playing well right the way through – who did Sportradar players back the most overall and why do you think it was?
Players backing England probably led to some of the worst results from a sportsbook perspective. Had they won, we would have probably lost even more. Spain grew as the tournament went on, and we saw more and more money coming in for Spain. It was a little bit ironic that we didn’t actually see that much interest in Germany. They weren’t heavily backed considering they were a home team in a tournament that they certainly had a decent chance of winning.
There just wasn’t much interest of any sort for some reason. There was quite a bit of money for France. In fact, France from a match-by-match perspective was probably the most backed team in the competition. They probably had the highest expectation to win their games, which wasn’t necessarily the case. But the big surprise was the fact that Germany just didn’t seem to create that much interest.
Were there any markets that saw a strong performance with regard to traffic this tournament?
For the most part, it’s always the core stuff. People always bet on who wins the game and the score, of course. We did see a lot of interest in the top goal scorer for the tournament and for the games. As I said before about Ronaldo, kylian Mbappe and even Harry Kane finished with only a handful of goals for the tournament. Then we had six players tied for the Golden Boot, which is an interesting one for the bookmakers. I think there are a number of different settlement decisions being made there.
Some are settling on a six-way dead heat. So, they pay out on all six. Others I know are using assists as a way to find out the winner – which could make Olmo the winner because I think he scored three and assisted two or three goals. We did see quite a bit of interest in the young player of the tournament, too. Lamine Yamal was pretty heavily backed for us from the start.
We managed to generate a very strong return but losing a few matches back to the customer is absolutely fine
Looking forward, how will this tournament inform Sportradar’s approach to knockout competitions such as the Champions League next season – as well as future international tournaments?
We do Vaix and our own hyper-personalisation, which is something we’re going to take a lot from this competition. I think one of the big things we felt this time around was that there was a real interest and a push for a lot more price boosting or odds boosting. It did drive in more revenue this summer as we noticed that where there was a boost attached, people really took advantage of that.
The final was tightly contested; however many people (correctly) backed Spain for the win – what were the key takeaways from the game from Sportradar’s perspective?
Ironically, from an MTS perspective and looking at all of the risk, an England win was what we wanted. That result would have been great for us. A 1-1 or even 2-1 to England would have actually earned us a very good return. However, we would have lost money on the outrights (players backing the overall winner of the tournament). Despite this, as an individual event, an England win would have been a great result. A Spain win and a combined score of over 2.5 goals? Bookmaker’s nightmare.
That’s exactly what happened. It went with the punter. Having said that – and harping back to the beginning, the tournament started off quite rough for us for the first two or three games. Then, we saw all these draws coming in, and especially in the last three games, giving money back to the customer because the results went their way wasn’t the worst thing. Realistically, on balance, it meant that we ended up with a very healthy competition.
