Watch and Bet: the live picture that runs alongside a bet
A bookmaker shows a live picture beside its markets, and almost every word written about it is about the match rather than about the picture. This desk is about the picture: which events have one, who owns it, what a reader must have on the account to see it, how far behind the event it sits, where it is blacked out, and what it is not allowed to prove.
- samples
- 10 invented
- events in 30 days
- 300
- with a picture
- 96
- picture lag
- 12.0 s
One event on one axis. The price reaches the screen 0.2 seconds after the event and the picture 12.0 seconds after it, so the number beside the picture is 11.8 seconds newer than the picture itself. The band between the first mark and the third is the part of the journey the reader cannot see through, and the reader's own reaction adds another 1.4 seconds to the last mark.
Forty cells, twenty-four cleared and sixteen blacked, and every blacked cell sits in the four events that also clear only one or two territories. The home column clears all eight events, which is the pattern a domestic broadcaster is protected by: the event a reader abroad can watch live is the one deliberately withheld at home.
A watch-and-bet stream is a licensed video feed shown beside a betting market. Only some events have one - on the samples, 96 of 300 in a month - and watching usually asks for something on the account: a funded balance, or a qualifying bet. The picture is seconds behind the event and further behind the price, it is blacked out in territories where it is not licensed, and it never decides a bet: the official result does.
What the samples show
The desk's central figure is one month: three hundred events listed, of which ninety-six carry a live picture and two hundred and four do not, across five territories and five quality tiers. Every figure anywhere on this site is derived from that month and from nine further samples, and the arithmetic is shown beside each one so a reader can re-derive it rather than take it.
Two findings do most of the work. First, the picture is not the event: on the samples it reaches the screen 12.0 seconds after it happened while the price it sits beside refreshes in 0.2 seconds, so the reader is watching a picture that is 11.8 seconds behind the number next to it. Second, the picture is not evidence of a result: it is a licensed broadcast, the official result is a different source, and where the two have disagreed the official result governed every time.
None of the samples describes a real event, broadcaster, bookmaker or account. They are ten invented sets of counts, territories, bitrates and durations, defined on this page, and every other figure on the site is derived from them.
Ten samples
Three hundred events listed, split by whether a picture exists.
- events
- 300
- with a picture
- 96
- without
- 204
What the account must have to watch a streamed event.
- balance only
- 50
- a bet required
- 46
- of streamed
- 96
The chain from the event to the screen, in seconds.
- picture lag
- 12.0 s
- price lag
- 0.2 s
- difference
- 11.8 s
Events against territories, and where the picture is blacked.
- cells
- 40
- cleared
- 24
- blacked
- 16
Five quality tiers and what an hour of each weighs.
- tiers
- 5
- bits
- 0.8-12 Mbps
- an hour
- 0.36-5.40 GB
What the picture costs the operator per viewer.
- per GB
- 0.02
- per hour
- 0.0270
- a match
- 0.0540
What replaces the picture, and how far ahead of it.
- data lag
- 2.5 s
- picture lag
- 12.0 s
- text ahead by
- 9.5 s
What the picture proves about a result, and what it does not.
- disputed
- 100
- picture clear
- 96
- picture governs
- 0
Two further samples are defined on the pages that use them: sample I on the replay window and sample J on the reader's own reaction time.
The month of events
Sample A is the clearest place to start, because whether a picture exists at all decides everything else that can be said of an event.
| Tier of event | Listed | With a picture | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| top-division matches | 60 | 60 | 100.0% |
| second-division matches | 80 | 24 | 30.0% |
| cup and international | 40 | 12 | 30.0% |
| lower and reserve | 120 | 0 | 0.0% |
| one month | 300 | 96 | 32.0% |
The picture against the price
The second figure is the one readers most often assume away: a stream and a market are two different clocks.