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Readers Choice Awards
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Best Sportsbook Software: Orbis
Jeremy Thompson-Hill, COO, Orbis
What sets Orbis apart from the competition?
Firstly, the product’s scalability differentiates Orbis from its competitors. Operators can build their offering without having to outsource to a different supplier each time, making for a much more streamlined operation.
Scalability is one of Orbis’ key values in terms of the software’s performance at peak times. Take the Grand National last year where, across Orbis’ top six customers, over 2.8m bets were made at a peak of 99,000 bets per ten minutes.
Secondly, the single account. Operators can use marketing, promotion and customer management tools to track and understand customers across different platforms. They can see where their poker player goes after playing a slot game, or entice their roulette player with a sports bet if they have never tried it before.
Lastly, the open platform sets Orbis apart. Orbis were the first to integrate third parties, promoting and including their content beside our own and our partners now include Wagerworks, Barcrest and Cryptologic.
What has been the company’s biggest breakthrough in 2009?
2009 has been Orbis’ biggest and most successful year yet. The business has made very successful inroads into new markets, many of which we are still unable to discuss publicly.
A lot of momentum has been gained in state and government-run betting and wagering interests, most notably PMU. The importance of PMU to Orbis is their place in the French market and, despite their experience in pools betting, they still see value in partnering with Orbis to integrate our software.
What has been the biggest hurdle you’ve had to overcome?
You either have problems because you’re shrinking, or expanding. We’re lucky because we are expanding, so the challenge is to accommodate new customers without affecting the priorities of our business and without driving our people to a point where they become unproductive.
As much as you can disclose, what milestones are you striving for in 2010?
In 2010 Orbis aims to focus on the benefits of the single account via innovation and software. The market constantly demands smarter software, so we will focus on improving the tools we already have with an emphasis on real-time immediacy and creating a community feel for players.
Back-end developments will also change the way operators on Orbis’ platform manage markets and pricing, allowing new tools for calculating risk and liabilities. These will also enable them to have more freedom in managing the look and feel of their interface.
There remain existing products in the online gaming space that would compliment the single account and the Orbis portfolio that we’ve not yet introduced, so, without saying too much, 2010 will be the year for exploring these further.
Having successfully retained your award from last year, how has Orbis’ software continued to innovate over the past 12 months?
Undoubtedly the most significant innovation in terms of sports book has been LiveServ, a piece of software that allows data to travel directly from database to browser with no time delay or need to refresh – a development with very exciting implications.
One application for the software, LiveOdds, has already gone live with Paddy Power and new applications will continue to developed over the coming year, including LiveChat, which will allow chatting between players and live support for the user.
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