Betinvest is sponsoring Betting on Football 2018, the fifth edition of the largest international football and betting trade conference at Stamford Bridge.
Ahead of the 20-23 March event, we spoke to the company’s VP of Business Development Valentyn Kyrylenko 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?
VK: We are especially excited by the opportunity of meeting some top people in the industry show over solutions and discuss the main challenges and global tasks for Betting on Football in 2018. It is very important for our industry to update the international developments full time.
Such kind of events is a perfect platform for sharing knowledge, innovations and support. Networking is great for sharing ideas and industry insights. We believe that it provides the chance to see things from another perspective which results in new opportunities. Also, one of the benefits is gaining the advice of the experienced peers to improve our product and skills.
SBC: What are you promoting at Betting on Football?
VK: Betinvest’s core competency lies in its sportsbook products. Specifically, the company’s primary key towards success is considered to be premium sportsbook content, tailor-made upon the customers’ needs, addressing properly to their demands. Both innovation and differentiation play a fundamental role in Betinvest’s strategy.
In particular, the company came this year to further strengthen its commitment to data science, with its trading team paving the way towards the use of big data and machine learning in sports betting. Given that user experience plays a rather vital role, Betinvest proceeded this year, with the relevant revamp and the launch of a new mobile application of even greater functionality.
Extending beyond its sportsbook offering, Betinvest came to provide an Easy & Fast API integration and an in-house built technology, of fully customizable design and software. It is a flexible solution that offers the fastest possible integration within extremely demanding projects. In this framework, the sportsbook provision in the regions of South America, Slovakia and Iran are worth mentioning, since Betinvest identified their uniqueness and offered the optimum content for each region.
SBC: What industry innovation will capture the most attention in 2018?
VK: Our bet is on machine learning. AI continues to take the tech community, and the world, by storm. I think the year 2018 will bring us one step closer towards widespread implementation of Artificial Intelligence in the iGaming industry. AI is not just a buzzword. As was the internet in its time, AI is much more than a new technology and will reshape the technology as we know it.
The reason for this is that AI is the science of self-learning software algorithms that execute tasks otherwise typically performed by humans. It will make bringing personalized offerings to the players easier and will increase their engagement. Building software systems that learn from data, rather than following explicit rules hand-coded by human programmers will be the next big thing.
Market share of mobile sports betting customers is also increasing day by day. Mobile has become the leading channel for operators. Recently we have seen some important changes in mobile technology itself, making it easier for the developers to achieve more with less time. I expect that making the sportsbook truly mobile presents one of the biggest challenges in the year 2018 and therefore offers many opportunities for innovations.
SBC: How can your company help to improve the customer experience ahead of the World Cup?
VK: It’s all about football this year. When it comes to the sportsbook content, Betinvest offers a breadth of markets, ensuring that the player will have the opportunity to place his bet on everything, while at the same time, it delivers over 30,000 live events per month, using Risk Protection by Design and Default. Football is the most characteristic product in this respect, comprising handily crafted unique statistics markets in live events and offering innovative special bet markets, such as:
Transfers / Loans of players, Managers moves, Players against team (who will score more, for instance Neymar against All Bayern Players), Next team of the player, Total amount spent on transfer market per league, Total amount spent per team, Salary budgets of top teams, Renewal of the contract of best players, Coach of the week (EPL, Championship), Player of the week (EPL, Championship), as well as Man of the Match (according to EUFA decision), etc.
SBC: Who are you backing to win the tournament, and why?
VK: There is no clear leader. Each one of those teams has its strong and weak points. Even smallest mistakes can have a high cost. Each one those teams should not have any problems becoming the leader within their group. We will definitely see lots of good games in playoff stage. If I had to say which teams enjoy the highest chances of winning the tournament, it would be Brazil 40%, Germany 40% and Spain 20%.