SPORTS BETTING

UK – Scientific Games’ OpenSports technology processes 50m bets during Grand National

By Phil - 12 April 2021

Scientific Games’ OpenSports technology delivered over 50m bets for its long-term sports customers during the Grand National – run behind closed doors for the first time since its inaugural race in 1839.

One OpenSports customer broke all Grand National betting records with their peak bets exceeding 57,000 per minute – a 128 per cent increase on 2019.

The 2020 event was cancelled and with retail and on-course betting postponed this year, the 2021 Grand National was tipped to be the ultimate test of the robustness and stability of the OpenSports technology stack.

Long-term customers Sky Betting and Gaming, Paddy Power, Betfair, Ladbrokes, Coral and William Hill all witnessed significant increases in volume and continue to rely on OpenSports as a key part of their product offerings.

During the three-day festival over 19m bets were placed on the Grand National race itself, up 60.5 per cent vs 2019. One OpenSports customer processed over 57,000 peak bets per minute. Total account transactions across the three days were up 55 per cent compared to 2019.

“Over the last three years, teams across SG Digital have transformed our OpenSports technology to meet the demands of the world’s leading operators. Whether it’s the Grand National, the Big Game or the Melbourne Cup, we have a responsibility to the largest sportsbooks in every corner of the world to deliver on our promises and exceed their expectations,” said Jordan Levin, Group CEO, Digital for Scientific Games.

OpenSports is a full suite of sportsbook products and services that covers: the account platform; the betting engine; trading and risk management; and bespoke front-end expertise.

This year also saw the Company launch one of the worlds’ first sports content aggregation platforms called OpenArena. With over 35 third-party sports content providers signed up to the platform and available through a single integration, the Company is at the forefront of the new wave of innovation in the industry.

“At the outset of our transformation process, two key paths were identified. Firstly, our 25-year reputation for stability and reliability were absolutely non-negotiable. Secondly, we set about completely modernizing our technology by shifting services to the cloud and using cutting-edge frameworks like React and Python for our artificial intelligence needs. Combining these ingredients with over 900 dedicated sports technologists, our customer deployment pipeline is now second to none,” said Keith O’Loughlin, SVP Sports at Scientific Games.

“That’s what makes this Grand National performance even more outstanding. The sheer volume of new deployments our teams are delivering in parallel. Three years ago, we were integrating one or two new customers a year. This year, we’re on track to deploy forty across some of the world’s most profitable markets. A huge credit to our global team and the long-term partnership approach we continue to build with market leaders,” O’Loughlin added.