Your time at Sportradar is coming up to 15 years. Can you walk us through that?
I joined in 2010; back then it was a small team of around 10 people. We focused on establishing what we could do to support sports governing bodies, leagues and law enforcement by looking first at detection. My first main role was as an Analyst, then I progressed to Manager and ultimately to Director of Global Integrity Operations, which was focused on our fraud detection system.
We could see that match-fixing was being reflected in the betting market. This is why we established our integrity services – then it was about convincing the sports partners that they can rely on this, that they can believe the reports we’ve sent and that reports were evidential. Not only that, but we could send the reports to UEFA and FIFA, and they could use these in disciplinary cases.
You’ve had past experience with William Hill and Ladbrokes. Was it useful having the operator perspective and knowing what operators want when you came into this role?
Absolutely. It gave me more than just educational teaching, because my first role at William Hill was as a retail manager, working in the West End before the days of electronic points of sale (EPOS). It was betslips and pencils, which meant all settlements were done manually. Bet settlement helped me understand the mechanics of gambling markets, but working in the shops and seeing differences between customers gave me an appreciation of betting activity and betting culture, even between different demographics. That’s what personally engaged me in the industry, and made me realise I could enjoy a long and successful career here.
Can you introduce the concept of regulatory services; what they do, what the aims are and how the process works?
The regulatory services were launched in October last year. What we see is that, generally, regulators are facing huge challenges in their daily work. A lot of regulators don’t have good access and visibility of data because they don’t have the right technology; we see they’re struggling even in the core of their duties to view and understand their own markets. A lot of them are still using Excel files as a basis to run their entire market. There are also subsets within that, such as taxes.
The reason most countries and states regulate gambling is to be able to collect taxes from it; that’s no secret. But what we also see is that this lack of technology is leading certain markets to be inefficient and inaccurate in collecting taxes. Similarly, we have the subsectors of responsible gaming, such as anti-money laundering. We see a lot of, again, inefficient processes due to not having a proper view of the market.
That was our main focus; helping regulators better understand their markets by providing the right technology tools. Sportradar understands betting data and how to leverage this to help our partners. Essentially, can we devise a product that is going to help regulators? We designed the central regulatory platform for this purpose.
This is a regulator’s platform. We install it in the regulator’s infrastructure, fully compliant with security GDPR local privacy requirements. Sportradar is not the one using the system on a day-to-day basis. In the screenshots, all the data is dummy data. You’re not seeing anything you shouldn’t be. On the homepage, there is a high-level snapshot of what a regulator would see when logging into the system, showing aggregated data from all different operators.
How does this work, in terms of getting information from operators?
There needs to be correct legislation and regulation in place from the regulator to connect with the platform. Regulators already have specific regulations about data sharing from operators, so that will be included in their rules.
All licensees need to connect, and we’ve designed the system to be connected to via API in real-time. We also accommodate non-real-time batch data transfer. The player part is really interesting. You see the date of registration, the name and surname and other personal information if it’s permitted.
We can also show the status of KYC and how this has been verified. This is not about the regulator taking over everything and increasing their surveillance and enforcement, but it gives them the overall view.
How do operators feel about the system overall?
The idea is that this should help them in the long run. There are already demands placed on operators for sharing data. But, if you look into the future of how data can be shared with a regulator efficiently and accurately, integrations with a central monitoring system via API should ease their life in the long run and save the manual effort of having to collate and transmit Excel files. The long-term vision is that the CRP and data within will be a tool for regulators to make sure their markets are structured, and their regulations are fair and competitive.
One of the big risks we see at the moment is lots of emotional decisions and restrictions being made, particularly in Europe. For example, when live betting first came out, even with certain levels of competition in some markets, I believe they were trying to impose restrictions on anything below third-division football.
The danger is when there’s limited access to data and understanding of the market, increasing restrictions are based on nothing more than emotions and the knee-jerk feeling that if something is a lower level, then it must be risky and we must prohibit it.
The CRP can help markets by helping regulators both establish markets and, in the first stages of regulations, help make sure the market is structured in a way that gives operators the best conditions to operate in. That could be with regards to which competitions and events are offered, it could even be tax.
It’s about giving the regulator tools, so that they’re properly informed to make policy and strategy decisions; to maintain and evolve the fairest and most competitive market for their licences. This should also help combat illegal and unlicensed operators, which is still a big challenge across all markets.
It’s an interesting point you made on emotional regulation, data versus emotion. Let’s say there’s a wave of public support for something, but data strengthens the other side, the less emotional side. That kind of battle will always be there, won’t it?
Absolutely. The same was true from my experience working in integrity, metrics and detection. We don’t look to eliminate emotions, only to give our partners access to the most complete and accurate data, and Sportradar’s position in this is not to push our partners.
We are only providing the tools and technology to enable them to do their work effectively, and that they’ve got the correct basis to make their decisions. This will not go away now, but hopefully by what we can provide with our CRP, we can facilitate more data-informed decisions in the future.
Do you have any final thoughts on the topic of regulation overall, and your regulatory services product?
The value of the central regulatory platform and entire regulatory services as this evolves will be global. It’s not something confined to brand-new markets or old markets. We have the conviction that this applies to
all markets. In the context of Asia, it’s a very interesting region. Obviously, it is the most active betting region in the world by volume. Still, there are some huge markets yet to legalise and regulate. We want to help regulators avoid copying bad practices of old.
We want to help new markets, from day one, have a system which enables them to work efficiently and effectively. Transparency is also extremely important, particularly in Asia. It would be particularly of interest to make sure the market is set out in the right way from day one, to manage different risks which can be associated with betting and gaming.