John Whelan is Off Portal and Off Net!

Wireless Location Data from Horse racing

I have been watching with interest developments at SportingLOT over the last year or so. Their innovative GUI for exchange based sports trading deploying their Liberated Object Technology added real value to the basic interface as available from sports exchanges such as Betdaq and of course Betfair.

However it is only in the last few weeks that they have embraced wireless technology and the results are major leap forward. SportingLOT are now taking real time location based data from certain racetracks in the UK and displaying the data on screen. This itself is not a new concept and they are utilising data from Turftrax. The system is called IRIS: In-running Racing Information Service.

Sports trading will never be the same again!

The system uses patented technology whereby sensors on the racetrack relay 2D location information from a device located on the saddle of the horse. This all sounded very familiar to me as I remember around 2001 meeting a UK company called Racetrace out of Cambridge in the UK who had a very similar system. It seems Racetrace was liquidated in 2004. However further investigation seems to indicate that Turftrax are indeed deploying the same technology and may be licensing it from Racetrace original owners Generics Group.

The real added value here is combining the location data with SportingLOT's unique superfast realtime sports trading system. As the figure below shows this enables the user to go long or short on the horse by just clicking the actual icon in the race animation.

posted by alatto @ 9:37 AM