The sports world is slowly beginning to recover from the coronavirus, but there is still a long way to go. The Premier League and the Bundesliga are back in action, the NBA is almost ready to finish out its season and the NFL still expects to kick off in September. Other than that, the pickings are slim for sports gamblers. However, there’s a new option available that might find a lot of support from people looking for a little action. It’s now possible to place bets on the migratory patterns of great white sharks.
MyBookie.com is offering lines on nine great whites that have been geotagged, according to Forbes. The sportsbook is working in conjunction with OCEARCH, a non-profit that offers the tracking tool for the tags, and allows shark fans, or gambling fans, to follow the sharks’ travel escapades in real-time. For gamblers, MyBookie has set up a number of straight and prop bets to keep them interested.
MyBookie’s David Strauss came up with the idea, which is seeded in a website that had been active years ago to follow the habits of turtles as they migrated from Costa Rica to the Galapagos Islands. Even though that was about 15 years ago, and that site didn’t survive the World Wide Web consolidation, the new shark-tracking project could become popular, especially because of the ability to wager. Strauss explains, “I have no illusions of grandeur that we are going to make millions of dollars off of this. It’s a fun thing and hopefully it catches on.” He adds, referring to the turtle migration tracker, “That always stuck in my mind, and the OCERACH site is perfectly set up to do this. All we had to do was come up with the odds. We were lucky that I knew about sharks and how they migrate.”
The nine sharks “phone in” to OCEARCH’s system every time they breach. That data is then shared with MyBookie to use for its odds. Gamblers can take a shot at how far a particular shark might travel between each call, or ping, when the next ping will appear or whether the shark will be seen in a specific body of water, among others. All data associated with the pings is published in real-time, allowing gamblers immediate access to the information needed to place their wagers. The best part is that there’s little chance of the sharks cheating, which means gambling integrity will remain solid.