SiGMA News caught up with ’s Sportsbook Product Manager, Edmond Ghulyan to discuss the impact of Covid-19, the importance of localisation and some newly launched developments on their platform

Hi Edmond, it’s been a challenging 7 months for the industry. What has Digitain done to mitigate the impact of the pandemic, especially on live sports?

The flexibility of the has been one of our greatest assets this year, especially when having to deal with the impact of the Covid-19 virus on live sporting events from April until August.

In order to mitigate the impact of the virus on partners’ revenues we had to pretty quickly refocus our product development roadmap in order to deliver additional live betting and gaming opportunities.

These included; a new dedicated esports section with live streaming and real-time statistics, plus the launch of Digitain’s own esports product. We also integrated a live simulated reality data feed from Betradar to provide additional in-play betting opportunities. This allowed Digitain to actually increase the number of in-play markets during lock-down.

Our biggest achievement, given the time available and the number of moving parts involved, was the rapid development and launch from scratch of a brand-new sports product – Table Football – featuring professional players, AI-driven live odds, live streaming and offering a match every 15 minutes with 60 in-play markets. The high flexibility of the Digitain platform is possible through the use of our own algorithms, machine learning and the use of AI by our own development team, based in Yerevan.

There’s lots of talk in the industry of the importance of localisation. What do feel about this?

There’s a balance to be struck with providing a stable, multi-functional platform and offering localisation. The more localisation offered, the more of an overhead you have to manage in terms of platform management and change control.

Nevertheless, you also have to appreciate the need for different approaches dependent on the market – whether it be the key channel, look and feel, regulatory requirements, content, layout, marketing tools or even style of customer service. Taking a one-size-fit-all approach for large continents, or even countries, does not wash these days – and we have to listen to our partners’, and potential partners’, requirements and provide solutions. We’re fortunate that our flexible platform, and the skills of our technology team, allow us to meet the needs for localisation. We have developed a self-help tool – DigiBuilder – that also enables our partners to design their own look and feel, layout, banner configuration and more, all in 15 minutes. We also offer a number of versions of our sportsbook view – for different regions well as WAP and SMS variations – very popular in Africa where bandwidth is an issue.

In terms of new developments – what have you been working on?

Talking about localisation – it’s worth mentioning our new Tax Engine application. This development grew out of conversations with some of our partners in Africa, where there can be challenges around collecting the correct gaming taxes from customers and ensuring compliance with local regulations.

Our new Tax Engine does all the heavy lifting for the operators and allows them to confidently tackle their key business objectives. Key functions include the ability to automatically deduct betting tax from the customer’s stake, from their winnings – or in the case of some countries – from both ends. Best of all it works well with all versions of our sportsbook – from turnkey to sportsbook API, and also works across all channels; web, mobile and even in betshops. Plus there’s a really cool reporting suite too. One other interesting development is our new Football Live Tracker – which offers customers a live visualisation of football matches, with goals, cards, possession stats and more. Its very fast, due to the web socket technology we use and we cover 736 football championship from over 150 countries. We even show ball animations and indicate which player is in possession. We’re really proud of this product – a lot of hard work by the team here has paid off.

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