Bet Builder has moved from product innovation to sportsbook infrastructure.
Customers no longer view the ability to combine related selections from the same event as an unusual feature. Across many leading products, it has become part of the expected experience.
The scale of adoption is significant.
Across Kambi’s network, almost half of all pre-match bets for Super Bowl LIX were placed through Bet Builder. Eighty-eight per cent of those pre-match Bet Builder bets contained at least one player prop. (Kambi)
Bet Builder represented 16% of pre-match turnover during the 2022 World Cup and 25% during Euro 2024 on the Kambi network. (Kambi)
The feature has won.
That creates a new strategic problem.
When almost every major sportsbook offers a version of Bet Builder, the presence of the functionality no longer provides meaningful differentiation.
The next competition will be about the quality of the entire Bet Builder experience.
The first phase was technical possibility
The original product challenge was correlation.
A sportsbook needed to understand that selections within the same event were not independent.
A team winning, its striker scoring and the match containing more than two goals are connected outcomes. The operator could not simply multiply three standalone prices and offer the result.
Pricing these relationships consistently required better models, data and risk management.
Once that problem became manageable at scale, operators expanded the number of combinable markets and sports.
The industry could then answer the first question:
Can the customer build this bet?
The next phase requires answering several more difficult questions:
- How will the customer discover the selections?
- Why would they combine them?
- Can they understand the resulting bet?
- Can they follow its progress?
- Does the experience work live?
- What happens when a player is substituted?
- Can the operator price and manage increasingly complex combinations reliably?
More combinations are not automatically a better product
Bet Builder roadmaps frequently focus on combinability.
More legs. More props. More sports. More live options.
These are valuable capabilities, but combinability can also create cognitive overload.
A football event may contain hundreds of possible selections. The customer is expected to understand which can be combined, how they relate and whether the resulting price represents an interesting view of the match.
The product often provides the construction tool without providing enough inspiration or context.
This is equivalent to giving the customer an empty spreadsheet and describing it as analysis.
The next generation of Bet Builder must help the customer form and express an opinion.
Player props changed the product logic
Player props have become central because fans increasingly follow individual athletes as well as teams.
A customer may not have a strong view on the final result but may have an opinion about a striker’s shots, a quarterback’s passing yards or a basketball player’s points and assists.
This allows the bet to reflect the way the customer already understands the sporting story.
The dominance of player props within Super Bowl Bet Builders demonstrates how closely the format is now connected to athlete-led narratives. (Kambi)
The product opportunity is therefore larger than adding more prop markets.
Operators can organise the journey around questions such as:
- Which player is likely to define the match?
- How could the expected game pattern affect that player?
- Which statistics support the customer’s view?
- Which selections naturally belong together?
- How can the customer track that story live?
Discovery becomes the next battleground
A customer should not need to examine every available market to construct an interesting bet.
Discovery can be improved through:
Narrative templates
Instead of presenting isolated selections, the product can help customers express recognizable match narratives: the favourite dominates, a defensive match remains close, one star player decides the game, the match starts quickly or the underdog remains competitive.
Each narrative can lead toward relevant markets without promising an outcome.
Contextual statistics
Statistics should appear where they help the customer understand a selection, not in a separate data area that requires another journey.
Search and natural language
The customer may know what they believe but not the sportsbook terminology required to express it.
Conversational interfaces can reduce that gap. FanDuel’s AceAI enables customers to research structured sports data and construct parlays through natural-language interaction. (Flutter)
Relevant starting points
The product can use team, player and market interests to suggest where construction might begin, while leaving the final decision with the customer.
Bet Builder needs a better live experience
The traditional Bet Builder journey is heavily concentrated before the event.
The customer constructs the bet, places it and then receives limited support for following the individual legs.
That is a missed opportunity.
A five-leg Bet Builder contains five separate stories. The sportsbook should be able to show which selections are currently winning, which remain unresolved, the live statistics behind each leg, which upcoming moments matter, how a substitution or rule affects the bet, whether cash-out is available and why the cash-out value changed.
Live Bet Builder adoption is already growing. Kambi reported that the format increased from 5% of live bets during the 2023 NFL playoffs to 11% during the 2024 playoffs across its network. (Kambi)
The next product advantage may come less from constructing the bet and more from bringing it to life after placement.
Product innovation is moving into new time horizons
Operators are also expanding the logic beyond a single match.
Flutter described FanDuel’s introduction of futures parlays, allowing customers to combine season-long outcomes, as well as drive parlays and rapid markets linked to individual NFL possessions and plays. (Flutter)
These developments show how the underlying proposition is changing.
Bet Builder is no longer only about combining match markets. It is becoming a flexible system for expressing a connected view across players, matches, tournament stages, seasons and individual passages of play.
That creates product opportunity, but also greater pricing, risk and communication complexity.
The unresolved problems
Bet Builder still contains several sources of customer friction.
Unclear settlement rules
Customers may not understand what happens when a selected player does not start, leaves injured or is substituted.
Inconsistent availability
A promoted combination may be unavailable by the time the customer tries to place it.
Weak explanations
Customers often see a combined price without enough information about how the selections relate.
Poor post-placement tracking
A complicated bet becomes a static receipt rather than an interactive live experience.
Copycat propositions
Operators frequently promote similar popular combinations, reducing differentiation and creating a repetitive product environment.
A better Bet Builder scorecard
Operators should evaluate the product across six dimensions:
- Coverage: Can customers combine the markets they genuinely want?
- Discovery: Can they find those markets without excessive searching?
- Understanding: Does the product explain selections and rules clearly?
- Pricing: Are combinations available quickly and consistently?
- Tracking: Can customers follow every leg during the event?
- Relevance: Does the experience reflect the event, customer and sporting narrative?
The number of possible combinations belongs in the first dimension.
It should not dominate the whole strategy.
The Adria Nexus view
Bet Builder won because it allowed customers to express a more personal opinion about a sporting event.
Its next phase must become even more personal, contextual and alive.
The competitive advantage will not come from placing another tab inside the event page.
It will come from connecting discovery, statistics, pricing, construction and live tracking into one coherent experience.
The question is no longer whether the customer can build a bet.
It is whether the sportsbook can help them understand, express and follow the sporting story behind it.
Frequently asked questions
Is Bet Builder still a differentiator?
The basic feature is becoming standard. Differentiation increasingly comes from market depth, discovery, live functionality, pricing and tracking.
Why are player props important to Bet Builder?
Player props align betting journeys with athlete-focused sporting narratives and provide more ways for customers to express an opinion about an event.
What is live Bet Builder?
Live Bet Builder allows customers to combine related selections after an event has started.
What should operators improve next?
The most important areas include guided discovery, contextual statistics, natural-language construction, live leg tracking and clearer settlement rules.