Third-Party Component
Instant Highlights
Two connected live stream features that hit 95% approval on highlights presentation and confirmed that bettors prioritise betting-relevant data over broader match insights.
Category
Product Design
Client
Stats Perform
Year
2023
Project overview
Stats Perform's Instant Highlights API was already widely adopted by betting clients including bet365, Superbet, and Winamax. But an API puts the implementation burden on the client. Smaller sportsbooks without the resources to build their own UI were either going without highlights or delivering a poor experience by default.
The opportunity was to offer a hosted, white-label solution that sportsbooks could drop in without custom development. As part of the same initiative, Stats Perform was also building Smart Stats Overlays. Real-time Opta-powered graphics that surface contextual betting stats directly within a live stream.
Both products were designed in parallel and sold as separate add-ons within a broader gallery of white-label solutions betting clients could choose from. My role covered the end-to-end design of both work streams, from stakeholder interviews through concept testing and implementation.
What Bettors Actually Do During a Live Stream
The starting point for both work streams was understanding how casual bettors engage with live streams while betting.
Stakeholder interviews and concept testing with bettors surfaced a clear opportunity. Casual bettors are typically sports fans who already know their teams well, but in-the-moment contextual data during a live stream could validate their instincts, nudge them toward a bet they were already considering, or give them enough confidence to place another one.
A Stats Perform case study assessing existing clients' implementation of Instant Highlights showed that bettors are 4x more likely to place a bet on an event they feel informed about. A finding drawn from real operator usage across clients like bet365, Kaizen Gaming, and Superbet.
The design challenge was not just to surface information, but to surface the right information at the right moment without pulling attention away from the stream itself. For highlights specifically, the team came in with an initial hypothesis about which events were most relevant to bettors. These were split into two categories:
Betting-specific stats covering player, team, and league performance.
Broader sports insights covering general match events.
Testing determined which of these actually influenced bettor behaviour.
The Screen Is Already Crowded
Moving from an API to a hosted solution meant Stats Perform was now making curation decisions that clients previously made themselves. That shifted the question from "what can we surface" to "what should we surface and where."
The first proposed approach for Instant Highlights was to embed the highlights panel directly within the video player. In theory it kept everything in one place. In practice it got in the way.
Testing showed that everyday sports fans wanted to see the highlight footage alongside the stream, not instead of it. The show/hide interaction required to manage the embedded panel also introduced usability problems that slowed people down at exactly the moment they needed to move quickly.
For overlays, the content question was equally consequential. If the overlays were too editorial or trivia-focused, they added noise. If they were too sparse, they added nothing. We needed to strike the right balance.
Two Products, One Principle
Both solutions were designed around the same underlying idea. The stream is the primary experience, and everything else has to earn its place on the screen.
For Instant Highlights, the answer was an expandable container sitting below the video player. Bettors could see the highlights list alongside the stream without one obscuring the other. The container could be collapsed entirely for those who didn't want it.
This had a commercial component since the additional real estate pushed betting odds further down the page. Product managers worked with account managers to gauge client appetite for this tradeoff. Presented with testing data showing bettors were more engaged with the stream when highlights were accessible, clients were comfortable with the layout.
The highlights themselves were organised to let bettors navigate by event type:
Goals
Shots on target
Shots off target
Biggest chances
New highlight alerts appeared inline within the match timeline so bettors watching live could see moments appear in real time rather than having to scroll to find them. A multi-match gallery view allowed bettors following several games simultaneously to move between streams and pull highlights across fixtures in one place.
For Smart Overlays, concept testing with nine participants assessed different overlay types across animation styles and timing.
The finding that shaped the product direction most was that 90% of bettors preferred overlays focused strictly on betting-related statistics over general sports insights or trivia. This gave Stats Perform a clear brief for which stats to prioritise pulling from API feeds and surfacing in the overlay suite.
Avikalp J., 29
Casual Bettor
“I can see Barcelona made 9 shots and blocked only 2, but their on/off targets are greater than Real Madrid. It can help you place a bet in real time, and you don’t see data this neatly someplace else.”
The redesigned overlay set covered total shots, expected goals, team fouls, and win probability, presented in broadcast-quality graphics that could sit on top of any sportsbook's stream without feeling out of place.
Process
Both products required close coordination between design, product, and the betting team to make sure what was being designed was actually deliverable from a data infrastructure standpoint. The highlights categories and overlay stat types were only as good as Stats Perform's ability to pull and serve them reliably within a live stream context.
Client appetite was a real input into design decisions, not just a downstream consideration. The expandable container layout was a direct result of account managers bringing client feedback into the product conversation early, which meant the commercial tradeoff around odds placement was resolved before it became a late-stage problem.
Outcome
Instant Highlights reached a 95% concept test approval rating, with the expandable container resolving the core usability problems identified in early testing. Smart Overlays testing confirmed that betting-specific stats only were the right focus, which sharpened Stats Perform's data prioritisation across the overlay suite.
Both products launched as white-label add-ons within the Bet LiveStreams gallery, available to sportsbook clients without custom development investment.
