Stats Perform Product Director Martin Popov talks with SBC News about the cost of stream delay to in-play revenue and what changes when latency drops substantially for sportsbook and iGaming operators.

Live in-play betting is now the largest betting segment in the US sportsbook market by revenue. DraftKings confirmed in early 2025 that in-play wagers crossed 54% of its total handle for the first time. Globally, in-play betting accounted for over 62% of online sports betting in 2025, with European markets leading adoption. In tennis, over 80% of sportsbook turnover comes from in-play markets.

Most operators, however, are delivering that in-play experience on live streams running five to eight seconds behind the actual event.

This latency mattered less when in-play betting represented a smaller part of sportsbook revenue. It matters far more now that most handle depends on how much usable betting time exists between the live action, the pricing update and the bettor’s response.

Every additional second of stream delay shortens that window. Operators compensate by suspending markets earlier, limiting how long prices remain actionable during live play. Across thousands of events, that dead time compounds into lost betting activity.

Inside the industry, we call this delay dead time: the period where play is live, but the stream has not caught up yet.

This cycle gets more expensive as operators push further into micro-markets, cash-out and faster in-play betting.

Delayed streams also widen the gap between bettors watching the live action first and everyone else reacting several seconds later. The longer the delay, the harder it becomes for operators to manage courtsiding exposure, stale pricing and inconsistent bettor experiences during live play.

What changes when stream delay drops below half a second

Realtime Streaming, Stats Perform’s sub-second streaming product, reduces stream delay from several seconds to under half a second, glass-to-glass.

At that speed, the bettor is no longer reacting to action that happened several seconds earlier. The odds on-screen still reflect what is actually happening in the match when they decide to bet.

This is important because in-play revenue ultimately depends on how much usable live inventory exists during a match. Every second removed from the delay creates more time where bettors can watch the action, react and still place a wager before the market closes.

Cash-out calculations also stay closer to the live action and fewer wagers get rejected because the stream, the pricing and the bettor interaction are operating within the same live window.

However, this improvement in latency only matters commercially when it holds consistently at scale.
Sub-second performance during a controlled demo is one thing. Maintaining it during a World Cup final, a Wimbledon final or a peak NFL slate, across hundreds of thousands of concurrent viewers, is where streaming infrastructure usually becomes much harder.

Why iGaming operators face the same latency problem

Live dealer casino is now one of the fastest-growing parts of the wider iGaming market, but latency affects those products in much the same way: fewer rounds per hour, slower gameplay and lower revenue efficiency per table.

In live blackjack, the player needs enough time to see the card dealt and act before the next hand progresses. If the stream lags several seconds behind live play, operators either shorten the effective decision window or slow the pace of the game itself. Both outcomes affect revenue.

In roulette, lower latency means more spins per hour without creating timing inconsistencies between players watching the same table.

Low latency alone is not enough if viewers are still receiving the stream at materially different times. In live casino, synchronisation matters almost as much as raw speed because players are reacting to the same cards, spins and outcomes simultaneously.

If players inside the same game experience cards, spins or outcomes at materially different times, the issue quickly becomes more than user experience. It turns into an operational and trust problem that can lead to disputes, chargebacks and player churn.

Realtime Streaming handles this through SyncWatch, Stats Perform’s patented synchronisation technology that keeps viewers within 100 milliseconds of one another regardless of device or connection quality.

In live casino, operators are already pushing toward sub-500 millisecond latency for blackjack and roulette because slower streams start affecting gameplay.

Operators running both sportsbook and live casino streams are increasingly solving the same problem twice. Both products now depend on low latency, viewer synchronisation and reliable performance at a very large scale.

The cost of stream delay to in-play revenue is only going to grow

In-play betting’s share of total handle has been growing for years, and there is no sign of it slowing down. As more revenue shifts in-play, more of the operator’s business depends on the quality of the live stream.

Operators who reduce latency first will capture betting activity their competitors are still losing during live play.

And once bettors become used to streams that are effectively live, multi-second delays become far more noticeable. What was previously accepted as part of the experience starts feeling broken.

If you want to explore how Realtime Streaming can help you capture a greater share of in-play handle, get in touch here.