Nowadays, founding a sports betting company is a real feat that can hardly be managed alone. In order to assert oneself in the market, strategic partnerships are required – above all with platform providers and odds providers. In addition, it must be strategically assessed to what extent it makes sense to outsource certain processes, such as risk management or KYC processes, especially at the beginning. You can read the first part “Synergies in the sports betting business Part 1: Team” here.
Which partners does my sports betting company need?
In the sports betting industry, there are a large number of possible partnerships that a sports betting provider can enter into – both in the area of their own team and in relation to external partners such as suppliers and third-party providers. It is important to always weigh what really helps the company’s progress and to only enter into strategically meaningful partnerships.
Some of the partnerships listed below are not absolutely necessary, especially for smaller companies, but the choice of your partners always depends on many factors, such as your target market, the type and size of your company and countless other, often legal, factors.
The following list gives you a comprehensive overview of the synergies that sports betting companies usually enter into:
Platform
The betting platform represents the technical foundation of your business and is used to handle all digital processes.
There are a few criteria to consider when choosing your platform:
- Quality of the platform (experience of the provider, technical standards, stability)
- Selection of frontends/products (click here for a reference: Bookmaker NEXT Frontends)
- Customizability/Options for diversification
- Integration of payment providers
- Integrations of third-party products (e.g. Casino, Virtual Sports)
- CRM, CMS and risk management tools
- Odds feed integrations (see also section “Odds provider”)
- Compliance options
- Costs (set-up, revenue share, monthly fees, etc.)
Particularly important for a decision are the integrations which are already present in the platform, e.g. payment providers, casino providers or even odds feeds. Some platforms also have their own CRM systems, which enable you to conduct effective marketing without the need to integrate external tools. An integrated CMS, which is optimized for sports betting, allows you to quickly and easily create and adapt sports betting websites and thus manage your website in a targeted manner, edit content and offer your betting customers an appealing experience. The more your platform can do from the start, the fewer features and functionalities you have to buy and set up at a later point in time and with increasing requirements.
Odds provider (data feed)
What would sports betting be without odds? To ensure that your betting customers can actually place bets, you need a data feed that supplies your platform with events, markets and odds.
With odds providers there are clear differences in the offer, the quality and the pricing, which must be taken into account for a decision. Examples of well-known quota suppliers are Betradar or Betgenius. Depending on the selected package, they provide your platform with pre-match and live odds and often offer additional features such as live match trackers, which, integrated into your website, enable your customers to follow the game live.
At this point it is essential to consider which software provider you are purchasing your betting platform from, as these are usually integrated with different odds providers. For this purpose, it should be clarified in advance of your planning which platform provider supports which data feeds.
Thanks to its Multi-Feed Approach, the Bookmaker NEXT software by Arland offers the possibility of obtaining odds from different sources at the same time. As a result, our customers have access to the powerful UOF (Unified Odds Feed) from Betradar with an offer of more than 400,000 events per year – system and source code customers also have the option of using the odds feed from Begeniusand other providers to expand their betting offer.
Risk management & KYC
Sports betting is always associated with a risk. In order to protect your company from fraud, errors or excessive profit distributions to betting customers, you need professional risk management and the professional implementation of KYC (“Know Your Customer”) processes. Typically this is an in-house department of the betting company that is busy 24/7 monitoring customers, games and betting. Running the risk management completely in-house always has the advantage that you retain maximum control over your operation, but it is also associated with a large amount of personnel.
Often there is also the option of outsourcing your risk management processes to the software provider. At Arland, we offer our customers the opportunity to use our bookmakers’ many years of know-how for their business and to have risk management run entirely through us. Customer identification in the context of KYC processes can also be outsourced to specialized companies (see also:KYC – Challenges for sports betting providers). With the help of Betradar’s MTS (“Managed Trading Services”) you can also outsource part of your risk management, which means that fewer in-house employees are required.
Payment Providers
In order to enable your betting customers to deposit money online on your platform, you need to cooperate with payment providers. Customers can use them to deposit and withdraw money simply and easily using debit or credit cards, prepaid tickets or digital wallets (e.g. PayPal, ecoPayz, Skrill, …).
The range of means of payment is highly relevant for the acquisition of new customers (nobody is going to bet where they cannot simply deposit via known payment methods). The choice of payment method depends on the payment habits in the respective market, but also on the availability of payment providers.
ATTENTION: The availability of most payment providers these days is tied to strict compliance guidelines and the existence of a valid sports betting license. We will gladly advise you on this topic.
The easiest way to assess the payment habits in a market is to analyze the competition in that market. What payment methods do other companies offer in your target market? Do customers in your market primarily pay with credit cards or do they prefer methods such as Paypal, Boleto or prepaid systems?
Casinogames / Virtual Sports
Casino games, often also called “slots”, and virtual sports (virtually simulated sports) are great additions to the sports betting offer on your website. These are games that are directly integrated into your betting platform. Whether and how you are allowed to offer online casino and virtual sports in your target market depends on the legal situation. You can obtain more information on this from the responsible authority in the respective country. By the cancellation of most sporting events in 2020 at the latest, it has been shown that sports betting providers can hardly avoid making their offer more diverse.
In order to optimally complement the betting experience, Bookmaker NEXT is integrated with the offer from Tom Horn, Booming Games, Evolution Gaming, Golden Race and Betradar Virtuals.
Marketing Partnerships
For successful marketing in the sports betting business, it is necessary to enter into marketing partnerships. This can be done, for example, in the form of sponsorship in return for banner or jersey advertising, or as part of an affiliate system.
You can read more on this topic here: Successful marketing in the sports betting business
Media Houses
Media companies have enormous reach and are a valuable partner for achieving your marketing goals. Cooperation with a media company or publisher is particularly advisable for larger companies, as a strategic partnership with them can generate great awareness and reach for your betting platform.
This type of cooperation also creates great trust in your brand, which particularly young sports betting companies with sufficient capital can use to penetrate a target market as quickly as possible.
In order to operate successfully in the sports betting industry, it is necessary to enter into strategic partnerships. With more than 23 years of industry experience, we have specialized in accompanying you from the planning to the implementation of your sports betting business so that you can achieve your goals.
The Arland experts will be happy to advise you on which partners can best support your sports betting company. Simply write to us at [email protected]!