The start of something special
As US basketball fans, fresh off another memorable March Madness, look ahead with excitement to the start of the NBA playoffs this week, those planning to make a Same Game Parlay may be interested to know the inside story of how teams across Flutter created their favourite bet type.
It goes all the way back to June 2014, when ‘Coxy85’ – a frequent contributor to a popular Australian betting forum – posed a question to the group. “Can someone explain why you can’t place a multi on the same event?” he asked, frustrated at an inability to select, combine and bet on several outcomes playing out within a single match. “Good question,” replied another member. “If you send an email to Sportsbet, they may take it on board.”
A message soon made its way to John Maguire, Head of Trading Solutions for one of countries biggest bookmakers, who was used to hearing what had become a common request from customers. At the time, Sportsbet was Paddy Power’s emerging brand in Australia and John – an Irishman now with FanDuel – had just moved to join its risk and trading team in Melbourne, where he was focused on adding crucial talent in data analytics and quantitative modelling to take it to the next level.
“We were a single team allowed a lot of autonomy, but were definitely seen as the little brother,” explains John. A chance office encounter between John and a senior leader who had travelled from Dublin changed all that. “We had dependencies on other teams to deliver the product, but following a sliding door moment, we realised we could use an approach that the Paddy Power’s quant team developed and were using for another sport.”
The Paddy Power Quants team were industry leaders in sports model simulations and had developed a model which enabled pricing simulations to be run within the model rather than simple event probabilities. While both teams had found a solution for ‘Same Game’ challenging, this cross-brand collaboration – an early example of the Flutter Edge – allowed John’s team to “join the dots to solve a problem that had been staring us in the face for years.”
"We were just solving an obvious customer problem"
Sportsbet went on to become the first operator to launch ‘Same Game Multis’ for the 2016 AFL Grand Final with Paddy Power and Betfair delivering the product on soccer in time for the 2018 World Cup. Around this time, Sky Bet – which was not yet part of Flutter – was blazing its own trail with its Request A Bet product, which offered pre-packaged bets with multiple selections from one event based on customer suggestions through social media.
While the innovation gave Sportsbet an almost two-year head start on rivals, Flutter’s expertise in risk management, combined with its ability to share accurate prices across its global network of traders, continue to give it a competitive advantage today. But as John humbly admits looking back, “as much as I’d love to say we knew we were going to change sports betting, the truth is we were just solving an obvious customer problem.”
John Maguire, Head of Trading Solutions, FanDuel
‘Same Game’ has indeed changed sports betting. It is a product that has been embraced by the wider industry and is now enjoyed by millions of sports bettors, whether they’re placing ‘Multis’ on AFL in Australia; ‘Parlays’ on NBA or NFL in the US; or ‘Bet Builders’ on football in the UK. Flutter’s own data shows their incredible growth in popularity, with over 262m ‘Same Game’ bets made globally in the last quarter of 2023 across Flutter’s key brands – almost 75% more than in the same period in 2022. This is further evidenced by a US consumer survey by UBS last year, which revealed that 90% of respondents had placed a ‘Same Game Parlay’ bet.
The industry is capitalising on this growth. Operators have been steadily rolling out new sports, with new markets, as well as enhancements such as ‘Same Game’ trackers and the addition of functionalities like ‘Cash Out’. ‘Same Games’ have also split into two segments to appeal to a broader customer base – shrewd bettors can build their own based on where they see value, while casual punters can choose from an array of pre-built offers inspired by Sky Bet’s Request A Bet. Both tend to be for lower stakes, naturally promoting responsible gambling through the placement of smaller bets with the possibility of bigger wins.
While it has helped to deliver a fun and safe experience for customers, ‘Same Game’ has also been a great commercial success for the industry. With more ‘Same Games’ being placed by customers, with increasingly more legs, they deliver a much higher expected margin than a single bet. According to US research by Deutsche Bank, ‘Same Game Parlay’ stakes as a percentage of total staking increased from 19.2% in 2019 to 24.3% in 2023, with margins from the products increasing from 13.1% to 18.5% during the same period, as customers increasingly added more legs.
Michael O’Donoghue, Head of Global Trading Product
Global innovation
Other industries are benefitting from this changing trend too, none so more than sports broadcasting. As ‘Same Game’ bets are keenly followed by punters, research show an increase in engagement across multiple avenues. For example, according to a Kagan Sports Survey, sports bettors were nearly twice as likely to watch live sports, and almost three times as likely to pay for an online sports service. Similar data from the American Gaming Association found that states with legalised sports betting saw a material increase in viewership of the Superbowl compared to those without sports betting.
With major American sports like basketball centred around star personalities and statistical performance, it is perhaps no surprise that the most significant evolutions of ‘Same Game’ have come out of the US. Led by FanDuel, these include the introduction of ‘Same Game Parlay +’ and Live Same Game Parlays – the former allows bettors to combine ‘Same Game Parlays’ for multiple games and across different sports, while the latter allows for a parlay during a live game. It has also developed an in-app ‘Parlay Hub’ – a one-stop shop for the most popular bets placed by customers, surfacing hundreds of different offerings across various bet types and sports.
However, there are no plans to stop innovating in the space according to Michael O’Donoghue, Flutter’s Head of Global Trading Product. “We want to continually lower the barrier for our brands to innovate in the sports that matter most to their customers, and to share those innovations globally”, says Michael, whose team can access every Flutter bet worldwide to evaluate trends and new opportunities. All this makes one thing clear – while ‘Same Game’ has changed the game, the industry’s innovative spirit will ensure the game never stays the same.
