In the gaming industry, mastering a specific need and building on it can be the recipe for broad-based success.
A social casino is the recruiting ground for future business. It familiarizes people with the games, rules and betting probabilities. Winning at these games gives players bragging rights on social media. Ideally, the social experience drives customers to real-money games. Social is emotional, and vendors who cater to it can create an economic pipeline.
Acquiring a company with a turnkey operation is another way to grow. If you can’t beat it, buy it.
And industry advancements, like same-game parlays in the sports-betting arena, are paramount for companies seeking new revenues. For example, industry estimates put in-game betting at a 400 percent increase over last year.
Here’s a closer look at companies not only keeping up with the trends, but creating them.
Socially Advanced
BetConstruct was on a roll with varied product offerings in 2021, especially in the sports-betting realm.
It has struck gold again with its Social Sportsbook, set to be deployed in emerging legal sports betting markets. A complementary amenity for sports bars and restaurants, Social Sportsbook educates players and harvests key marketing data as users compete and interact.
The multi-platform solution, available on iOS, Android, Facebook and the web, has loyalty marketing tools including coupons, discounts and promotions. It will also drive traffic to brick-and-mortar venues, company officials say.
Social Sportsbook has powerful back-office tools, such as player, content, bonus and game play management, monetization tools and analytics. For operators, perhaps the most important tool is its ability to extract key demographic and psychographic information. This data gives operators a competitive advantage when legal online and brick-and-mortar gaming are established in their respective jurisdictions.
BetConstruct has developed solutions both timely and relevant to the needs of the North American marketplace, and continues to thrive in all facets of the sports-betting world.
Its iGaming platform features different betting types (single, multiple, system, chain), plus tax and express bonus calculation. Its sportsbook solution provides head-to-head stats for more than 20,000 matches each month in over 2,400 tournaments.
The company gives operators maximum autonomy, enabling them to not only choose any event they wish to offer (live and pre-match), but also set more competitive odds on single matches, markets, sports or countries by employing an advanced margin-control functionality.
Among BetConstruct’s sportsbook features:
- 120-plus sports including virtuals and esports
- U.K. horse racing
- Advanced betting tools such as EditBet, BetCloud, SuperBet, Counter Offer and BetBuilder
A pioneer in the iGaming industry since 2003, BetConstruct continues to leverage player insights and technology trends to push the limits of gaming. With 300 customers across 50 markets, the company leads the category by delivering control to operators while providing the most extensive gaming and betting portfolio to players, company officials assert.
BetConstruct got 2021 off to a roaring start with the integration of Pinnacle Solution’s sports-betting offer onto its platform and its further supply to operators. The company stakes its claim to open its platform to third-party sportsbooks. The partner-oriented approach led to what BetConstruct considers a landmark deal, embracing one of the company’s key partners, VBET. Company officials say VBET will utilize the iFrame solution, giving its end users across a number of territories access to a market-leading array of betting content, including an award-winning esports betting product.
That product, catered for Pinnacle Solution, comes with expert risk management and is available under its iFrame API solution alongside BetContsruct’s betting offer.
“This partnership with BetConstruct, covering both its B2B and B2C arms, showcases the flexibility of our Pinnacle Solution sportsbook offering and ability to service client needs, whatever they may be,” says Pinnacle CEO Paris Smith. “Having seen encouraging early results, we’re confident that this partnership will continue to be a successful one, with BetConstruct proven to deliver results across its own brands as well as for its B2B partners, who can now supply their customers with our market-leading sports betting content.”
Bonus types include free bets, accumulator bonuses, wagering bonuses and profit boosts.
The company will display its award-winning online technology at G2E 2021.
Setting New Standards
GAN has bolstered its position in the sports-betting space in 2021. The year started impressively when the company completed the $176 million acquisition of Coolbet. The integration process incorporates Coolbet’s proprietary sports betting technology into GAN’s current B2B technology stack.
Subsequent highlights include launching one-third of Michigan partners— Churchill Downs, Wynn and FanDuel—on Day 1.
GAN’s platform allows its partners to choose if they’d like to manage risk on some or all sports, or enable a team of more than 60 traders to do so on their behalf.
GAN enjoyed a successful multi-state transition into its gaming platform for Churchill Downs and incorporated Twin Spires-branded sports betting and iGaming operations in Colorado, Indiana, Michigan, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
Its proprietary sports-betting platform, GAN Sports, creates a seamless plug-and-play experience for partners to launch their desired sportsbook.
Whether customers engage via retail, online or both, GAN has the experience to enhance an operator’s betting platform, say officials. The GAN service model includes configuring an operator’s product, odds, line and marketing activities, enabling them to achieve their strategic and commercial goals.
GAN’s platform allows its partners to choose if they’d like to manage risk on some or all sports, or enable a team of more than 60 traders to do so on their behalf. The company’s platform also allows for localized pricing, giving its casino partners or trading team the ability to manage risk at the property level. This means each property can control its pricing parameters, down to the event level.
