Could you tell us about your career and background before joining Sportradar?
That’s a good question. I studied classics at Cambridge, and my dad is from a horseracing background, having been a horseracing journalist for 60 years. He did all the tips for all the papers you might know of – so I was always in the gambling world. I grew up on racecourses, bookies etc. Then, out of university, I started working for a high-frequency trading sports betting hedge fund. That’s a very long winded way of saying they make money with complex arbitrage. So I learned about Asian handicaps and Asian totals, specifically, which is obviously the main two markets in Asia.
In 2009, I had the opportunity to join Sportradar’s Integrity Services, or Security Services as it was called back then, and knew this was a great opportunity to monitor match-fixing. But to do that, you have to be an expert in the betting markets. So Asian Handicap, Asian totals, 1x2 etc. I did that for around 10 years, I moved to Asia in around 2013, moving to Hong Kong to set up an Asian operation. I worked with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), one of the biggest sports organisations in Asia. So by 2022, I’d done the integrity, I’d done risk management, I’d done consultancy with the AFC and it was time to join the sales team, heading our commercial function for all of our sport products in APAC.
Can you walk us through your current role and your day-to-day responsibilities? And did your prior experience prepare you well for the job?
I speak for the region on commercial matters and execute the growth strategy. We’re trying to grow larger than some of the other regions. APAC is a growth area for Sportradar – and I also speak with our biggest customers and try to alleviate their pain points. I’m mostly in charge of quite a large sales team, but also liaise with product marketing and communications. Risk, legal and all the functions within Sportradar are funnelled into the region. So they’re in the mother ship in Europe and America, and we liaise with them here.
On whether I was prepared, I started to gain access to some customers through our Integrity Services all the way back from 2009, because a lot of the match-fixing was taking place on those very bookmakers – the big brands that you’ve heard of. So I started to get to know the customers and that prepared me a lot for the APAC region. Then, of course, I founded our own Intelligence Services, so I was used to owning and selling a product. So, yes, I feel I was well prepared.
Our second point is in the product pipeline, to develop products that are tailored towards countries within the APAC region that are most exciting to us
Can you outline Sportradar’s strategy for the APAC region?
The number one on the list is to be known as the top-quality provider. We’re not the cheapest, but we’re certainly the deepest, fastest and most accurate. We have a fair amount of competition, but we’re laser focused on the strategy to rollout, to make sure the whole market knows we have the most quality.
Our second point is in the product pipeline, to develop products that are tailored towards countries within the APAC region that are most exciting to us. We want to produce content and markets that are relevant for the particular country. Say, for instance, the Philippines, where NBA basketball is the most popular sport. We’ve got to have good-quality basketball data and basketball products for them to be interested. In Southeast Asia, for instance, table tennis is a large sport. It’s developing the products that are tailored and focusing on key growth areas, certain countries. This would include India, Japan, the Philippines and Thailand. And the reason I mention those four: India is a huge market that could potentially legalise; Japan is also on the road to potential legalisation; The Philippines has already legalised and Thailand is a very interesting market, where they’re sort of betwixt and between at the moment, with casinos and the potential for sports betting. There is huge potential. Lastly, we want to showcase our expertise in certain products, particularly around AI and VR. We think that is big in the non-sports betting industry in Asia, but not in the betting industry. And we think there’s a market for AI.
A few interesting points, there. I can certainly understand when you said you’re not the cheapest but you aim to have the best product. Because I think if every company just tries to compete on price, you have a race to the bottom and, ultimately, the product and innovation isn’t going to be as strong. Given the markets you mentioned, I think an answer I’d be interested to hear is what are the key differences between Europe, the US and Asia that sports betting companies need to consider?
