Q&A: Sporting Risk on the future of the sport betting supply ecosystem

Sporting Risk pulled off something of a coup earlier this year as the firm added former Genius Sports business director, Andy Phillips, as chief commercial officer. The supplier, which is headed up by CEO Henry Newman, began life as a betting syndicate some nine years ago and has since sprawled out into various facets of the sporting and betting worlds.

The company has offerings in data analytics for professional football clubs, but its focus now lies in its sports betting B2B arm. The business recently launched a deep player props offering to complement its data driven insights, which have been snapped up by the likes of ComeOn Group and Betfred.

Here, Phillips details his decision to link up with the supplier, what the future holds for the B2B sports betting space and how smaller firms can blend into the ecosystem with established giants.

EGR Technology: Why did you join decide to link up with Sporting Risk after a spell in consultancy?

Andy Phillips (AP): I was full time with Rei Do Pitaco, the leading DFS brand in Brazil, so I was on the operator side looking at suppliers and taking a different view on the industry. I was seeing how operators can differentiate themselves, where the best value for money is and what can you control in-house. I learned a lot in that year.

I was looking to come back to the supplier side and bring those learnings to a business like Sporting Risk. What is interesting here is there is a huge amount of IP. These guys have been building the models and technology for a long time and they’ve got proven competency as a supplier. It didn’t feel like a risk at all.

EGR Technology: How much has the player prop market changed the industry?

AP: The interest in player-based markets has grown quite rapidly. The opportunity to combine these and give customers more choice, gives operators a point of differentiation. We’ve built a platform for understanding the context of the game and serving the right markets when they are most relevant.

That approach isn’t something operators have traditionally done, but now with more and more player prop and stat markets to accommodate, building a UX that curates all this content in real time is the key.

EGR Technology: What innovations in sports betting do you see coming to the fore?

AP: I think the next iteration of bet builders is where we go from here. Today, you often seen pre-made bet builders from bookmakers to make it easy for customers. They’ll serve one up and quite often it is a pretty random selection. That product is doing well but, for me, once a customer has made that bet they can easily forget what individual selections they chose because there isn’t necessarily any logic behind it.

The next stage is using data to tell a cohesive story. If you present customers with a rationale or narrative for the combination you are proposing, they can very quickly either agree or disagree with that. The product is more fun and recreational when you provide the context.

EGR Technology: What markets are going to be the most fruitful for sports betting suppliers over the next few years?

AP: For us, the biggest opportunity is in football. Most of our conversations are with European operators. Latam is also getting very interesting. We can provide a real point of differentiation for operators in markets like Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Chile and Mexico. Those leagues aren’t currently well served with player-level markets. There’s a huge opportunity to win market share by having a unique and localised product.  The same goes for regions like central and eastern Europe, where the leagues just don’t get the same focus from incumbent suppliers as with the big five.

EGR Technology: How does a smaller operator go about challenging established giants like Genius Sports and Sportradar?

AP: I think the way the industry is developing, at the moment, is seeing the big data providers competing with one another to pay more for rights and then having to charge more downstream. There has been a lot of technology development in capturing the data that has come from outside the industry, such as optical tracking and wearable tech. All of these things create more granularity in the data.

However, there’s not so much being built downstream to turn those new data points into valuable betting products for operators. We can have a symbiotic relationship with the data providers because we can help operators fully exploit the value in the data. At the moment, not a lot of large firms have time to spend on the more speculative R&D because of congested roadmaps. Smaller firms like ourselves can fit into that ecosystem and play an important role in the value chain.

It isn’t necessarily about challenging them, it is more about working hand in hand to help them realise the potential of the data they have at their fingertips.

EGR Technology: What hopes and expectations do you have for the next 12 to 24 months?

AP: We want to build up the customer base of existing products. I think there will be gradual iterations of the existing products to expand them and their relevance. I’m in the process of presenting what we have to the operators, and I know most will value what we have to offer. In the meantime, we have new customers to announce and are looking to help more brands go live with us in 2023.