SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
Speed, scalability, stability and flexibility – Metric Gaming has made its ambitions for its sportsbook platform clear, which is hitting the market after two years of development.
Summarising the supplier’s approach to its new product on an SBC Webinar this week, Metric Commercial Director Thomas Warburton said: “Our whole ethos as a company is to use technology as a differentiator within the industry.”
From the outset, Metric focused on how its leadership team – and the past experience of its members – has heavily influenced the production and rollout of its sportsbook platform.
Much of the group’s senior leadership come from the B2C side of betting and gaming themselves, providing the company with knowledge of ‘operator pain points’, Warburton explained.
For example, Graeme Brett, Director Of Data Strategy at Metric Gaming, previously worked at industry heavy hitter Entain and betting-media convergence specialist LiveScore Group, and, as his title suggests, now heads up the group’s data strategy.
“I’ve been given a blank canvas when it comes to building a data strategy and data vision for Metric,” he explained. “In the world of technology and data right now it’s moving at an ever faster pace, you see things like the emergence of ChatGPT.
“As a data technology, these tools help you differentiate yourself not just as a sports betting company but as a company. As opposed to we’re going to have the best reporting and the best models, the real value comes from how you can take this technology and make it available to everyone at your company, to make better, smarter and faster decisions.”
Flexibility is the key word for Metric’s sportsbook, according to its developers – Charlie Lingford, the firm’s Trading Director, emphasised that this also applies to compliance, taking into account differing national factors.
The company conducts research prior to launching its platform in a market to ensure regulatory requirements are met. For example, if an operator is in the Netherlands and in the UK, the platform will allow card markets on football in the latter but not in the former.
He remarked: “Having worked in the US over the past five-to-six years, the difference from state to state – can you offer props, what props can you offer, can you offer an in-state team playing out-of-state – the complexity abounds. We can say ‘in this jurisdiction, we can do this and this.’”
So ultimately, how does Metric make itself stand out? Company leadership explained that Metrc strives to take on a collaborative, ‘agnostic’ approach to its sportsbook platform, also seeking to tailor the offering to respective regional requirements e.g. from North America to the Netherlands.
Linford continued: “Outside of the absolute behemoths and juggernauts of the industry that are doing billions in revenue, it makes good financial sense to use a B2B provider like Metric to outsource the fixed costs of the training floor, compliance team and risk management, before you even get to the issue of data and different providers you might be signed up with.”
Metric has had the luxury of ‘starting fresh’, Director of SRE Bernd Schwarzer asserted, which has helped the company learn from the ‘latest and greatest and best technologies’ from various industries.
In conclusion, this has enabled the firm to build a platform that is highly manageable but also scalable, enabled by extensive modularity, leadership were keen to express on the recent webinar.
