GR8 Tech has had a tough time this year. According to CEO Evgen Belousov and CTO Artur Ashyrov, this is just the tip of the iceberg as the company has just announced the launch of the GR8 Sportsbook as a standalone product.
Both executives are confident that the GR8 Sportsbook will strengthen the GR8 Tech portfolio and provide operators with the tools they need to succeed in the constant iGaming race.
Evgen Belousov and Artur Ashyrov share their experience with overcoming technical challenges when implementing a specialized sports betting platform. They highlight the main benefits and features of the new product, and discuss the essential role of machine learning in providing personalized betting recommendations.
Thank you for taking the time to chat with us! So as we understand, GR8 Tech has decided to launch their sportsbook as a standalone product. Can you walk us through this decision? Why now is the right time to do this?
Evgen Belousov: Thanks for having us, it’s always a pleasure. Even more so when we have such a great occasion as our sportsbook widening its market! As part of our complete product suite, it has delivered strong results for our clients in various markets. Realising its potential and acknowledging the rapid evolution of the sports betting market, we decided it was time to offer GR8 Sportsbook as a standalone product.
Artur Ashyrov: The decision also came from the understanding that operators seek robust, efficient, and scalable solutions to stay ahead in this competitive landscape. With GR8 Sportsbook’s capacity to handle 30,000 bets per second and settle 1 million bets per minute and its demonstrated uptime of 99.95% during World Cup 2022, we believe it is exactly the kind of solution operators need.
Given the number of sportsbook platforms on the market, how does GR8 Tech plan to stand out in an increasingly competitive market?
EB: It’s one of those times when quality is way more important than the quantity. See, one of the key challenges that operators face is maintaining and growing player engagement, a crucial factor that can affect market share.
GR8 Sportsbook stands out by providing comprehensive gamification capabilities. It offers tools to create multi-layered player engagement scenarios, including quests, achievements, and tournaments, features that very few competitors currently provide. This unique aspect enables operators to offer a more immersive and engaging betting experience, thereby differentiating themselves from the competition.
AA: Furthermore, our platform’s ability to cover over 100,000 events per month in 40+ sports, including both globally renowned and regionally favoured options, its extensive eSports events portfolio with up to 2000 CS:GO events, 1300 League of Legends events, and 1000 Dota2 events per month makes it a standout choice for operators looking to offer a wide range of betting options to their users.
We firmly believe that GR8 Sportsbook is not just another product in the market but a game-changer that allows operators to improve their player engagement and, in turn, increase their market share.
Did launching your sportsbook as a standalone product present any technical challenges? If so, how did you overcome those?
AA: Any product launch comes with its share of technical challenges, but our experienced team managed to surmount them effectively. One of the main challenges was to maintain performance levels during peak loads.
We achieved this through rigorous testing and continuous performance optimisation, allowing us to maintain high uptime and swiftly process many bets.
We’ve seen a number of gambling operators, particularly tier-one sportsbooks, bring their sportsbook platform development in-house. What would you say are the key benefits of using a platform such as GR8 Tech’s rather than relying on in-house developers?
EB: We have a proven combination of integrated feed and proprietary trading that can never be achieved with in-house development. We take the best, filter it, add a touch of our own and we get a unique product that allows us to cover the needs of players and manage risks and margins to the maximum extent possible.
It’s a successful model that has already been tested in many markets, so we are confident in the value we are presenting in GR8 Sportsbook.
AA: While developing in-house can provide a certain degree of customisation, using our platform brings benefits such as proven reliability, comprehensive market coverage and advanced features like our cashout engine and personalisation engine. These enhance user engagement and revenues for operators, boosting their ARPU by up to 2-5%.
How is GR8 Tech ensuring that it delivers a much more personalised, localised experience for those using its sportsbook platform?
AA: Delivering a personalised, localised experience is a core feature of our sportsbook platform, and we achieve this in a few different ways. First, we offer all major odd notations, allowing us to cater to a wide range of regional preferences; Our sportsbook solution provides region-specific line display options (American, Asian, LatAm view). Furthermore, we offer international and local payments, multi-currency and multi-language support within each brand, and KYC/AML capabilities and services.
Second, our platform offers extensive coverage of regional and niche sports. This includes sports such as Kabaddi, with 700-1000 monthly events, and Cricket, with over 4000 events. It’s also important to note that we offer one of the broadest betting lines for lower-category leagues, ensuring we cover a wide breadth of sporting events that cater to all user interests.
Last but far from the least, there’s our ML recommendations engine as a complimentary feature of GR8 Sportsbook. It provides a genuinely personalised sports betting experience, fine-tuning the recommendations based on player behaviour and habits, combining many factors in a single attention-grabbing feature.
EB: And, as I already mentioned, a winning combo of integrated feed and proprietary trading allows us to modify these offerings based on client requests, adding new markets and betting lines to customise further and enhance the player experience. This personalisation level makes GR8 Tech’s sportsbook platform stand out, as we understand that different regions have different preferences and betting habits.
By ensuring our platform can be adapted to fit these unique needs, we provide a tailored and localised betting experience that drives user engagement and, ultimately, revenue. It’s definitely a cherry on top of a sweet enough deal.
And how does this ultimately enable your partners to generate revenue in the long term?
EB: Personalisation is key in driving revenue growth in the long term for our partners. It allows the creation of a more engaging and interactive betting experience tailored to the individual user, which in turn encourages greater user activity and spending.
To highlight the significant impact of this, consider a case from one of our clients during the World Cup 2022. With our sportsbook, they experienced a +170% growth in their multiple bets share compared to the Euro 2020. This massive growth accounted for 60% of their Gross Gaming Revenue (GGR) during the World Cup.
This case perfectly illustrates the transformative potential of personalised betting experiences. It’s not only about meeting individual user preferences but also about driving significant growth and boosting the bottom line for our partners. Therefore, our platform’s personalised capabilities are a critical tool for our partners when it comes to long-term revenue generation.
What’s even greater, this exciting experience is not limited by the time of day, season, or availability of sporting events. We always have a wide range of esports, “synthetic” sports, local micro-events, etc. In fact, we can handle anything from bets on Eurovision to local mayoral elections. Thus, players can enjoy a rich gaming experience anywhere and anytime.
Tell us about how the platform has performed so far – how has launching your sportsbook as a separate product been received by your partners?
EB: As of today, GR8 Tech’s sportsbook product has been met with immense enthusiasm by our clients, largely due to its impact on ARPU. Our sportsbook has contributed to a +19.44% increase in ARPU for one of our largest clients in the first quarter of 2023. Another feature, the Real Time Bet Scoring system, has contributed to an additional +0.5% ARPU for our clients in the same period. These figures highlight how GR8 Sportsbook helps our partners substantially boost their revenue performance.
As thrilled as we are by these successes, we are even more excited about the future. We at GR8 Tech see ourselves as lifetime partners to our clients, rather than just another tech provider. That’s why we aim to work with a limited, select number of partners – to be able to provide each of them with maximum attention, expertise, and outstanding service.
As we tackle the big iGaming race together, our partners can expect the highest level of commitment and care for all their custom tasks, problems, and needs. I can’t wait to hear the feedback from the wider industry and new clients who choose to supercharge their ecosystems with our GR8 Sportsbook.
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