The future of U.S. sports betting is here with NBA League Pass' integration of live betting

The NBA has integrated a sports betting feature into the NBA League Pass streaming service, Sportradar, the league’s data partner since 2016, announced Tuesday.

The new function brings betting content like point spreads, over-unders and moneylines into League Pass streams, and gives viewers an option to select bets as they watch games and be directed to DraftKings or FanDuel through embeddable links.

Powered by Sportradar’s over-the-top (OTT) solution called emBet, the technology stops short of allowing people to wager directly in the NBA League Pass app. However, it certainly seems to be a step in that direction and won’t likely be the last of its kind. This is always where sports betting was headed.

@NBA in-play betting has been elevated.

Sportradar’s emBET solution is bringing sports betting content directly into NBA League Pass and giving fans the convenience of viewing and selecting bets while they watch.

Read more here: https://t.co/XN3CqfVqYA pic.twitter.com/MeTm68zizV

— Sportradar (@Sportradar) March 19, 2024

“Integrating emBET is consistent with the NBA’s vision to create hyper-personalized and customized viewing experiences within NBA games,” NBA executive VP of media and gaming Scott Kaufman-Ross said in the release. “For NBA fans who want to wager on our games during live action, they can now elect to receive contextualized betting information directly on NBA League Pass.”

The integration of odds and live streams has been teased for several years now, especially with the growth of micro-betting — a type of wagering where users can bet on individual events within a game — in recent years. As that appetite grew, the industry was always going to find a way to feed it. Several sportsbooks even brought live NFL streams directly into their apps in 2023. What the NBA and Sportradar is doing simply takes that idea to another level. Instead of bringing the stream to where the odds are, they’re bringing the odds to the stream. It’s probably just a preview of what’s to come.

X (the social media site formerly known as Twitter) added a betting functionality to its sports pages just before the Super Bowl last month. Expect to see more sports content providers — including other streamers — follow in the same path. The future of sports betting is no longer the future. It’s here.