Colombian operator BetPlay has teamed up with interactive payment provider TAPPP and satellite television provider DirecTV to launch the first in-broadcast betting experience available directly from a television screen.
The product, which went live on Colombian Division A soccer games on Saturday, enables BetPlay customers who subscribe to DirecTV to open an overlay on their TV screens while watching a live soccer match and place a bet within the same screen.
TAPPP’s patented payment technology facilitates the transaction between the broadcast and BetPlay, within both linear TV services and DirecTV’s streaming platform for the first time.
Reflecting on the launch at SBC Summit Americas in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, this week, TAPPP Chief Executive and Founder Sandy Agarwal said, while the product has only been live for six games, initial data shows that 14.5% of people watching the games clicked, age-verified, and accessed the betting experience. Moreover, 6.5% scrolled through to see what kind of bets were available and 37.5% showed intent to bet by linking their accounts.
Agarwal also said that early data from trials showed that when viewers placed even a modest bet, their engagement with the game rose from an average of 10 minutes to 21 minutes.
The technology has the potential to revolutionize the way that bettors engage with sports and entertainment on TV, enabling a more intuitive and social online betting experience.
BetPlay board member Paola Echeverri said the operator hoped to see the offering expand across sports and entertainment programming. “A year from now, this is going to be a lot bigger, and it’s going to be a lot more entertaining and a lot more fun than we’re seeing right now,” she said.
“That overlay will hopefully have transformed into a new way of consuming sports and a new way of expressing your passion, which is what our brand is all about, betting on your passion. We are completely betting on transforming that passion in our customers and hopefully, with TAPPP and DirecTV, creating something completely new that we can’t envision right now, but that we completely feel coming our way.”
The project has taken almost 18 months to deliver after DirecTV accepted TAPPP’s proof of concept in January 2024. Describing the process as “very complex, business wise and technology wise”, Agarwal said it took a team of 60 full-time engineers nine months to deliver the product ready for launch.
However, with sports betting rolled out, Agarwal is ready to expand TAPPP’s innovative payments technology to multiple use cases. “We want to be ubiquitous,” he said. “We’ve taken practice swings with almost every sport. The platform is, in lot of ways, plug and play.”
TAPPP has received investment via two funding rounds. The first was in 2018, followed by a $10 million Series B funding round co-led by Accomplice and Verance Capital in 2022.
Other backers included Stephen Pagliuca of the Boston Celtics and Peter Tomozawa of the Vegas Golden Knights and Seattle Sounders. As well as Permit Ventures, London-based Oakvale Capital and ADvantage, which counts sports betting entrepreneur Laila Mintas among its venture partners.
“The highest cost and the biggest challenge for sportsbooks is user acquisition. Through my 20 years in the industry, I have seen many deals that failed converting people that love to watch sports into people that actually bet on sports,” Mintas told COMPLETE iGAMING.
“TAPPP‘s solution can really help solve this pain point for the sportsbooks and at the same time help broadcasters to improve their viewership numbers.”
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BetPlay, TAPPP and DirecTV pioneer betting direct from live TV broadcasts
