W2 Global Data is sponsoring Betting on Football 2018, the fifth edition of the largest international football and betting trade conference at Stamford Bridge, the home of Chelsea FC.
Ahead of the 20-23 March event, we spoke to the company’s CEO Warren Russell about what he is looking forward to at #bofcon2018, which innovation he expects to capture the most attention in 2018, and who he is backing to lift the World Cup trophy in Russia.
SBC: What are you looking forward to at Betting on Football?
WR: We’re excited to meet with a highly targeted audience of industry professionals from all areas of the gaming landscape. With industry speakers from a significant proportion of leading European and Worldwide bookmakers, the show always provides an excellent opportunity to learn about key developments in the sports betting space.
The World Cup is now within touching distance, so I am also anticipating some excellent content from this side of the conference track. It will be interesting to hear about what offers, promotions and product enhancements the various operators are planning to release in line for 15 June.
SBC: What are you promoting at Betting on Football?
WR: W2 provides an award-winning suite of data aggregation platforms with capabilities covering Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti Money Laundering (AML), Fraud and regulatory compliance. We’ll be promoting two new exciting product releases at BOFCON that will be live in 2018, so I would encourage attendees of the show to visit our stand to find out more.
With 16 UKGC licensed operators currently under investigation for potential AML breaches and an ever-increasing industry focus on compliance, there has never been a more important time to assess your options in this area.
SBC: What industry innovation will capture the most attention in 2018?
WR: I expect to see an increase in personalisation of the sports betting experience within 2018. Features such as Bet 365’s Edit Bet and Sky Bet’s RequestABet will likely become more common place across a larger selection of operators. Engaging customers through personalisation drives revenues and increases loyalty, so I expect to see more of these types of personalised products throughout 2018.
From a compliance perspective, source of funds seems to be a key trend at present and there is no doubt that there will be some interesting product initiatives in this area in the coming months, we are also working on an exciting angle here, so watch this space.
SBC: How can your company help to improve the customer experience ahead of the World Cup?
WR: As a data aggregator, W2 can offer complete flexibility of workflow to our partners and have no bias in terms of which data services are used and at what part of the customer journey. We are proud to offer numerous premium data sources that help operators with both customer onboarding processes, such as real time electronic KYC and document validation, whilst also offering tools for ongoing monitoring of entire customer databases.
This means we help operators and solution providers to provide a more holistic approach to KYC and Due Diligence, thus offering the customer a seamless process of verification that is compliant with both the 4th Anti Money Laundering Directive and respected industry regulators such as the UKGC.
SBC: Who are you backing to win the tournament, and why?
WR: Rather than focusing on the easy options at the top of the market, it may be worth waiting for some enhanced each way terms on the hosts – Russia. Since 1930, the home team has progressed to at least the quarter final on 17 occasions, (Semi Final 13, Winner 6). So, whilst Russia are not a great team, with home support behind them at 40/1 each way, they may be worth a small interest when enhanced place terms are available.