Kambi: Build the bet and they will come…
What is a bet builder? What has it done for the sports betting industry? And how can it be best applied to engage an increasingly savvy generation of bettors? These, and many other questions, are tackled by Kambi in its latest white paper.
Sports betting solutions provider Kambi has published a new white paper that shines a guiding light on what it describes as a “a revolutionary development in sports betting” – the bet builder. The document, titled Bet builder: Evolving the bookmaker-bettor relationship, sets out the timeline of the sports betting product from concept to present day, while addressing the vital role it plays in the bookies’ arsenal.
As has been well-documented, Kambi has been developing its platform, algorithms and risk processes for many years in a bid to offer a seamless, instantaneous and fully integrated bet builder combination product, starting with soccer in 2019.
The firm has since claimed to have taken this one step beyond the market by being first to deliver the most recent phase in the product’s evolution – imbuing it with the capability to combine combination bets across leagues and sports for the first time.
The white paper states: “For example, Team A on the moneyline and Player B to throw over passing yards can be combined into a single bet with Team Y on the spread and Player Z to score a touchdown. Selections from other sports and games can be incorporated too, with the main limit being the bettor’s imagination.
“This multi-event, multi-sport functionality within Bet Builder has increased the size of the menu and given players an unmatched level of control over their sports betting experience further adding to the product’s popularity and profitability.”
It continues: “Another area which sets Kambi’s Bet Builder offering apart from those of other leading sportsbooks is how it has been built into the core of the sportsbook product. This enables Kambi to add more markets (including an extensive selection of player props), leagues, and sports, while also providing a unified experience through a superior UX, consistent odds, lower margins, faster payouts, and the ability to generate odds on request in a split second.”
Addressing the concept of the ‘limitless sportsbook’, the paper adds: “While developing best-in-class bet builder products placed large demands on the resources of tier-one sportsbooks, this development work has paved the way for an important step in the evolution of sportsbook packaging.
“As sportsbook content and offering scale continues to grow, presenting this content in more engaging, entertaining and seamless ways to the bettor will be crucial to ensuring a satisfying consumer experience – one that is not bogged down by menus or overwhelms the bettor with a glut of options.”
The document’s claims are supported by some interesting statistics, notably that approximately 30% of bet builders are placed more than nine hours ahead of game time, while 80% of those who place a soccer bet builder return to place a second. Meanwhile, 86% of those who placed a second returned to place a third.
During the 2021/22 NFL season 45% of NFL bettors placed a bet builder, while 42% of bet builders featured selections on more than one game. Furthermore, 24% of all NFL bets were bet builders, with 50% of Super Bowl bettors placing a bet builder on the event.
Kambi Product Strategy Lead David MacTavish, who has been working on the development of the firm’s Bet Builder since its inception, explained more in the paper about the process from planning to execution.
He said: “We began working on our soccer Bet Builder in 2018, launching in the first quarter of the following year. The notion of a customer requesting or building their own bet in one form or another had been growing in popularity for some time. For Kambi, our priority is not always necessarily to be first, but to ensure we get it right from day one, taking the time to build the right product, to serve as a platform for future growth and iteration.”
The white paper also touches on the influence that bet builder has on Kambi’s risk function and the way in which the firm strikes a balance between expanding players’ options, while safeguarding the long term commercial interests of its partners.
Explaining that in detail was David Arnold, Kambi’s Director of Risk Management, who noted: “To create sustainable business growth, sportsbooks must maximise profitable opportunity whilst minimising risk, but finding the sweet spot between the two is often a difficult balancing act.
“To have the best chance of getting this right, an effective risk management department will typically employ highly sophisticated, automated models analysing every bet request to evaluate the profitability expectation of individual bets and players. This comes alongside liability aggregation models with intelligent monitoring capabilities, as well as risk mitigation mechanisms to combat extreme liability growth.”
Arnold also highlighted some of the implications for Kambi arising from the growth of the firm’s in-event combination capabilities, including more legs and a greater variety of different sports. He said: “As we expand our product range, the risk management team will be continuing to increase its capabilities in relation to big data, the accuracy of our forecasting models and procedural automation.
“Although we will see an increase in the number of bet requests with selection correlations and an expansion in the number of possible combinations, our fundamentals of the service we provide do not change, ultimately requiring an increase in computational power so that we are able to keep these at the cutting edge and provide the ideal layer of liability mitigation for every individual partner, in line with their strategies. With a proven track record, Kambi is well placed to continue developing these capabilities.”
The full version of Kambi’s white paper can be downloaded HERE.
Source: SBC News
