While the NBA Finals haven’t produced stellar TV ratings as they head back to Oklahoma City for Game 5 on Monday, the extended series is providing ample opportunities for bettors to sample more than a thousand in-game wagers newly available this season.
This season, sports data and analytics firm Sportradar has tripled the betting options for fans. “We launched now 1,800 new markets, player markets and micro markets,” Sportradar founder and CEO Carsten Koerl said on a call with analysts last month. “For us, the NBA is doing very well, you see it in our numbers.”
Last year, there were about 600 ways to bet on an NBA game, according to information disclosed in earlier Sportradar calls with Wall Street. The explosion of betting options signals the next stage of growth for U.S. sports betting, shifting from wagers placed before a game to betting during a game.
For Sportradar—which provides its data and micro market options to its sportsbook clients, who in turn offer them to sports bettors—it’s an effort that took off a little over a year ago. The company developed and rolled out in-game micro markets this past season for the NBA, using its exclusive betting data rights for the league.
Yet while fans can gamble on everything from whether the Thunder’s Dillon Jones will score at least two points off the bench or how many fouls the Pacers’ Pascal Siakam will draw in the third quarter, the bulk of wagers are coming on traditional bets: the winner of the game, the margin of victory and total points scored.
For Game 3 of the Finals, the latest for which betting volume data was available, nearly 28% of in-game bets were on whether the Thunder or Pacers would win. Just over one in seven bets were on the handicap, the second-most popular bet, while 9% of wagers were on the total score. That concentration of bets, with more than 50% of wagers on those three areas, reflects how bettors also allotted their gambling during the regular season.
This past season, nearly a quarter of fans who bet during the game wagered on who would win, with the average bet nearly $26; 15% of in-game bets were on the handicap, also at nearly a $26 per bet average, and 12% on the total score, with an average bet close to $36.
While the big three bets aren’t shocking, Sportradar’s in-game statistics show some interesting wrinkles. A notable segment of fans like to bet on the total points scored in each quarter, with the first and third quarters drawing more than the second and fourth. More than 1.8 million bets worth about $81 million were placed during the 2024-25 season on the third quarter total points, the biggest quarter bet by bets placed. Interestingly, more people bet on the first half’s total points—about 2.3 million tickets were written—but the average amount bet was about half that of first- and third-quarter point bets.
The first and third quarter bets have been supercharged during the Finals. In Game 3, Sportradar said the first quarter handicap was one of its biggest markets, with an average wager of $310. The biggest player-specific market was on whether the Thunder’s Jalen Williams would score 25 points—bettors gambled an average $289 on the possibility. Williams netted 26.
What does all that mean? Hard to say, other than it’s good business for Sportradar, which saw 63 million bets in the regular season placed over the 1,800 betting markets available during the typical game. Because the company has relatively fixed costs on the rights to official data and the cost to develop its technology, bets placed during a game largely flow to profits.
“Every percentage point of growth that we see in-gaming here in the U.S. is another $1.6 million, $1.7 million for us as a company. It really flies right to the bottom line,” Craig Felenstein, Sportradar’s chief financial officer, said during a December investment conference.
“Sportradar should continue to benefit from burgeoning interest in in-game betting (Sportradar’s core offering), which we view as the next leg of growth in the U.S.,” David Katz, a Jefferies equity analyst, said in a May research note. Katz, who has a “Buy” rating on the stock, expects in-game volumes to help rally Sportradar shares to $27, about 10% higher than where they are now. If shares reach that price, it will be the first time since its 2021 IPO that Sportradar has traded at that mark.
In-game betting opportunities aren’t being limited to basketball. Earlier this year Sportradar introduced 1,500 new betting opportunities for every ATP Tour tennis match, and this spring it began rolling out in-game betting markets for MLB, for which it is the official data provider.
Overall, about a third, maybe slightly more, of U.S. sports betting is in-game. Sportradar expects that to grow to at least half soon and, eventually, closer to two-thirds of all sports wagers—the level of in-game betting elsewhere in the world, according to the company.