Vegas is finally catching up the technology online gambling and the UK has been using for years. The newest and hottest phenomena sweeping through Las Vegas is Cantor-Fitzgerald’s technology that allows bettors to wager on games on a play-by-play basis, in other words, they finally have what has been known in the online gaming industry as live betting.
At least Vegas is finally catching on. Online Sportsbooks like Bodog have been offering live betting to their clients for over five years. And in the UK, you don’t have look far at all to find a place to in-game wagers. BUt I suppose it’s better late than never for Vegas.
Already the idea of live sports betting is sweeping through Sin City. Cantor-Fitzgerald now has deals with several other casinos including the new Cosmopolitan, the Hard Rock, Tropicana, The Venetian and The Palazzo. The technology used involves a hand-held tablet, similar to an iPad, which displays the plays and allows users to choose their wager with a few taps on the screen.
This new device pretty much gives the users the same experience of betting online. It’s a computer, with a account in which, once you win or lose, your balance is updated immediately.
Vegas may see this new technology attract another type of sportsbetting fan, the one who doesn’t like to hang out in the Vegas Sportsbook, the one who would rather just take their tablet and find a nice place to bet. It’s the same person who would have been content to have just stayed home and wagered on the game live through online gaming.
What Cantor-Fitzgerald have done is bring Wall Street trading technology to Las Vegas. Both are gambles, just with different data to compute, so the transition was as easy as programming a computer to analyze thousands of sports statistics.
It’s an image thing as well. There’s something a little classier, or perhaps a little more sophisticated about making bets with such a high tech piece of equipment. You might want to call this the official welcoming to the world of computers for Las Vegas Sportsbooks.
It should almost go without saying, this is long overdue.
