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 are delivering that in-play experience on live streams running 5 to 8 seconds behind the actual event.
I have spent years working with operators on the live product side, and that shift changes what operators should expect from their streaming infrastructure. When the majority of an operator’s in-play handle depends on how much usable betting time exists between the live action, the pricing update and the bettor’s response, every second of stream delay has a direct cost.
In the industry, we call it dead time: the seconds where play is live, but the stream has not caught up, markets suspend early, bets get rejected for outdated pricing, and in-play handle goes uncaptured. A bettor watches a goal on Twitter, waits for the stream to catch up, tries to bet, and finds the market suspended. Or they see a price that looks live, place a bet, and have it rejected because the data feed moved first.
Realtime Streaming, Stats Perform’s latest streaming innovation, reduces that latency from several seconds to under half a second.
What changes when stream delay drops below half a second
With Realtime Streaming’s sub-0.5-second glass-to-glass latency, the bettor sees the on-field moment almost as it happens and the odds on screen match what is actually happening in the match, so the price is still live when the bettor tries to take it. Betting windows stay open for longer on every event because the stream is no longer seconds behind the action. Micro-markets that would normally suspend within seconds on a delayed stream stay active long enough to generate turnover. Fewer bets get rejected because the stream, the odds and the bettor are all on the same moment.
That latency improvement only matters commercially if it applies across the full live portfolio, not just tentpole events. Realtime Streaming delivers sub-half-second latency across over 40,000 events a year spanning 14+ sports, from the FIFA World Cup and LaLiga to EFL, ICC cricket, PDC darts, FIBA basketball and FIVB volleyball. The infrastructure supports over a million concurrent viewers at the same latency, so operators get the same delivery on a World Cup final as they do on a Tuesday night league fixture.
Why iGaming operators face the same latency problem
Live dealer casino is one of the fastest-growing verticals in iGaming, and latency costs iGaming operators in the same way: fewer rounds per hour, lower revenue per table, and players who lose trust in the product when the stream does not keep up with the game.
In live blackjack, the player needs to see the card dealt and act before the next hand progresses, and any latency in the stream shortens the decision window or slows the pace of play, which directly reduces the number of hands dealt per hour. In live roulette, lower latency means more spins per hour and more revenue per table.
Viewer sync is also critical in live casino. If two players at the same table see the card or the spin at different times, the game does not feel fair and the operator ends up handling disputes. Every player needs to see the same game state at the same moment, regardless of device or connection. Realtime Streaming handles this by keeping every viewer within 100 milliseconds of each other.
Leading iGaming streaming providers target under 500 milliseconds for decision-based card games, and operators expanding into live casino need to hit that benchmark from day one. Realtime Streaming delivers well within it, and for operators running both sportsbook and iGaming on the same platform, the same infrastructure covers both.
The cost of stream delay to in-play revenue is only going to grow
In-play betting’s share of total handle has been climbing for years and there is no sign of it slowing down. As that share grows, so does the amount of revenue that depends directly on the quality of the live stream. Every percentage point that in-play adds to total handle raises the commercial cost of running a delayed stream, because more of the operator’s revenue depends on betting windows staying open, bets being accepted and bettors staying on the platform.
The operators who reduce that latency first in their market will capture in-play handle that their competitors are still losing to dead time. Once bettors experience sub-second streaming with one operator, a multi-second delay on another platform becomes hard to accept.