As the patent owner and market leader in this space, the company provides its partners a Day 1 fully integrated player account management solution, along with loyalty integration at both the retail and mobile/online levels.
Fully scalable to meet each property’s unique needs, GAN’s kiosk-first approach allows its partners to launch and operate a sportsbook onsite, without the need for additional staff. Its highly configurable platform allows partners to make on-the-fly changes to provide product differentiation and meet constantly changing player, market and regulatory demands.
The company is not limited by the restraints of legacy systems, which often inhibit the ambitions of brands when utilizing other sports betting suppliers.
Earlier this year, Arthur Barker, managing director of acquisitions for GAN, shared a market overview. “As an early entrant into the U.S. gaming market, GAN has seen firsthand the industry’s growth in regulated U.S. states,” he said. “A landmark moment of particular note was the parallel launch of three different brands in Michigan on the GAN platform. The regulatory framework that enabled pre-registration of and depositing into customer accounts generated a particularly steep growth curve and associated sports handle.”
The company will showcase its retail sports offering at G2E. As a greenfield project, the GAN Sports team of industry experts has created a compelling retail product, uninhibited by many of the legacy system issues faced by other offerings. Barker believes it will reset the market for sports-betting kiosk solutions and offer a depth of functionality currently unavailable in the market.
Besides the patented loyalty integration, the GAN Sports kiosk solution will offer far more personalized user content and recommendations, UX configurations and various omnichannel synergies, giving operators the flexibility they need to optimize sports betting revenues.
‘Odds On Demand’
Enabling bettors to control and drive their own sports betting experience is a growing trend in the U.S. sportsbook, and flexibility is a key part of the equation. In 2020, approximately 50 percent of sports betting revenue in New Jersey derived from parlay betting alone, and New Jersey routinely flirts with $1 billion in mobile totals every month of NFL season.
Premium B2B sportsbook supplier Kambi wasted no time in the wake of repeal of the Professional and Amateur Sports Protection Act, opening a U.S. office to help service the stateside market. The company realized that any innovation that speeds play or enhances the betting menu finds an enthusiastic clientele.
The latest enhancement in Kambi’s football product, known as Game Parlays, gives players an unmatched level of control over their sports betting experience. It empowers them to combine multiple main and player prop bets within the same game—and for the first time, across different games.
The feature also allows Kambi’s partners to rebrand Game Parlays under a different name, tailoring the product to best fit their individual strategies.
Previously, Kambi’s football offering allowed players to create their own bets within main markets such as over/under and spread in a single game or across multiple games. Game Parlays enables Kambi’s partners to offer their customers a market-leading number of betting options by expanding the multi-event functionality to include player props—such as touchdown scorer and rushing yards—as well as a wide range of derivative markets.
What separates this level of “combinability” from other parlay products is the capability to fit seamlessly within the existing sportsbook, giving the bettor ultimate control and making NFL Sundays much more interesting, Kambi officials say.
Other game parlay products in the market are stand-alones, which sit outside the normal sportsbook offering. This adds significant friction to the user experience and produces pain points in the sportsbook interface, which Kambi’s solution sidesteps, its analysts say.
Kambi has a long track record of developing forward-looking products to meet the growing appetite for “odds on demand.” The launch of Game Parlays builds on the company’s Parlay Builder, launched in 2019. A later iteration saw Kambi become the first B2B supplier to enable players to combine multiple selections and in-event combinations across several sports and events into one bet. Kambi’s extensive development work and innovations give players increased flexibility by breaking down the barriers that exist in combining bets across events.
The company says it helps operators obtain a higher margin for return and benefit from Kambi’s deep strength of product and expertise in both proprietary pricing and risk management.
Kambi also made news late in the second quarter of 2021. That’s when it signed an agreement to provide its premium technology and services to a newly developed sports betting brand in Latin America, backed by an experienced private equity firm. The multi-year partnership will see Kambi support the launch of Olimpo.bet, an online sportsbook owned by NG Gaming, which is a recent addition to one of the leading corporate groups in Latin America.
The Olimpo.bet brand aims to initially target Peru, due to the growing market there, and will further strengthen Kambi’s position in a region where it already has an established presence (in Colombia and Argentina).
“This is an important strategic partnership for Kambi as we continue to expand our footprint in Latin America’s growing sports betting market,” according to Kristian Nylén, CEO and co-founder. “The ambition shown by NG Gaming to be among the leaders in sports betting matches our own, and we’re excited at the prospect of Olimpo.bet going live in time for the Copa América.”
An NG Gaming spokesperson added, “We are delighted to partner with Kambi to launch our new disruptive brand. It quickly became clear Kambi was the only partner we could trust to support us with our ambitious time-to-market strategy and future expansion across the South American continent. Kambi’s flexible technology alongside its proven risk management and price differentiation capabilities will give Olimpo.bet a platform on which to outcompete the market.”
Major market innovations like the expansion of sports wagering arrive perhaps once a generation. And the gaming world feels the electricity.
