Why DAZN Is Killing NFL Live Betting In Canada


Every so often, most commonly in the tennis world, we hear of sports bettors getting in trouble for ‘courtsiding’.

In case you don’t know, courtsiding is when someone in attendance at a live sporting event transmits information to gamblers immediately after plays conclude. Those gamblers, knowing what the outcome of the last play was, can then quickly attempt to place live bets before the online bookmakers change their live betting odds appropriately.

The reason courtsiding works – and the reason the U.S. Open placed 20-year bans on the 17 spectators it caught using the practice in 2016 – is that sports broadcasts on live TV are generally subject to delays of seven seconds or longer, giving broadcasters a chance to censor out any offensive material before it hits the airwaves.

By having someone in attendance at the live event itself, you’re able to obtain valuable information (like the result of the most recent play) far before you could if you’re sitting on your couch at home, and before sports betting sites have had the chance to adjust their live betting lines.

The same logic behind courtsiding is exactly why DAZN NFL in Canada is bad news for any Canuck who enjoys live betting on the NFL.

That’s because, this time, the bookies have the advantage.

How DAZN NFL Canada gives online betting sites an advantage

DAZN NFL Canada, of course, has replaced the Sunday Ticket package that cable and satellite companies have offered in Canada. DAZN, a burgeoning streaming service based out of the United Kingdom, bought the Canadian rights to the Game Pass package earlier this year, enabling it to sell online access to all NFL games in 2017, as well as the RedZone channel and NFL network.

When announcing its arrival in the Canadian market, DAZN marketed itself as the ‘Netflix of sports’, crowed about viewers’ ability to now watch live NFL games on multiple devices (and without being subject to blackouts), and prided itself on being a cheaper option than Sunday Ticket. For $20 per month (or an annual subscription of $150), you could not only live stream any NFL game you wanted, you also had access to broadcasts of European soccer and other international sports.

DAZN NFL Canada

But while live streaming sports is obviously the way of the future, it comes with several potential problems. Audio and video quality aren’t as reliable over an Internet connection as they are via cable or satellite, not all televisions and other devices are able to provide access to the service, and it takes longer to switch from game to game.

There’s one other huge headache about DAZN NFL Canada that the streaming service has yet to be able to provide NFL bettors with a Tylenol for.

Extreme delays.

Reportedly, DAZN NFL broadcasts are already on a time delay. Add in the constant buffering and other issues viewers complained about en masse on Twitter in the first week of the 2017 NFL regular season, and you could be five minutes behind the actual action.

Good luck beating oddsmakers to the punch when they’re changing live betting lines on the fly.

NFL Live Betting Odds Change Quickly

Even if you try to keep up to date with the latest action by monitoring the progress on Twitter or via one of the many scoreboard apps available online, you’re still not going to get the information as quickly as you would have when watching live on TV.

And since almost all sports betting sites who offer NFL live betting apply a short delay before accepting your wager (their way of protecting themselves in case you know what happened first), even if you’re trying to bet on appropriate lines, it’s quite possible the next play is underway and the live betting odds have already changed again or are unavailable.

Plus, live bettors don’t just want to know what’s happened before placing a bet. They also want to see why it happened. A simple scoreboard refresh won’t tell you whether the Bills’ offensive line is getting dominated or if the Panthers secondary looks tired.

Watching games on Sunday Ticket gave you that opportunity. And it’s possible that DAZN NFL Canada still might.

But until the new holder of NFL broadcasting rights in Canada can figure out answers to all of the huge questions facing it following Week 1 of the NFL season, they’re killing NFL live betting in Canada.