SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Since the company was founded over 25 years ago, OpenBet has established itself as a leading force within the sports betting industry. And for good reason too.
With its platform capabilities, trading knowledge and expertise in the sports entertainment space, OpenBet has long showcased the “quality, scale and depth” of its products.
Speaking to SBC Media, Chief Product Officer Nikos Konstakis shares his insights into the company’s enhanced product set.
Five pillars
OpenBet has defined its portfolio offering with five different pillars: Bet, Trade, Transform, Protect and Elevate.
Konstakis explained to SBC Media that this product evolution came about following OpenBet’s acquisition of Neccton, a leader of responsible gaming, anti-money laundering (AML), and fraud detection technology. As a new addition to the product set, the investment represents OpenBet’s entry into the player protection and regulatory compliance space.
He began: “Our product portfolio reflects both the evolution and expansion of OpenBet. We decided to reshape the way we go to market with a simplified representation of our product offering, but at the same time, incorporating everything that we do under the OpenBet brand. It’s our intention and commitment to continue to grow and enhance our portfolio. And our new architecture underpins that.”
The first pillar, Bet, exemplifies the power of OpenBet’s sportsbook platform, its engines and front-ends across every different channel. In the words of Konstakis, this is OpenBet’s “bread and butter”.
As the name might suggest, the Trade pillar covers all things trading, risk management and content. Both of these pillars, Konstakis added, are complemented by the Transform pillar.
Konstakis continued: “Transform is basically the icing on the cake for both of these pillars because you can customise the offering. This really emphasises the flexibility around the brand because it has a dedicated focus on all of the products that we provide.
“With Protect, we really wanted to showcase our commitment to safer gambling, which is something that is incredibly important to OpenBet. Regulation across sports betting and player protection is something that we want to continue investing in.
“And lastly, the Elevate pillar is everything that our mothership Endeavor brings to the table as a sports entertainment powerhouse. They are a leader in the convergence between sports media and entertainment, so we really wanted to showcase that.”
This renewed architecture of OpenBet’s portfolio also aims to showcase the company’s expansion over the last few years.
And while developing new products is a major undertaking in and of itself, there also needs to be a number of considerations made when it comes to ensuring both scalability and reliability when pursuing further expansion.
“To be honest, ensuring expansion without compromising on quality and speed of product has always been a challenge. But we’ve always been proud of our scalability, our reliability, the trust that we build with our partners and the quality of our deliverables. Partnership is a key word for us and delivering for partners is something that we have incorporated into our culture,” the CPO said.
“Our partners are incredibly important to us, so we hope to always provide an exclusive service to them. I think where things become really, really different is when you elevate the service with our Transform pillar, where we can provide added layers of service with customised, dedicated solutions, based on what you need.
“Speed and quality is something that we’ve also worked on. Over the last few years, technology has evolved considerably and it goes without saying that our technology has evolved as well. The reason we’ve done that is to put special care into speed and points of delivery.
“We spent a lot of time and effort this year to make sure that everything we do is fully automated. At the same time, we’re spending more and more time developing new technologies to ensure that time to market and customer centricity is at the core of what we do.”
Konstakis shared that as we edge towards 2024, OpenBet will continue to innovate its product portfolio to ensure “quality, scale and depth” of products for its partners.
He added: “We’re continuing our focus and investment on content that supports the Trade pillar. We’ve got a lot more to offer the industry when it comes to different feeds.
“We’re really looking forward to continuing investing in this space and bringing more innovative products to the market that will be unique in terms of enabling fun engagement experiences.”
It’s all about being responsible
Talk soon turned towards the importance of responsible gambling, and the need for suppliers to deploy the best-in-class products to ensure that players remain protected.
For Konstakis, however, this commitment goes above and beyond the company’s recent acquisition. He said: “Responsible gambling is an area that we’ve invested in and will continue to do so. The Neccton acquisition will help shape our focus within the space – and our investment within responsible gambling will continue long into the future.
“We’re in the lucky position at OpenBet in that regulation and compliance are a central part of our ethos. It’s been a solid part of our company’s foundation since we were founded 25 years ago. We have always been compliant in everything we do.
“It’s not necessarily an easy position to take strategically, but the end result is well worth it. This is much more apparent now that more markets are opening up, and we’re well prepared.
“It’s something that we definitely endorse and embrace as part of our company culture. We’re looking forward to more countries jumping into that wave of regulation – and we’ll be there every step of the way to provide our solutions.”
