Go on, say it. One thousand and one. Again. One thousand and one. One more time. One thousand and one.
That is one second. No matter how you say it, shake or otherwise define it, it is one second. For some it will remind them of their sex lives and you have my undying sympathies for that. Likely it is the same when joined by a partner. One thousand and one. For others, it is a prize of some sort, one thousand and one of this or that. Is it a prize to endorse an accomplishment of some sort? Perhaps, but not this time around. It could be what I pay myself daily, weekly, monthly, annually? Not what would satisfy my wife by any stretch of the imagination. Maybe, just maybe, how many seconds it is to get to the moon once they are up there. Aha, the population of Ghana.
Actually, it is what began some years ago as the length of time it takes to get a score or other highlight from a football game, sent by what has become known as scouts in the stands. That, they say, is how fast, on a good day, soccer updates are recorded, sent and up on the site(s) of choice. One second. I won’t debate it but I will question it.
It is, again, the speed by which they, and we know who “they” are, say they obtain soccer (football) score updates in Europe. For still others, like myself, there is the reality of what cannot be achieved in North America, particularly the U.S., despite the pummeling requests concerning same.
Nary a conference goes by that I am not confronted by more than one person, numerous companies, that want results of the NBA, NHL, NFL, and MLB in one second. How they love to ask for that…”We need it in one second. It is done here for football, it can be done there.” No, my European friends, au contraire, it cannot be done here, transmitted to you to be on your site, on those of clients, in one thousand and one! Consider this for openers, we cannot, as was suggested to us by one prospect, guess at whether it was a 2 or 3 point basket, if there is a touchdown or a foot on the line, whether the puck hit the post or made it into the net, whose foot was on first base first…runner or fielder.
Every U.S. professional sport has instant replay. We cannot, we will not, guess. Every play is much more involved than “Goal!” when it comes to scoring. Professional leagues will escort your scouts from the stadium and they will find them…you can count on that. We are credentialed for every press box in every sport and our reporter/stringer, cannot stay on the phone on end. Those that created the scout system claimed they would come to the Colonies and situate themselves in the stands with their scouts. Piece of cake!
Wrong. The ultimate product never made it to the microwave. One game in the NBA on the west coast as a trial and the return flights home had to be moved up. Another applicant out of London came along and boasted, for all to hear, that they would put on their best invader outfits and go where the very company they had purchased had gone, and failed…not only professional sports but collegiate as well… hundreds of games on a Saturday. Oh, did the say just a select few while running ads here for students to watch games on TV in the dorm room and then transmit or actually do so as scouts in the stands? Not!
Let me be clear…scores alone can be done in as little as 3 seconds or better but, inevitably, the person with whom we are speaking wants more details and every request adds time.
When told, as I have done at a few recent conferences, that they will never come to the U.S. and put their scouts in in any seats at sporting events here, armed with PDAs and do what they have done on their side of the pond, I am advised, “Never is not going to take place” and “Never say never.” I have said it. And, I have watched, first hand, bookmakers as far away as Armenia pay to watch national U.S. television, which they can get by satellite, and think they have discovered the wheel. They post the site of Bet365 and scoring tables posted are wrong, late, suffering numerous failures.
What bookmaker that has any sense at all will pay upwards of £400 pounds per game for the “official feed/results” of those games, the ones in the NBA? Why pay for select games under any conditions when your client base has games they specifically like…and you do not have them?
Do this in a few seconds and the recipient wants one more item, then another, still another…and you have transposed instant scores to play by play.
One thousand and one. That fast. Really! And, the response will be the expected…”We get the scores, post and send to our clients for their site and punters to see in one second.” Whatever floats your boat or flies your kite. But, do you really think that some Russian millionaire punters are spending waking hours trying to figure out how to best you by a millisecond and break the bank? Really?
We will furnish score updates to hundreds and hundreds of sites and clients for uses other than on their site, bookmakers, casinos, media, mobile apps, fantasy game efforts, and still more. It is fast, incredibly so, detailed, replete with play by play, statistical information ongoing, weather and injury reports, running box scores, previews, selections, live odds throughout the day, historical trends and a great deal more, embraced by all who have it.
“One thousand and one.” Nope. Maybe one thousand three, a four or five due to the nature and depth of the play, but accurate and detailed to a fault. Go on, take a breath. That just took about one second, maybe more. Point made? Hope so.
