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What are you most looking forward to at this year’s industry-defining event?
All roads and flights, at least from the beginning of the year, will now converge at London’s ExCeL Centre for ICE in February. We are eager to set up shop at this event and present our new plans and progressive product portfolio at Booth S1-120. It’s a timely event that sets the tone for the rest of the year, and it’s not surprising. All week, the Atlas-IAC team will be present on site to meet old friends and make new connections. It will be fun as usual, but it will also provide a wealth of information at a crucial time when the industry must unite to face and overcome some major headwinds.
ICE London is a think-tank that will examine how operators and bettors can provide engaging, innovative betting experiences at some of the most lucrative events in the year. You will also have the opportunity to network with your peers and discuss many of the most pressing and important issues at the panels, talks, and at the tables and bars of the Atlas stand. What’s on your mind? The looming recession, the cost of living crisis and player profiling. How regulation is closer to home. How player engagement and retention strategies work. How are the American and African markets evolving? It’s helpful and sometimes illuminating for industry leaders to exchange thoughts on these topics and other innovations, so that we can all agree on the best way forward.
Atlas appears to be making great strides in emerging market markets lately. What’s next?
Atlas is the sector’s most flexible, scalable and efficient gaming and sports betting platform. We are the platform of choice for emerging markets like LatAm, Africa and Pan-African countries. Our highly modular and flexible solutions will help us gain traction in established markets, as well as those that are new to regulation. Atlas’ highly automated software is driven by live data and helps traders focus on value-added risks management decisions. It also eliminates manual labour that is required to maintain legacy systems. This is a problem you often see in mature markets due to enrgised deals. As more customers realize the value of modular and flexible solutions that can be tailored to their specific operational strategies, these deals will either end or evolve. Atlas CRM System is also a fully automated marketing system that allows operators to manage all their marketing and communications activities with customers from one location. These efficiency gains in cost and scaleability will prevail no matter where your company is located on the world stage.
What are Africa’s unique challenges?
Your brand will be the preferred wallet for every customer if it can provide quick or immediate access to funds from deposit to withdrawal. This is a universal truth that doesn’t just apply to Africa. Africa is unique in the fact that complex payment systems are needed in Africa than in developed countries. Customer trust in any operator hinges on their ability to pay out in a timely manner. Customers are heavily inclined to use the BetBuilder/accumulator model of small stakes-big-win scenarios. It is necessary to coordinate your payment methods country-bycountry, in order to meet the needs of many countries across Africa. This is similar to what you see in the US state-by-state. This requires exceptional agility to serve the Pan-African multiplicity like Atlas does.
However, just like in South America, it is important to also focus on Customer Support. This is one area in which automation won’t help you. African players would prefer to communicate with a human being fluent in their language and preferred dialect. Your site’s User Experience must be familiar. If you want to compete in any particular territory, you won’t have to reinvent the wheel. Africa, like LatAm (where Brazil’s sleeping giant of sports betting is about to awaken), is an emerging football-mad market. This gives us the opportunity to expand our international reach. Deals like these show how Atlas’ modular B2B division is able to serve emerging markets around the globe.
You’re big on automation. Is machine learning really a thing in sports betting or just a hype? Is it possible that we are still years behind other tech-driven industries? If so, how can we catch up?
It’s a great thing to report that our sector, traditionally slow to adopt the tech advances of other industries, has made significant strides over the past 18 months. I am even happier to share that Atlas’ innovations in this area have put us in the forefront of disruption in an industry that has been too often tethered to conservative thinking and legacy systems.
Machine-learning is gaining popularity. It allows operators to use generalizable tools to adapt and improve their programmatic code. This gives them an advantage over their competitors and provides them with a deeper understanding of their customers. Trading is a great example of this. It’s said that punters who bet on an event ahead of it are more likely to win. It’s true that this is a generalization with many exceptions. However, it helps explain why operators lower their limits closer the event’s start time (when most unknowns are known), so it’s easier to steal an edge. The latest AI tech can probabilistically analyze these “tells”, e.g. The latest AI tech can probabilistically drill down on these “tells” (e.g., time/size, location, gender) across all boards and create a profile of your customer in just a few trades. The same applies to marketing and trading tools. High rollers who are bonus abusers are evicted, and high-rollers who were lucky enough to get in early on are accommodated. You get the idea.
