Next week, much of the SBJ Tech team will be in New York City attending our annual Game Changers event, to celebrate and learn from the women making a huge impact on the sports industry today. Included are several women driving innovation in sports tech, such as nVenue CEO Kelly Pracht, who SBJ interviewed recently to talk about the unique challenges and opportunities working with NASCAR.
PUBLISHING NOTICE: SBJ Tech will not publish next week, but it will return to your inbox Wednesday, Oct. 2.
nVenue CEO Kelly Pracht dishes on motorsports betting
In her own words, Kelly Pracht has spent the last three-plus years “evangelizing” fan engagement and in-game betting.
The CEO of predictive analytics firm nVenue has seen her company foster more connections throughout sports, such as its work with Apple around MLB broadcasts and its graduation from NBA Launchpad .
Last year, nVenue added a new challenge when it signed a multiyear deal with NASCAR , testing its tech in a sport with so many variables that change drastically from week to week. With the first year of the deal ending in August, Pracht -- who was just named to SBJ’s 2024 Class of Game Changers -- spoke with SBJ about nVenue’s work with the governing body and the learning process that’s come with the NASCAR experience.
On the technology that powers nVenue’s microbetting markets
“It all begins with how do you make a prediction about what's about to happen? That's the nature of it all. Take any sport -- how do you predict if the Yankees are going to win? How do you predict if [Aaron] Judge is going to hit this home run? And there's a variety of elements that come into how you, as a fan of whatever sport you follow, consider. In football, you'll consider how your team is doing, you'll consider what down it is, the field location, the time on the clock, the score, is your quarterback in, etc.
“So at the core of whether it's a fan engagement -- just thinking about what's about to happen, something you might watch on screen or a broadcaster might talk about -- or what you're going to bet on, it all comes down to those points of what do I know and how do I predict it? And when you start to automate that, that's machine learning. And when you start to forecast what those things are and take data feeds to move faster so you can think and do those predictions faster, that's AI.”
On NASCAR’s uniqueness compared to other sports
“[It] has this unique challenge of every single venue is massively different, and the races themselves are massively different. So the laps, the distance, they vary. There's three stages, usually, except for the Coca-Cola 600 and the types of tracks, weather is huge. ... Then you add in there’s 36-to-40 drivers per race. So NASCAR presents some very, very unique challenges when you’re somebody who prides themselves on technology to predict.”
On NASCAR factors considered by nVenue in their microbetting markets
“The track, the distance, the location, the angles, the uniqueness of the tracks come in. There are some tracks that are more similar to others. There are drivers who may do particularly well on a type of track. We look at driver performance. We look at things even down to old car and new car. ...
“We come up with some pretty good and consistent odds ahead of the race ... but I love when the race starts because that's when things get exciting. We can start to pick out who's having a wildly faster run than they've ever seen before. And in fact, we're picking that up a lot faster than broadcast and a lot faster than other odds providers, sometimes even like 15 laps faster. We're getting shorter odds on the winners faster.”
On the NASCAR data
“What I have been incredibly pleased with is that the NASCAR data is head and shoulders better than a lot of the data that we receive. And it has to do with the telemetry -- the removal of some human elements. We've got sensors in the cars telling us their speed, their location, their position. We're getting that in real time. And it's very rarely wrong. Whereas in football, we'll get something like, ‘Oh, I'm so sorry. I meant the other side of the field.’”
On a significant step for the partnership in Year 1
“Earning the respect of sports fans who love their sport, and the respect of the betting and gaming industry and putting out good pricing -- those are two very big hurdles and they're different for different reasons. ... There was a moment where not only did we cause the sports fans to say, ‘Oh my gosh, you've got something,’ but also the [gambling] industry say, ‘Oh my goodness, you've got something.’
“We mentioned earlier that our [machine learning] is stronger and it picks up things before the rest of the industry is seeing it in a live race. The example is Chris Buescher in the Kansas race back in May. He had pretty long odds before the race, but he moved into the top five pretty quickly, and our prices on him became much shorter and much more accurate before the rest of the industry’s.
“And it took the broadcast about 15 to 20 laps before they started to mention and see that Chris had this abnormally fast time. Only when the broadcast mentioned it did the price drop in the rest of the market. So together with NASCAR and with our team -- we have diehard NASCAR fans our team -- and also our betting experts, we all said, ‘Wow, we beat the industry by 15 laps.’”
Speed reads
- The 2024 SBJ Game Changers honorees include several execs from tech: EA Sports' Andrea Hopelain, FanDuel's Jennifer Matthews, Ticketmaster's Marla Ostroff, nVenue's Kelly Pracht, Prime Video's Betsy Riley and Next3's Carolyn Tisch Blodgett.
- My SBJ colleague Rob Schaefer dives into the tech that helped UFC set commercial records for its first live sports event at the Sphere.
- Tennis Social AI is making its V1 Tennis Simulator available for preorders, with a product it hopes can reach the full spectrum of players, reports SBJ's Joe Lemire.
- The tech-enhanced football helmet designed by AT&T and Gallaudet University to assist coach-to-player communication for deaf and hard-of-hearing athletes received NCAA approval for in-game use for the school's entire 2024 season, notes Schaefer.
- The SEC will use Hawk-Eye Innovations’ video replay system for soccer and volleyball this fall, writes Lemire.
- As part of the debut of SBJ's Facilities newsletter, Bret McCormick reports 50 Mashgin units were introduced at Auburn’s football stadium as part of a grab-and-go market overhaul, and now 60% of the Jordan-Hare Stadium’s lower-level concessions consist of that setup.