Betgenius is sponsoring Betting on Sports 2017, the second edition of the largest international sports and betting trade conference at Olympia Conference Centre in Kensington.
Ahead of the 12-15 September event, we spoke to the company’s Business Development Director Matt Stephenson about what he is looking forward to at #boscon2017, his perfect sporting event, and how sports and betting can work better together.
SBC: What are you looking forward to at Betting on Sports?
MS: At previous Betting on Sports we have been invited to discuss key trends within our fields of expertise. This has ranged from how technology is transforming sportsbook trading, to how bookies can boost turnover through data-driven, personalised digital marketing. However, this year we are exhibiting for the first time and we’re looking forward to showcasing some brand new products.
As a technology company, we are always looking for new and inventive ways to help our partners meet the needs of today’s increasingly demanding punter, and as the domestic football season really gets going this is great timing to show the exciting innovations we’ve been working on.
SBC: What are you promoting at Betting on Sports?
MS: We are well known to most people working in the sports betting sector for helping international, regulated bookmakers maximise performance across trading and digital marketing. As well as constantly evolving our pre-match and in-play trading services (we’ve added 10 new sports during the past 12 months), we have also greatly diversified our offering with several unique products to meet changing customer demands.
Our award-winning, recently launched High Availability Cash Out product is a prime example of our ability to understand the market and deliver an innovative solution. It allows bookies to run their cash-out function for the entire lifetime of an event, and therefore take a much more aggressive stance, without having a detrimental impact on margin. People should also make sure to visit our stand to get a demo of BetBuilder, our fully-automated service which allows punters to place personalised accumulators made up of dozens of different player, team and event markets from the same fixture, all the while, giving bookmakers a huge boost on margin.
Meanwhile our new MicroBets product offers quick-fire markets on whether an event will occur within a 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5-minute window. Again, this product is a reaction to the demand of punters wanting greater control over their betting, while also fulfilling operators’ needs to offer something beyond the traditional sports betting markets.
SBC: Where can betting work together more closely with sport?
MS: As a division of Genius Sports Group, Betgenius has very close ties with sports. Genius Sports works in partnership with hundreds of sports leagues and federations all over the world to help them collect, manage and commercialise their official data – including into the regulated sports betting market via Betgenius.
Harnessing this official data to power our trading products means our pricing is the fastest and most accurate available on the market, but the benefits of working closely with sport are far broader than that. Protecting the integrity of sporting competitions is fundamental to the sustainability of sport and this can only be achieved through a collaborative partnership with the regulated betting sector.
Via our 24/7 bet monitoring system, we are able to analyse odds patterns across international betting markets in real-time to identify potentially anomalous activity. This betting activity is then cross-referenced with sporting factors, enabling us to alert governing bodies to suspected instances of match-fixing or betting-related corruption.
SBC: What sports betting partnership has stood out in the past 12 months?
MS: Our partnership with Greek sportsbook and lottery OPAP to power its digital sportsbook platform was a landmark deal for us. As the first platform deal Betgenius has struck, it marked the start of a new chapter for the business. As we all know, the sportsbook platform space is highly competitive but there is a massive opportunity to disrupt the status quo.
For us that means placing the highest quality data at the heart of our sportsbook proposition, bringing our core trading and marketing capabilities together and moving towards a genuinely personalised offering across each stage of the online betting experience.
SBC: Describe your perfect sporting event
MS: It has to be when I watched England regaining the Ashes at the Oval back in 2005. After 18 years of getting hammered by the Aussies it was a very, very sweet moment. Kevin Pietersen’s 158 in the second innings was one of the most exciting I’ve ever seen and it was a fitting end to an amazing series.
Anyone who watched it will remember how dramatic it was, but to be there in person on that sunny Monday evening, in that electric atmosphere, was incredible. Coincidentally it was the day before I interviewed at Betgenius, so it was quite an eventful week all round!
