With less than a month to go to this year’s Betting on Sports event, Ebbe Groes, CEO at EveryMatrix, drills down into the details behind the company’s fully-managed sportsbook software Solution, OddsMatrix, the land-based potential for sports betting in the US and their latest innovation which the company will be pitching at the Olympia later this month.
So what sets OddsMatrix apart from other sportsbooks?
Two key areas where we are particularly strong is on API and bonusing.
For API we’ve built and extensively tested a Web API allowing clients to build their own front end from scratch, rather than getting sa customized template from us. This gives unprecedented freedom to innovate for our customers. It’s been a massive success for our casino product where most of our top clients fully control the front end. We’re now aiming to repeat this for our sportsbook. We already have two clients live with their own front end, one online and another a mobile app.
For bonusing we’ve taken another unprecedented step and completely separated bonusing from the gaming product into a standalone component covering both sports and casino. This allows us much faster turnaround on bonus features, an absolutely key part for gaming companies. And as a unique feature, allows bonus offers that combine requirements from both sports and casino – or other gaming products, ideal for casual punters and conversion.
The company has offices across Europe and in China, how do the Odds Matrix sport data feeds and sportsbook software work across such differing markets?
OddsMatrix has always been based on a high degree of automation and a vast collection of data sources. Coverage of sports for different markets has thus been rather easy for us. The challenge is rather understanding and getting the user experience right. Here we still have much to learn despite having had Asian focused clients for several years now.
Where do you see the big wins taking place in sports betting – both in terms of technology and geography?
For geography USA is the obvious answer. But taking a step back, what’s remarkable is not so much that it happened but how distant this opening up of the market seemed only four or five years ago. So I’ll suggest that the exact same will happen in Asia. Don’t be surprised to see large Asian markets getting legalized, even China.
For technology, live betting with fast settlement is similarly obvious but still much remains to be done here. It’s highly complex in terms of having reliable data both for odds and settlement across many sports.
Finally, I’ll put some money on the individualized front ends. It’s frankly shocking to see how little user experiences vary between operators, whether European or Asian. Little to no personalization. No gamification. Bonusing not triggered in real-time based on game or betting events. And rather than believing that OddsMatrix has the greatest ideas for how to build exiting new user interfaces, I am a strong believer in making this innovation as easy as possible and let our operators innovate instead. Make it cheaper and get smart people to build and you’ll see ways of sports betting vastly different from what everyone offers today.
In relation to this, what are the obstacles which both land-based and online need to overcome in terms of technology and what are the greatest opportunities?
Land-based is very interesting. I think it can easily be underestimated, in particular for less developed markets such as US. There are few – or no – providers with a high quality omni channel product. Much interesting work awaits in this area – and big rewards for those who get it right.
As an international company, what are you looking to achieve at this year’s Betting on Sports event?
OddsMatrix is a strong brand already. But we have both a new product to pitch, the OddsMatrix Aggregator, very exciting for me, and then we’re going to start to test the waters for more, serious and resourceful, clients to start building own front ends. We have two such client-built front ends live already, two more are being built, and we aim for even more!
EveryMatrix will exhibit on Stand K20 at this year’s Betting on Sports (17-21 September, 2018)
Image: Ebbe Groes, CEO at EveryMatrix
