How do online sportsbooks operate their live betting services?

[BigDofBA]

Is someone watching the game as it's going on and taking lines off the board when needed?

Example: The live odds on Soccer totals change constantly. When I'm watching a game on TV, the line is always taken down like 5 seconds before a team scores.

Obviously there is a bit of a delay or lag on the live broadcast. How do the books get the info. that the goal is scored before the live broadcast.

I've always wondered how the books are able to do this.

[BigDaddy]

Magic

[rangerz2478]

Is someone watching the game as it's going on and taking lines off the board when needed?

Example: The live odds on Soccer totals change constantly. When I'm watching a game on TV, the line is always taken down like 5 seconds before a team scores.

Obviously there is a bit of a delay or lag on the live broadcast. How do the books get the info. that the goal is scored before the live broadcast.

I've always wondered how the books are able to do this.

They clearly have the best feeds possible that's the same as being at the game, otherwise they wouldn't be able to do this. ESPN games are the absolute worst. They are at least 10-15 seconds behind in every sport.

[theballsflop]

They have smurfs at EVERY game with an ipad

[RonPaul2008]

They have smurfs at EVERY game with an ipad

Probably not every game, but I suspect at big games some do have a person at the games.

[kkkkk]

First of all every tv signal has delay - depending on country where the game is played and where people watch. If its same then minimum for signal to reach is 3 secs if there are different -> signal is retransfered few times so it might take 8-12 secs. And if the broadcaster has do it on purpose becose of many reasons - paying less money or whatever, it might take longer. On other hand there are liveservices that use ipads and people who give informaton from every stadion - so info is there in around 2 secs and even more, those guys report dangerous situations that might block the livebetting many secs before scoring a goal.

[Maniac]

Probably not every game, but I suspect at big games some do have a person at the games.

There are some scouting companies who will employ people to go to and sit at a match with a PDA and update on the situation almost play by play ( when there are corners, free kicks, even just general attacking play they will have a button to update for).

The company then recieves all this information in as close to real time as you can get, and then they will charge sportsbooks either a fee per game, or an overall subscription, for access to the data feed for the game which the traders will use to trade the game.

It doesn't matter how low quality the match is, it doesn't cost much to have a guy sat there for a couple of hours as they make much more from the sportsbooks who subscribe to the feed. So next time you see a book offering live betting on some random low level garbage game from some european country you have never even heard of this is how they do it

[patswin]

most books copy pinnacle or 5 dimes,they might adjust their lines according to their action but most just copy

[maryhinge]

Almost certainly just copying Betfair lines and adding juice

[iceman9870]

maniac is absolutely correct. best gig i ever had