We are creatures of habit. AI, on the other hand, is a more intelligent animal. The trading algorithms will start to kick in and the client-specific marketing strategy will follow. This will allow for a personalized experience for punters. Operators dream of being able to log-in and know their customers. This dream has become a tangible reality thanks to Atlas’s AI-powered platform. Personalization in sports betting is a term that has been around for some time, but it has not become a reality. It is our goal to guide the industry towards personalizing player experiences.
Will the trading desk be available in the future?
Yes. Its role will change with automation. Its role as the nerve center of a trading organization does not need to change. It is still able to provide the assembly point for all the progressive feeds, including advanced pricing, scoring data and team and player updates. It is difficult to combine all this information and find precise answers for trading strategies and risk management. This challenge can be faced regardless of whether an individual controls the system or only oversees the machine-learning software. Sometimes, new services may emerge out of the midst of rapid progress. Verifiable Tracking is one example of a new test for the trading desk. However, it has also given it a new job: an integrity tool. The data specialists and sensitive market-models who now work behind the tennis tours are there to prevent match-fixing, or at the very least flag it. These tools will be refined and used to counter misinformation and human misdeeds. This task is for the most brilliant minds, who are aided by the best AI systems.
Why is this area of expertise so important?
Our MTA (Managed Trading Service), is our own and we strongly believe it has more advantages than any other competitor, whether they are established or new. The Trading Platform is a highly configurable platform that takes into consideration thousands of factors across sport, event and market. It also provides the best MTS possible. To ensure we offer the best odds, our MTS algorithms and related tools are cross-referenced to the profile/data of each user. We can set different pricing strategies for each competition/event. Additionally, we can customize individual sportsbook instances to highlight/order important competitions or events from the same back-office system. Our MTS is built around automation of our ever-changing algorithms. However, we understand that partners may want to outsource management (cue the “risk free” sportsbook solution, which we have been popular in emerging markets where we underwrite any downfall) or specific aspects of control over their sportsbook. This versatility is possible with the event/market odds and limits that can be set by each partner through our back office.
What about marketing and CRM? Can AI tools be as efficient in this area?
Atlas CRM System is a fully-automated marketing system that allows operators to manage all their communication and marketing activities with customers from one location. Our rules-based flows allow for personalized communications that are targeted to customers based on segmentation and customer profiling. Based on customer activity, betting behavior, and deposit frequency, customers can be placed in profiled segments.
There are many additional characteristics. Typically, VIP users are placed at the one end of this spectrum while arbitragers and bonus abusers (or suspected fraudsters) are placed at the other. Atlas-IAC allows each product vertical to have a unique segmentation number. Each customer can also be given an overall rating. For each client, you can create custom customer segmentation rules.
Every CRM platform must be able to influence individual consumers’ behavior. Our licensees can target specific customers with targeted promotions using a campaign management tool. Atlas’ advanced marketing tool allows for precise targeting of customers to provide generous promotional offers to high-quality clients. This is in contrast to other sports betting services that offer one-size-fits all campaigns to all customers.
How can you concisely describe the areas of Atlas’ provision and their integration?
Sure. First, the Atlas Seamless API provides a service to existing gambling operators that need to expand their product line to improve business performance. We can integrate any product you require into your existing platform, whether it is a Sportsbook or Casino, Live Casino, Virtual Sports, or any other product. An operator can have complete control over each product’s appearance and feel once it is integrated. Each product includes a multifunctional backoffice, which has an intuitive customisation module as well as a CMS. Operators can integrate all functionality of Atlas CMS, including our powerful CRM and risk management tools, with one seamless API.
Our Atlas CRM System is a fully-automated marketing system that allows you manage all your communication and marketing activities with customers from one location. Rules-based flows allow for personalized communication with clients, identification and trigger of client groups, increase campaign numbers through powerful tools that enable in-depth marketing analysis and prediction, as well as the ability to modify campaigns on the fly.
It’s key features include real time data collection and triggered activities; unique content-creating tools for template management across all communication channels; client segmentation tool that provides a myriad of triggers to identify and group clients; and messaging hub for all social media and messaging platforms
Finally, we have our risk management tools. These tools provide a broad range of tools for automated identification and restriction fraud customers and responsible management of good customers. To identify and manage “at-risk” customers, you don’t need to hire a large team of risk analysts. You can create and manage your own policies, rules and categories in the constructor. The rule-flow engine analyzes the activities of clients and categorizes them. The core components of the engine include in-depth analytics that are mounted on more than 200 triggers to manage client group. The two operational models it uses are AML-scoring and trigger-based scoring. They are supported by dedicated 24/7 support.
