Mark Wilson, FSB: five key steps in offering a leading horse racing service

Ahead of the Cheltenham Festival, Sportsbook and Trading Director Mark Wilson pinpoints five key challenges to be encountered, and highlight how FSB will overcome these as the true horse racing specialists in the sportsbook platform provider space.

People

The foundation upon which our entire horse racing operation has been built on. Having intuitive, in-house expert knowledge on the sport allows us to work fluently internally while giving our platform partners true confidence that they’re working with a supplier that has a clear understanding of the sport in the round.

The three central figures in our racing trading team (Head of Horse Racing Leighton Williams, myself and Head of Trading Solutions Alex Abel) have been in position at FSB for over a decade and boast a collective 33 years experience in our organisation. T

hey have worked together to build up our product and platform capabilities over multiple years to support our ever increasing partner community. Armed with Tier 1 operator experience pre-FSB they have cultivated an end to end, always-on high performing, expertly managed trading service with horse racing at it’s epicentre.

This operational expertise allows us to offer value adds to our platform partners through consistent collaboration, strategic insight and performance optimisation. Having this deep racing knowhow in-house at FSB’s London HQ we feel differentiates us against other sportsbook platform competitors.

Pricing

Where the vast majority of other platform providers use third party data to fill their limited horse racing service, at FSB we’ve built our own automated algorithmic pricing models for the sport.

These proprietary odds have been powering our best in class racing service for a decade and enable us to differentiate our pricing offer against the bulk of the market, have robust faith in the accuracy of our odds and crucially give us independent control over margin strategy.

These pricing models also power multiple horse racing derivative markets that we showcase on our sportsbook that provide end users with deeper, daily choice on the sport.

This innovative approach across end to end horse racing management extends to our recently announced major partnership with South African multi-media organisation SuperSportBet.

As part of the multi-year agreement with the powerhouse operator we have curated a fully localised racing service replete with daily derivative markets, ante-post opportunities and unique bet types.

It’s our ability to adapt to different jurisdictional challenges within horse racing that demonstrates why we are the true specialists in the sport.

Platform

Being a proud UK based sportsbook platform provider, horse racing has always been a central pillar of our sports betting mix. Over the last 10 years we’ve incrementally bulked up the racing focussed technology and tools that sit on our platform to create a competitive, contemporary revenue generating product.

From an end user point of view these include additional automated markets, streaming, content led race cards, enhanced place terms and exciting in-house built products like Bet Boost, Cash Out and Price Boost that dovetail within our racing service.

These are backed up by a wealth of precision focussed platform tools that enable us to provide a timely, round the clock efficient service to our partners.

Functionality like automated event set up, auto-settlement and manual market creation empower us to offer daily early price opportunities, execute rapid settlement speeds of (platform average) 21 seconds and support a wide ranging ante-post programme at the touch of a key.

Performance

At FSB, we’re proud to produce consistently strong margins across the very challenging sport of horse racing due to our in-house knowledge, proprietary pricing and risk management tools.

With regard to the latter, these highly automated, in-house built risk management tools provide us with the foundation to drive competitive returns for our platform and our partners.

These include dynamic betting limits, AI led player profiling, expected margin per player and a vast range of liability alarms and alerts. Detailed real time views of risk, running up money, bespoke time-based limits and bet override are all further examples of powerful functionality that unlock growth for our partners.

These tools make a daily difference to the bottom line of our partners and provide the functionality fuel to execute our expertly managed racing service. 

Partners

In a ringing endorsement of our horse racing capabilities across people, product and platform we are particularly proud of the stable of UK and Irish racing focussed brands that have partnered with FSB over the last five years.

SBC Racing Bookmaker of the Year Fitzdares are arguably the most dedicated horse racing brand in the UK and continue to offer a unique operator offering across the sport.

Bet Goodwin are a fast growing brand who have partnered with the likes of trainer Alan King and jockey Tom Cannon while putting their name to January’s Sussex National contest. And in 2023 our long term partners QuinnBet hosted a valuable race series at The Curragh in their native Ireland.

It’s the pedigree of these flourishing brands sitting on our platform that gives us immense confidence that we truly offer the market a leading, specialised horse racing service.

With the Cheltenham Festival taking place this week, together with our partners, we’re ready to capitalise!