Algosport believes that its range of “next generation” betting products allow operators to maintain a large degree of control while reducing a reliance on 3rd party suppliers.
The company’s CEO Leigh Herdman spoke to SBC News about a “polarisation” between sportsbooks with and without the R&D capabilities to develop new products, the evolution of trading in the sports betting industry, and how the Algosport acca-based product is different to its competitors.
SBC: As a development team, where do you feel that industry operators/stakeholders are being under-served?
LH: I think one of the biggest areas is the polarisation between those sportsbooks that have R&D capabilities to develop new products in-house and those becoming more reliant on 3rd party suppliers. There are very few products on the market that bridge this gap, which will give companies the benefits of outsourcing, while maintaining a large degree of control over their product.
Even those companies who have in-house R&D teams are increasingly taking 3rd party products, as they must maintain legacy trading systems that are holding back innovation. Therefore, we are starting to see much of the innovation in this area coming from small start-ups instead of the big established firms.
SBC: How do you see trading in the sports betting industry evolving in the future?
LH: I see a lot parallels between the insurance industry and sports betting. An area I have previously worked in as both involve the pricing of risk. In the past, pricing at insurance companies was done via underwriters who used their opinion to price risk along with the use of tables and charts. Not to dissimilar to how the trading room at bookmakers recently operated.
However, the insurance industry automated itself long before the sports betting industry did, the first models were created and deployed by quantitative developers, like where we are now. Later the data analysis, model creation and deployment process was automated. Meaning that the models they used, which required regular reviewing, could be updated a lot faster and cheaper. Essentially those who created the first automation tools eventually found their own roles had become automated. I expect sports betting will follow the same path.
SBC: What is the biggest thing that Algosport is bringing to the sports betting market?
LH: Algosport has developed a range of “Next Generation” betting products, which will allow sportsbooks to automate the development of their trading solutions. Companies who don’t already have their own in-house trading solutions will find our products a fast way to catch up with their rivals and reduce dependencies from 3rd party suppliers.
Sportsbooks and suppliers who already have their own trading models will also benefit, as our automated model development process, will reduce costs and improve productivity. The Algosport system also allows customers to build their own next generation products internally and independent of Algosport.
Personalised betting has become the hot topic within the industry with the request a bet style same game accumulator becoming very popular. We have also developed our own version of this as a standalone product based on the Algosport system.
SBC: How does the Algosport same game accumulator product differ to its competitors?
LH: The Algosport version of this product is fully automated, available in play along with cashout. Also, the accumulator is available via the bet slip, using the existing markets on the standard interface. This reduces the learning curve, navigation and the number of clicks for the customer to place these bets.
With our solution existing screen clutter can also be reduced, e.g. why waste screen space offering the 1X2+O/U 2.5 goals market when the customer can create this market and other variants of it for themselves?
For operators an attractive feature of our solution is that we generate the odds using those already available within their sportsbook. This will lead to consistency with the prices and overrounds already on offer, whether these prices are generated internally or from 3rd party solutions. The fully automated same game acca will be rolled out for sports other than football in the near future.
Leigh Herdman will be leading an ‘Innovation in automation’ presentation as part of the Betting on Innovation track at next week’s Betting on Football, held at Stamford Bridge from 20-23 March.
Source: SBC News
