Kindred Group has elaborated on its plans to build a proprietary sportsbook, saying it signals the Unibet operator’s intention to become a more “customer-experience-focused organisation”.
When announcing an extension to its partnership with Kambi earlier this month, Kindred revealed that it was to develop an in-house sportsbook, and stop using its former subsidiary’s technology. This will be build around its horse race betting product, Kindred Racing Platform, and is expected to launch in 2024.
Providing more information on the new sportsbook product, chief product officer Erik Bäcklund said the move would give Kindred greater control over what it delivers to customers.
“What underpins our strategic intention is moving away from being a sales and marketing-led business, towards a product- and customer-experience-focused organisation,” he explained. “A key part of this strategy is having full control of our product suite.”
Bäcklund added that a proprietary sportsbook was the “missing piece of the puzzle” for Kindred, after it acquired online casino supplier Relax Gaming outright in 2021.
“After the hugely successful development of our racing platform, the opportunity to expand its capabilities into a fully-fledged sportsbook platform was obvious,” Bäcklund said. “In fact, it was built with sports in mind from the start.
“That is the route we are taking and we continue to make very good progress behind the scenes.”
He added that the sportsbook will include a number of automated processes for trading among other elements.
“Big headlines for the platform include the broad integration of fast, rich data, sophisticated presentation algorithms and automation in as many operational areas as possible,” he said. “This includes trading and margin management.”
Meanwhile, group head of trading Ben Colley revealed that the operator’s racing product had been designed with a view to one day expanding to cover sports betting as well.
“Since we launched the racing product a few years ago it has outperformed some ambitious expectations,” he said. “We set out to create what we considered to be the first truly 24/7 racing product, with as much streaming and rich content that we could lay our hands on.
“When we first started building that racing platform, we always had one eye on a possible future role in mainstream sports betting, so the paving slabs were laid some time ago for what we’re working on now.”
Colley added that he still saw a place for a relationship with Kambi and Sportradar – which in 2019 acquired the Optima platform used by Kindred – despite the plans to create a new sportsbook product.
“Our main sportsbook suppliers, Kambi and Optima (Sportradar), are both excellent and very well-established products that have worked well for Kindred for many years,” he said. “Indeed, we see a future partnership with Kambi and Sportradar as one that evolves with our own, proprietary aspirations.”
