Chief Product Officer, Kambi Group
Kambi: modernising product portfolio will meet any operator needs
Kambi’s Erik Logdberg, Chief Operating Officer, discusses on how the company is expanding to enhance its product strategy, with Morten Tonnesen, Chief Commercial Officer at Shape Games and Anton Janèr, Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Abios, delving into the duo’s collaboration with the sports betting provider.
Transcript (22 segments)
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Interviewer0:02
Hi Eric, could you tell me more about how Kambi is evolving its product strategy?
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Erik Lögdberg0:08
We've been in the last two years I would say very focused on modularizing our technology and our service to create a more open full Sportsbook where our customers can take more control of what goes into the product, the offering, and how to package that out to the players. And another great benefit of modularizing processes is that we're going to be able to start creating Site Services that are actually unsettling to operators with their own sports. Another big thing going on for us has been what we call the third generation trading, which is moving towards reinventing the way we will essentially build the Sportsbook, the trading function, towards an algorithm-first approach. So it's a lot of two main things going on for us.
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Interviewer0:50
What industry and consumer trends are driving this?
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Erik Lögdberg0:56
The greatest challenge for any sports book is to remove barriers for the end users in increasing a more and more exciting offering and taking away any type of friction on bet placement. And with better use of data, internal data we have as well as data from the stadiums, etc., with an algorithmic approach, we believe we can do this better and better. And that's what we see then users ask for. In the future, it will be less about either insourcing or outsourcing a sports book. We see that in most cases it will be a mix of the two. Some will do much outsourcing, big part, and some will be on the other side of the spectrum and do a big part in-house but a bit of outsourced. So with this modernization, we're creating a product portfolio really that can meet any type of operator's need regardless of where they all respect from.
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Interviewer1:49
What are some of the services that Kambi is going to look to offer operators?
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Erik Lögdberg1:53
Of course, first we have our existing great turnkey Sportsbook. Also, we'll get then is the more open service, I guess. In the extreme, you can think about it as a pure Sportsbook platform, the risk management, the regulatory compliance, and the bet placement functions onto which an operator can choose to take some of our services but also use other third-party services or build themselves. And then finally on the modularized services, we already have of course all builds in Esports, we have Shape on the UX side, and now we'll more and more be looking to create the trading services as well. Right now, what we think is most exciting to take to the market is our leading bet builder product.
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Interviewer2:36
What would make Kambi's modularized service unique in the market?
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Erik Lögdberg2:39
We're coming from being a full Sportsbook, our turnkey service, so we have the 360 view of the full Sportsbook operation and we have all the data from the full Sportsbook operation and all the experience of creating that full Sportsbook and the individual services as part of this. They hugely benefit from that turnkey context and that's quite unique in how we create these products.
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Interviewer3:06
Can you give us a brief introduction to Shape Games?
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Shape Games Representative3:11
Shape Games is a company that focuses on building omnichannel front-end solutions for the sports betting and casino. So we build a web app and retail, but our main focus is on app since what most companies see is that most of the revenue these days are generated from app engagement with consumers.
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Interviewer3:30
You joined Kambi last year. Can you tell us more about how is your offering complementing theirs?
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Shape Games Representative3:40
Yes, so Kambi acquired us because they had a big gap when it came to delivering native app to the existing customer base and new clients. And what we have been doing, since we already integrated with the Kambi solution prior to the acquisition and had a long-term relationship with Kambi, what we've done now is integrated and are in conversations with a number of existing Kambi clients to roll out our solution to them and improve the experience for Kambi customers and future prospects as well.
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Interviewer4:07
Is there a partnership with Kambi innovating the front-end experience?
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Shape Games Representative4:11
Working with Kambi, we have a much stronger and closer collaboration product development-wise from the Sportsbook and the innovations that are happening there through to the front end and consumer experience, which will only be able to strengthen what we can bring to market in the future. We're very much focused on two areas of product for consumers: one is customization, so making the product more tailored to the individual user, and number two is flexibility, which is enabling more flexibility both in the types of bets, the type of how bet builder works, and everything else for the consumer to ensure that the product of the future is significantly better than it was before.
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Interviewer4:54
And what can we see from Shape Games by the end of this year?
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Shape Games Representative4:59
Improved product in terms of customization. We're looking at a number of improvements to the product. We're working with Kambi on enhanced bet builder and a number of other functionalities. So overall, the consumers will see a lot of improvement in the experience they will have when they are visiting customers that get their product provided by Kambi and Shape together.
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Interviewer5:21
Can you tell us more about ABS and what do you guys do at ABS?
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ABS Representative5:27
We are a daytime content provider within Esports and have been for the past 10 years. And super exciting now we're moving into the sports betting space with our own proprietary odds product, which is going to be very fun to see roll out now.
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Interviewer5:42
Can you talk a bit more about how does Esports fit into the wider sports betting ecosystem?
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ABS Representative5:49
It fits in just like any other sports. It is digital, of course, so it's different in that sense, but the dynamics are very much the same. You know, it's a sports with pros, with fans. Sports betting product fits really nicely in there as another layer of engagement on top of that.
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Interviewer6:05
Is there a difference in data collection when it comes to sports betting and Esports?
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ABS Representative6:11
I mean, to some extent for sure. I mean, since this sports is digital by nature, you know, there's a lot more data produced, that sort of high quality. So the question is mostly how do you get that and how do you work in a smart way with that amount of data. But you know, in the same way we're talking a lot about third generation trading here and pricing in regular sports, and I think the tools that we have there are getting pretty advanced now as well. So it's you know different but a lot of the same still.