iGaming Business magazine iGB 112 Sept/Oct 2018 | Page 17

Tech & Innovation

Tech & Innovation

iGaming Business: What are the key features of Betflow and why is now the right time to launch it? Barnabas Szelke: Betflow puts control back in the hands of the customer. AI-powered relevant insights and tailored bets are brought together in a live, personalised and highly engaging flow of unique Bettingcards, enabling customers to make quick and well-informed betting decisions and to bet responsibly. Several studies have shown that these are the features bettors currently miss. As an agile newcomer, we are addressing these needs ahead of the industry. iGB Live! was perfect timing for us as we went live a few weeks earlier for the FIFA World Cup. This allowed us to validate and fine-tune the core concept in a real-money betting environment – enabled by the Betfair Software Vendor Program – before it got measured by industry experts and investors at the start-up LaunchPad competition.
“ Our aim is to save time and effort for the more experienced sports bettors
and make their betting routine easier and more fun”
How has the start-up been funded? Over the last two years funding has come from the major co-founders.
What were the biggest challenges to getting this project off the ground? The current Betflow product is the result of our B2C product strategy to develop a single sportsbook account where customers can find the best tailored bets on their favourite sports and games with the best insights and odds. Our aim is to save time and effort for the more experienced sports bettors and make their betting routine easier and more fun, as well as make sports betting accessible and convenient for recreational punters.
The current challenge in the industry is the way in which customers find and bring together the best tailored bets with the best insights and the best odds; the biggest challenge on the B2B side is finding the best solution to this for each participant of the value chain. So far, so good. We’ re up and running and the number of active customers and daily bets are growing.
What’ s the next major milestone for the business? Our next challenge is to accelerate this growth, which requires further product development. We can do this by adding more sports( horse racing, for example); introducing next-level insight by processing more data points for the AI; through more personalisation and gamification; and finally by fine-tuning the proposition and business model. To achieve accelerated levels of growth we are looking for an investment of € 500,000 to be spent on developments and for preparing to scale the business.
Which jurisdictions are you targeting and over what timescale? Our versatile product leverages B2C and B2B, enabling us to help further grow the business of existing operators or platform suppliers on any regulated markets or even state monopoly operators / lotteries, as well as media companies. We are ready to establish either B2C cooperation by integrating the operator’ s content and price offering into a localised version of Betflow, or B2B partnerships by providing a wide range of fully customised facilities. This could be anything from an AI-powered bet recommendation tool to further increase second bet rate, to a tailored flow of Bettingcards overlaying the current platforms of operators. In line with our dedication towards simplicity, our B2B solutions are omni-channel, device neutral and supplier agnostic. Omni-channel means that casino and games-related offers can also be added to the flow; device neutral means that our Bettingcards will work on any devices from VR glasses to smart watches to retail terminals; and supplier agnostic means that our solutions can overlay any combination of proprietary or third party platforms and suppliers. Our combined B2C and B2B strategy is basically jurisdiction independent. This means we’ re ready to overlay a number of additional sportsbook operators in the UK and less challenging markets, or cooperate with a few operators on more challenging EU markets such as France, Italy or Spain – or even in the US. We can also set up partnerships with lottery or retail-only operators in more exotic markets.

“ To achieve accelerated levels of growth we are looking for an investment of € 500,000”

What’ s changed since you won the iGB Live! LaunchPad? We have been exposed to the industry and had some great feedback on our product and business model. We are in discussions with several investment groups – the big players in the industry. iGamingBusiness | Issue 112 | September / October 2018 15