BETKING
“Larger organisations usually have one big team that manages all of their data and insights . Instead of that , they should be taking a democratised approach ”
IAN THOMAS VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS , BETKING from the front-end of our application stack should be treated no differently from the data we get from our backend BI ( business intelligence ) environment . We want to be able to expose that information at high volume to our growing data science team and build a range of value-added models against it .” The resulting opportunities could include recommenders , predictive monetisation features , and enhanced fraud detection / problematic player recognition capabilities .
These new features will also fit into BetKing ’ s broader development plans , not least of which is a significant market expansion to new territories and product areas . Although exact details are currently being kept under wraps , Thomas indicates that entertainment broadcaster MultiChoice Group , one of Africa ’ s most prominent companies in the sector , will play a key role . “[ MultiChoice has ] broadcast rights for premiership and other top-league football in Africa ,” an important asset for a continent whose primary consumer betting interest is focused on that sport . “ BetKing ’ s goal is to deliver an integrated entertainment experience straddling the consumption of sports content and live games and placing bets on them ,” he adds . “ A lot of our product investment and expansion over the next 12 to 24 months will be focused on that area .”
BetKing ’ s growing maturity in leveraging data across all levels of the company affords one of its biggest opportunities for growth . Thomas reasons that unlocking this information will improve decision-making , help BetKing understand its customers better , price its products appropriately and create a better experience overall . “ Operating in Africa creates some unique challenges ,” he says , “ a lot of which has to do with the rapidly changing state of internet
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