They are unlike the US and to a lesser extent Europe. Asia is completely multicultural in the sense that you’ve got 20+ large gambling nations. Everyone is slightly different, whereas in Europe one product could work across several regions and, in the US, obviously we know the ‘big four’ sports. In Asia, for instance, in Thailand sepak takraw is a big sport. In Japan, they like sumo; in India, cricket is extremely popular. So there are different bettors from different countries, although interestingly enough, across Asia, the user experience is actually quite similar. If you’ve ever opened your Amazon app and compared it to an Asian app, you’ll notice a difference between an Asian consumer and a Western consumer. Western consumers like it spaced out neatly. Yet in Asia, it’s dotted around. There are blinking lights, it’s flashy and there are coins, with a gamified experience. It’s completely different and the same translates to the betting experience.
In Europe and America, it’s very clean, very clear. In Asia, it’s about volume. It’s about different markets, specialised markets or exotic bets, as they call them, so that would be the main difference and what sports betting companies need to consider. Something else that’s important is low margin. The Asian player, on average, is concerned about margin and some of the European margins – and the traditional 1x2 prices do not fly with Asian customers. So you have to offer a very competitive product. The last main difference connected to the offering and user experience is the need for speed. The most popular casino game in the whole of Asia is baccarat. Why? Because the hand is over in eight seconds or so. You need to be able to offer quick, rapid markets, which are settled instantly and that the Asian punter can take advantage of.
When it comes to that price point, how do you prepare for that as a business? Do you just simply accept that you will make less per bet, and that you’re just going to have to generate more market share?
When you’re looking at it from a bookmaker’s point of view, yes. It’s very much about driving higher turnover with a lower margin. In the end, it will make the difference – or you acquire customers cleverly, who are not so focused on a low margin. For our business, where we’re a bookmaker’s bookmaker because we do Managed Trading Services, we’re interested in liquidity-based trading. When we’re able to view all of the turnover across a market, we’re able to give a very accurate price. So if you’re not the lowest margin and you’re not the highest turnover, you better be the most accurate in oddsmaking because then you’re not taking advantage of it so much. That’s the magic triangle: Attract the most bettors, have the lowest margin possible and then win the most money as an operator.
We have also opened an office in Mumbai and appointed a General Manager, Prasun Bhadani, which obviously shows that we’re looking at the Indian landscape
You mentioned India earlier and, of course, it is a market with huge potential. Specifically for Sportradar, what are your aspirations for the Indian market?
We know it is one of the biggest, if not the biggest potential market in the world – after a legalised US. Already, it’s India next and it’s an incredible opportunity. Of course, we are preparing in various ways and there are two main features we think we could tap into the Indian market with, in a regulated market. The first is technology, so you have to be able to provide value for the federations to give their rights away. They’re not just going to say ‘hey, here’s our rights.’ We’re legalising for betting so you’ve got to contribute to the sport. You have to provide graphics that are instantaneous; deep, deep data that even the teams are not aware of – even their own players are not aware of. So you have to build a technology stack that is able to add flavour to the Indian legalised market when it comes. That’s the first one, and we think we have some of the technology to do that. We have one particular product called FrogBox, which is a camera solution that’s moving to computer vision, which is exciting.
The second is you’ve got to have a great trading product, so you have to be able to trade cricket better than all of the fans in India who are going to be betting on your platform. For years, we’ve been developing our premium cricket services and we believe we have one of the strongest cricket trading operations in the world. We have also opened an office in Mumbai and appointed a General Manager, Prasun Bhadani, which obviously shows we’re looking at the Indian landscape.
Finally, encompassing everything we’ve discussed so far, what goals do you have in particular for the APAC region in 2023?
We’re starting to get the message out about our richness and our quality of data, and being a reliable partner for our bookmakers. They call us in the hour of need; we have stable, reliable data and a stable, reliable platform. The second is what we want to achieve. We want to support federations in monetising their data rights. So it’s not just enough to buy their rights and do nothing with them. You have to develop certain products along with those rights, and we’ve been quite successful at doing that – we want to do more in 2023.
The last is to launch our Managed Regulatory Services, which provides assistance to governments to legalise sports betting. There’s all this potential of legalised sports betting. But what we have found is that governments don’t know how to do it right with taxation, integrity, anti-money laundering, problem gambling and that’s what we’re working hard on to launch in 2024.
