AI brings better odds and betting concerns to sports gambling | Semafor

In the coming days, top US college football programs will have a chance to clinch a semifinal spot, while thousands of sports bettors cash in on their success or demise behind the scenes. This time around, they’re supercharging their college football and NFL picks with AI-powered predictions on the point spread, over-under bet, and outcome of games.

SportsLine is one of the sites touting predictive AI as part of its forecast model. The platform formulates its projections using each team’s historical data and quantitative analysis of their defenses, and it continually refreshes with the latest data, SportsLine says. The model simulates every game 10,000 times to get more accurate predictions than human experts, it says.

Statistical analysis has long been a factor in predicting the outcomes of sporting events, but the rapid development of predictive AI brings a new granularity to the data, and the rise of sports betting heightens the stakes of each wager. AI can swallow and examine the relationship between millions of data points on game-day weather, injuries, and the historical performance of each player on the field.

While AI might produce better odds, it also raises concerns about exacerbating betting addiction because it can make gamblers want to stay on the site longer. Americans will bet around $150 billion on sports this year, Business Insider reports, up 25% from 2023.