BetSymphony: launching a no revenue share sportsbook solution

Imagine that you were opening an online sports betting business. Perhaps you are in that position. How would you build out the platform? You have several options, each with merit and risks but which will ultimately help you get to the stage where you can begin taking online bets. 

You could build your own platform or buy a turnkey sportsbook solution. Building out your own platform offers flexibility and a personalised experience but can be incredibly expensive. Using a turnkey solution is a very fast way of getting live and taking bets, and is a much less risky proposition, but does come with less control. 

There is another way that offers the best of both worlds, according to a member of senior leadership at Symphony Interactive. BetSymphony, a new platform Symphony Interactive developed by Symphony Solutions, is a fully managed sportsbook platform that offers full freedom not only in terms of source code ownership, but also runs on a model of no revenue share.

Valentina Synenka, CEO of Symphony Interactive and Board member at Symphony Solutions, chats to SBC News about the platform and why personalisation is so important for an operator to be able to have control and ownership over its sportsbook platform. 

Predictions of change are tough, but predicting what won’t change is easy

When discussing the key trends for sportsbooks in 2025, it is easy to talk about new features and betting options, or the continued AI revolution that is taking place. 

But instead of this, Synenka identifies that it is a much safer bet talking about the core parts of fully managed sportsbook platforms that clients do not want to change. 

She says: “Nobody wants worse service. Nobody wants it to be harder to find what they want to bet on. Nobody wants content to be unavailable. Those things are not going to change, right, and they only want to improve them.

“That customer experience element and having a really good service isn’t going to change, and that’s something that operators will need to focus on.”

But Synenka argues that it is difficult to stand out from the crowd when it comes to the service and platform an operator can offer if they have to spend up to dozens of millions building their own sportsbook platform, or have to “join a queue” for features using a supplier’s sportsbook. 

That’s the big pitch for BetSymphony, in her view. Clients can buy the source code for BetSymphony, which comes with core PAM, backend and frontend features and is fully-customisable on the operator side. 

She explains: “With us you’re not reliant and you’re not in a queue, as you would be with a big platform provider, and you control your own destiny.

“The platform’s got all of the core features that you would expect to hit the ground running, but then on top of that, operators want to do something more innovative. So that’s what BetSymphony is all about. 

“It’s about accelerating, about coming to market quickly, having ownership and control over your own roadmap, and then, of course, partnering with someone like Symphony Solutions who has got years and years of experience in building features for sports betting.”

Customisation and personalisation

SBC News inquired about the biggest challenges that Symphony Solutions seeks to address for operators, and Synenka noted that sportsbook managers and CEOs usually have two key issues. 

“First, there’s the commercial challenge,” she says. “Let’s just imagine that you don’t yet have cash out but desperately want that feature. Often, you are in a long queue, and the platform provider says that they’re working on it. But sometimes a year can go by and you still won’t have cash out.” 

She argues that, with BetSymphony, operators can add their own cash out feature or a different third party cash out directly into the platform because they have the source code. So, her theory goes, operators have more flexibility to add new features that offer a competitive advantage. 

The second key issue that Synenka often hears from operators is a technical challenge. She says that operators can be in a “technical debt” that they must clear in order to progress. 

“There’s a lot of sportsbook operators out there that have old, ancient, what we call monolithic platforms,” BetSymphony’s lead explains. “There’s a lot of technical debt there, and there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to allow you to release new features quickly. 

“Quite simply put, if you imagine a deck of cards, if you pull one card out, you can bring the whole thing crashing down. For them, they have a huge amount of work that they need to do to modernise the architecture, which then would allow them to develop and release features weekly or daily. That needs quite a sophisticated architecture, and there’s still a large number of operators that simply haven’t got there yet. So they are constrained by their own architecture in terms of their ability to launch and release new features.”

A flexible platform equals better customer experience

As Synenka outlines at the beginning, successful sportsbooks are those with high levels of customer satisfaction. Having a great experience means standing out from the crowd and offering something different that works well. 

One use case that she identifies for the BetSymphony platform is being able to twin the platform with the BetHarmony AI Agent to suggest bets for players based on their individual needs. 

In an era where accumulators/parlay bets are becoming more and more popular, Valentuna Synenka argues that those operators who are “forward thinking” can package those bet offerings neatly in the UI for bettors to select.

“Doing that should be really, really easy,” she asserts. “If you’re scratching your head saying, ‘how do I make a parlay for five or six, different events’ then it’s been done wrong.”

Ultimately, as Synenka concludes her chat with SBC, she explains that BetSymphony’s platform can offer a personalised betting solution for a portion of the traditional cost.

On top of it less conventional “leasing” model with fully customised payment conditions is available to serve needs of different size clients. 

“Our ideal customer wants to control their own destiny. They want something that’s stable, reliable, and has all the core features so that they can step out of the shadow of a traditional rev-share platform model and then start building things that really matter to them.”

The Advantage of a No Revenue Share Model

Finalt, Synenka reiterated the biggest advantage of working with a sportsbook provider that doesn’t work on a revenue share model.

“High licensing and operational costs make it challenging to remain competitive. Custom development requires substantial upfront investment and ongoing maintenance. Expensive integrations and compliance requirements add hidden costs.

“BetSymphony eliminates revenue share and reduces operational expenses with a scalable, cost-effective model. By owning the source code and avoiding recurring revenue share fees, operators can allocate more resources toward innovation, marketing, and customer acquisition, ensuring a more sustainable and profitable operation.”