What does the future hold for football betting?

This post is purely me thinking out loud about what the future might hold for football betting, I want to cover three main thoughts I have had. I would really love to know what you think so please leave a comment below.

Will Mobile Take Over?

Tech people have been saying for years that mobile is going to take over, I think for football betting this will almost certainly be the case.

Lets look at The Footy Tipsters relative stats between Mobile + Tablet Vs Desktop + Tablet* over the last few years, you might need to click on the picture to see it in all its glory. What this shows is that 2 years ago there was a big gap between the amount of people coming in on desktop (which was winning) compared to now where mobile is creeping forward.

* I couldn’t find a purely Desktop/Laptop breakdown in Google Analytics I could use.

I don’t think the gap is anywhere near large enough yet for me to say that mobile has “taken over” but I can see that a trend is already starting that mobile is coming out on top.

The proliferation of mobile apps aimed at football bettors is further proof that the industry is taking mobile seriously.

Recently Google announced it project Loon. This project has the aim of delivering the internet to everyone via internet enabled hot air balloons! Sounds crazy but what this will mean is people in countries who never had access to football betting will soon have this access via, not their computer but their much more affordable and useful mobile device. Here is an article from the Guardian last year explaining how internet use on mobile phones in Africa is predicted to increase 20-fold.

So yes, in short I think Mobile will take over.

Will offline bookies still exist?

Will offline bookies exist in the future? Honestly I don’t think so. It costs a lot of money to keep the lights (and TVs) on in physical locations and their staff could easily be trained up on how to support people making bets online.

More and more people are placing bets online from inside the pub instead of nipping out to place one in person. From my albeit anecdotal evidence, the average age of the people inside these betting shops seems to only be increasing, there is very little “young blood” going into them.

I will save my thoughts on if this is a good thing or not for another day. Suffice to say I think that if they don’t die out, they will certainly shrink in number. If you agree you might want to read my post on picking the right online bookmakers.

Will better odds calculation lead to less money to be had?

This is one I am not 100% sure about but I want to throw it out there. Will prediction software used by betting websites start getting better at predicting results to the point that there will be less money to be had by “value bets”.

Right now there are some matches that with a bit of knowledge and careful betting it is possible to beat the bookies, this must be something the betting companies are working on cutting down of. It is costing them money after all!

I think if this is the case then the real value will shift to in play betting (which we offer as part of our personal betting service), where snap decisions are going to be harder for their algorithms to get right but were tipsters with years of experience might be able to guide you in the right direction.

(Bonus Thought) Will The Footy Tipster take over the world?

YES. Of course we will!!