The demand for content and options when it comes to sports betting seems to be constantly growing. Sports betting has to follow seasons and timeframes, and they eventually end. This sees people move on to different sports betting events and continue their sports betting in another kind of sport, and Simulated Reality League (aka SRL) is not an exception.
Yet that’s all changing with the continued emergence of the Simulated Reality league or SRL. This is where the marriage between technology, data, and statistics comes into play and builds out a continuous stream of events to watch and place bets on.
What Exactly Is Simulated Reality league?
With the great strides technology has made, especially with computer graphics, SRL combines those graphics with hundreds of thousands of data points and builds out its own simulated sporting events into real-life scenarios. These become computer-generated environments and characters, and it ends up feeling as if you’re watching a real match. It’s not just pretty data either but has built-in the actual rules of the match, which adjust the outcome and the results of the match as well.
How it All Works: Before You’ll Start With Simulated Reality League
It’s all about the historical data that’s behind it, combined with machine learning and AI systems continuing to push what the possible outcomes for each match can be. What’s so amazing about it is that it can be as customizable as possible. It makes it possible to even utilize retired players, placing them into teams, and incorporating their player stats into the overall team statistics. All-star teams can be made, or any type of team you can think of. Of course, the best way is to keep the existing teams but not end the season and have them play as many matches virtually as possible.
The more matches that end up playing in a simulated reality league, the more data points there are that will help refine the algorithm and the AI processing of the data in the background. This leads to not only hyper-realistic-looking matches but also hyper-realistic outcomes. It also still maintains the possibility of having an underdog win or having an upset when the favorite to win doesn’t due to probabilities.
Advantages of SRL
Having a simulated reality league is excellent for the bottom line. It offers all the revenue opportunities for sports competitions without any of the overhead of having to run an actual match. There’s no need for the players, referees, and support staff to be involved in running the stadium. Of course, that can be a major loss for stadium ticket revenues, but it won’t necessarily mean ticket losses in general. It’ll be possible to generate even larger audiences and charge admission to watch these events, as well as the opportunity for sponsorships and advertisements. This is very much in the vein of streaming platforms that already have this revenue channel.
On top of that, it continues people’s preferred sports and teams that they can bet on without ever having a season or even a break in that season. The upshot benefit of this is sports betting revenues continuously throughout the year.
There’s also no chance of physical damage being done to people in sports or any type of injury (although it can be simulated). This means that while SRL is being used specifically for sports such as football, soccer, tennis, cricket, and the like, there’s an opportunity to do various sports.
These sports can be from the past, such as jousting, or something that we’ve created and made up, such as science fiction sports we’ve watched in a movie. If there’s data to be used and gaming rules in place, the possibilities will continue to be limitless on how SRL can grow and evolve. All the while with the ability to do sports betting and place wagers.
Convenience is another factor when it comes to SRL. Just like you having the ability to watch a regular sports match online or on TV, the same goes for SRL. Wherever you are, so long as you can connect to the internet, you’ll be able to participate in any type of event or sports wagering where possible. All of this can even be done from the comfort of your home, and there are no restrictions based on your location. Of course, keep in mind that online sports betting regulations may differ where you are.
Still, it won’t stop you from, at the very least, being able to experience and enjoy watching the events in a simulated reality league. It will feel as if you’re watching a photorealistic animated sporting event that will only get more refined as technology advances.
Challenges To Consider With Simulated Reality Leagues
While there isn’t as much of an investment that’s going to be required when we’re talking about training up players, building up stadiums and infrastructure, and so on, there is an initial and ongoing investment that is needed. While the talent will continue playing real matches and providing data, there may be costs associated with licensing or obtaining that data that need to be weighed up.
In addition, technology is a huge investment to provide the most realistic environments possible. That means rendering technology able to build up players looking properly, with processing systems able to provide real-time calculations and decision-making as the games go live. All this processing power will require actual teams and power to manage them and keep them running 24/7.
Another area to consider is the line between sport and simulation. No matter how much data you have in them, live sporting events always have that human element, where really anything can happen, and that action may not factor in currently. This is, of course, a calculation of randomization that could be refined and thrown in, but it may still, in the end, feel as if it’s a video game and nothing more.
This legitimacy as a sport versus a game or a video game will be interesting to see play out in the world of SRLs. Yet even with that, video games have already transitioned to become legitimized in many areas as a sport itself. This transition in one direction could make it easier to accept SRLs as a sport by default. eSports, turning video games into sporting matches, have only grown in popularity and already have many more data points to consider than traditional sports.
There’s also a huge industry for eSports betting that already exists, making it, in many ways, easier for SRLs to gain legitimacy as a sporting event.
Ethics and SRLs
A final area that needs to be considered is the ethics behind the simulated reality leagues themselves. Whether it’s the ethics of how the players are used and if there are violations or exploitation of their usage, or whether virtual athletes need to be treated the same as actual athletes.
Ownership of any virtual athletes will also come under scrutiny. Does the likeness of Ronaldo or Messi become owned by them, or the person that simply made a virtual copy of them and incorporated some programmer to ‘appear’ to play like them digitally? This is another area to consider for the creators.
These types of questions will need to be looked into while this area becomes more and more involved. Even when it comes to sports wagering on SRLs, if all the statistics and information are already in there, are there really odds to consider as well? A case of ethics could be pushed here as well, and that’s a good thing.
In the end, the more questions that are going to be asked about simulated reality leagues, or the challenges that are imposed upon it, show that there’s a huge interest already in the theory behind SRLs.
Also that the driving force of it already exists in some capacity from some of the major players. It ends up bringing a new type of content that’s more interactive, with ways to engage instead of simply watching the match itself. There will always be questions with something new, and already there are those that are working on resolving those issues, as sportsbook operators are already launching regulated offerings for their sports bettors, which only helps to continue to bring legitimacy to SRLs
In The End
The concept that is behind SRLs is fantastic. It helps to keep you watching your favorite sports year-round and even on demand. It also helps to open up opportunities to bring these existing sports to new levels and dimensions that weren’t thought possible in the past.
At the same time, technology has made it easier to incorporate all of this and make it a reality for these types of sports and those sports we ‘want’ to see happen that can only be done in a virtual setting because they’re too expensive to produce or let’s be honest, too dangerous to actually do.
It will be great to continue seeing what SRLs are going to do next and how they will progress. Because of their foundation, they will only continue to be more interactive and engaging.