Defining
Sports Betting Tech
An arm of Unibet Group until 2014 , the now-independent Kambi Group has grown to become one of the world ’ s premier suppliers of sports betting software solutions
By Alan Campbell
Kambi Group PLC is widely considered to be one of the world ’ s leading independent providers of online sports betting technologies and services , with its client list currently running to more than 40 business-to-consumer ( B2C ) operators on six continents .
The Malta-headquartered company offers an in-house developed software platform featuring an advanced front-end user interface as well as risk management , customer intelligence and odds compiling functionalities .
Kristian Nylen , chief executive officer of Kambi , notes that the history of the company stretches back more than 30 years to a meeting with Anders Ström . Then studying economics and mathematics at the University of Karlstad in Sweden , the enthusiastic Nylen subsequently struck up a friendship with the man who would go on to establish betting and gaming behemoth Unibet Group in 1997 .
Auspicious Inception
After completing his university studies , Nylen worked in finance , but was soon persuaded to join Ström at the new enterprise his entrepreneurial friend had just begun running from the bedroom of a west London flat . Inaugurated at the height of the dot-com boom , Unibet Group went on to benefit from the growing interest in iGaming and betting to become one of the world ’ s most prominent operators of domains , offering a vast array of online casino , poker , bingo and sports betting entertainment .
“ As Unibet Group began to grow , the sports betting landscape was rapidly changing as regulation in Europe came into play and the popularity of live betting exploded ,” Nylen says .
“ Running a sportsbook in the early 2000s cost little compared to running one today , with in-play and regulation being the catalysts as they were driving costs . Live betting was still to establish itself when I started working at Unibet Group , but everyone could see that this was where things would go .”
Inspired by such trends , Nylen began advocating for Unibet Group to
18 Global Gaming Business JUNE 2023