SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
For traders, Christmas represents a hectic Premier League fixture pile-up, with teams playing three games in just 10 days; fans happily sit back with a turkey sandwich, whilst trading floors are faced with numerous challenges.
Charlie Linford, industry veteran and Director of Trading at Metric Gaming is well versed in this schedule having traded on the frontline for many years. He sat down to talk with us about his experience, and to offer some insight on how to prepare for, and prosper from, the Premier League’s festive fixtures.
SBC News: Tell us a bit about yourself and what you do at Metric Gaming?
Charlie Linford: As Director of Trading I am ultimately responsible for pulling together all of the moving parts that represent a fully Managed Trading Service.
That is an end-to-end process spanning fixture creation, mapping, pricing, trading (pre-match and in-play), resulting and settlement, customer service queries, risk management and limit configuration (by player and by event), liability management, regulatory compliance and more!
SBCN: How does your day to day impact your customers and the end-user?
CL: Every piece of work done by my team will impact end-users in some fashion; our job is to minimise the friction and enhance the user experience wherever possible.
As Metric values collaborative partnerships with our customers, they frequently own or influence some parts of the user journey. A key differentiator of Metric from the competition is our ability to do this seamlessly thanks to our state-of-the-art componentised architecture.
You want to risk manage a small subset of users (say casino VIPs), but leave the other 98 percent to us? No problem.
Want to offer pricing on a local sport you already have expertise in, directly in our Trader Interface? Here’s some bespoke training and your login, and away you go.
SBCN: Trading is a tricky discipline to navigate, if you look back over the years, what would you say have been the most challenging periods encountered? And why?
CL: Obviously COVID stands out as a clear outlier – I never thought I’d have to know so much about the Setka Cup, or BATE Borisov, but outside of that I would suggest we are living in the most challenging period right now.
Bettors have never had a better or wider product offering to choose from, and the surface area trading has to cover is vast. Costs are up, regulation is increasing, and so every decision you make has to be ruthlessly data-driven to ensure you are competitive.
The relationship between trading and data has to be almost symbiotic as a result, and I’m fortunate to have excellent support and expertise in this area at Metric.
SBCN: So, getting onto the Premier League’s festive period. It’s a notoriously difficult time for a number of reasons, however, could you elaborate on the difficulties that many in your field will run into?
CL: In almost twenty years in the industry, it’s incredible how the same problems surface year after year, and Christmas is no exception.
With teams playing three times in ten days, how many rounds ahead do you want to offer? Doing all three leaves multiple correlated risks on the board, not doing so might make your offering look less robust than your competition.
How do you want to handle multiple liabilities, such as the Boxing Day ‘Over 2.5 Goals’ tenfold when the 1963 graphic inevitably circulates on social media again? Great bets to lay, but you must be able to guarantee paying the electric bill on December 27th.
Who is sitting on four bookings and might fancy some festive time off? Information like this has never been more widely accessible to bettors and angles that used to lie largely undiscovered are now eagerly awaited by many, hoping a generic algorithm will carelessly offer a juicy price for Matty Cash to get a late yellow against Sheffield United.
SBCN: So, how do you go about setting yourself up for success?
CL: Every trading floor I’ve worked on has debated these questions, and I’m sure many Trading Directors would give different answers to me. In truth, the hard work in overcoming these issues starts long before we have even launched with a partner, and certainly before Michael Bublé hits the airwaves – we work together during integration to properly understand their brand strategy, and craft a bespoke trading strategy to complement and maximise their approach.
This covers an enormous amount of ground, from how many rounds ahead they want to offer fixtures, what the market depth and limits look like at different time bands, their maximum tolerance for risk etc.
Once this framework is in place it’s then up to my subject matter experts in-house to make the difference with intelligent real-time adjustments: cutting the West Ham price when Bukayo Saka limps off injured in the top of the table clash with Liverpool, keeping on top of the Aston Villa liability as a public underdog against a Man United team in disarray, and so on.
SBCN: What should we expect from this years’ Christmas schedule? Any major shocks could be on the cards?
CL: For all the reasons already given, Christmas is as good a time as any to buy variance, as there may be a host of motivational factors present that the market is not aware of.
To that end I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near Man City at Goodison after returning from the Club World Cup and tucking into their Christmas turkey.
Newcastle making the long trip to a rested Luton just a few days after playing Chelsea in the Carabao Cup is another one the team have highlighted to me as a potential banana skin.
Finally, as a Brighton fan I’m not sure how much more variance our games can get, but our clash with Spurs must have at least some chance of finally landing the 7-7 draw social media is hoping for.
Charlie, and Metric Gaming will be at ICE 2024 in February (S2-240) should you wish to discuss how Metric’s new technology and trading expertise can help you stand-out and be more competitive. Contact the team to set up a meeting: [email protected].
