ports betting is unquestionably the most complex of gaming verticals to offer. The human element in sports, in contrast to casino’s mechanical RNG, means a highly skilled staff is required to deliver both an entertaining and profitable sportsbook product.
As more and more sportsbooks go international, coupled with increased regulation, the ability to offer a market-leading sports betting experience that is both compliant and localised for the end user is becoming increasingly more expensive and onerous to do from a proprietary perspective.
Kambi has been pricing markets, trading sports and managing risk for some 20 years, while for the best part of the last decade it has been doing so on a B2B basis, ensuring customers have what they need to become market-leaders.
There are many parts which make up Kambi’s modern sportsbook operations department. While the large bulk is trading staff, there is also a number of ancillary departments, whose job it is to support the trading team and Kambi customers to deliver a high-quality and responsible sportsbook product.
Some of these sportsbook operational teams include:
The Sportsbook Control team covers a wide variety of areas, from quality control to regulatory compliance to operator inquiries. In addition, the team focuses on sports integrity and constantly monitors the Kambi systems to identify and escalate any suspicious betting patterns. Sportsbook Control also uses sophisticated algorithms to detect any early signs of problem gambling, which if detected are escalated to the appropriate operator.
The Risk and Player Analytics team is responsible for, among other things, mapping the profitability of players, bet offers and automated tools, as well as dictating the strategy for liability management, which includes conversing with every operator to agree their event-by-event bespoke limits. The Risk and Player Analytics team’s overarching goal aim is to optimise margin to drive long-term revenue performance for operators.
The Pre-Match team is, as the name suggests, responsible for the creation of bet offers and odds making before the event begins. The Pre-Match team will work closely with the Risk and Player Analytics team on areas such as player segmentation and the Sportsbook Control team on, for instance, the reporting of suspicious betting patterns. Pre-match will also process market and event coverage requests from operators.
The Live Betting team consists of a large team of traders whose main task is the management of Kambi’s in-play offer. This includes the live trading of hundreds of thousands of live events every year, driving the bulk of Kambi turnover. The Live Betting team is supported by Kambi’s sophisticated technology, models and algorithms which automate large parts of the live trading function, although Kambi traders retain ability to override this automation to take into consideration factors undetectable by technology. In order to perfect these models and introduce new markets, the Live Betting team works closely with Kambi’s development organisation.
In this video, Gambling Insider talks with Jonathon Hurst, Head of Live Football, part of the Live Betting team, to discuss what goes into a busy night of Champions League action, from preparation to execution. To find out more, please contact [email protected].