Interview: Unikrn plays smart with AI in esports

Best known for its expertise in esports betting, Unikrn has been working hard behind the scenes on two new innovative products which co-founder and CEO Rahul Sood believes will shake-up the vertical. In a bid to solve the problem of a lack of esports content to bet on, Unikrn has released two brand new products: virtual and streamer betting.

Unikrn Virtual allows players to place bets on esports matches around the clock by placing wagers on randomly selected matches from the past. The product uses an RNG to select a round from a historical match for a player to bet on. Meanwhile, Unikrn Streamer allows players to bet on a streamer’s gameplay live using game analytics, new AI trading bots and screen analysing technology.

Unikrn, which also uses crypto and blockchain, is pushing ahead with technological advancements in the esports arena to offer a variety of betting options to its punters. While the spectator betting products are not yet available in the US under its sports betting licence, Unikrn’s skill-based Umode product, which launched in January, is already available in 41 states in the US.

And with a casino product also in the pipeline, Unikrn has a busy year ahead in terms of product development. Sood explains the technical know-how behind the new products and how Unikrn is embracing the opportunities in crypto and blockchain.

Rahul Sood, CEO, Unikrn

EGR Technology: Can you tell me more about your new product Unikrn Virtual?

Rahul Sood (RS): The challenge with esports is, like horseracing, that there isn’t a ton of content out there, and unless you’re willing to take risks on low tier tournaments (which we don’t do) you can have hours of dead time. So Unikrn took a page out of the horseracing industry with their video betting terminals using fake horses. With the Unikrn Virtual Betting Game, we use historical match information and randomise it using our regulator approved RNG. It lets people bet on matches that happened in the past. It presents the user with the names of the teams and tells you who won overall before you place a bet. It then randomly picks a round that you bet on. We describe it as a new game every minute. There’s 550,000 hours of betting content available with a ton more on the way. Even if you are an esports historian, you don’t know which round will be picked. It’s actually really fun and we noticed in our first few weeks it took in over 50% of our sportsbook bets.

EGR Technology: How does the AI work in Unikrn Streamer Betting?

RS: We have a list of streamers on our platform. Normally a company would have a trader watching the streamers play and place odds. The problem is that it isn’t scalable. So, over the last year we developed these AI trading bots. We ingested a ton of match data. We understand the streamers and how good they are. It’s fully automated and uses AI trading bots, computer vision, and predictive analytics to capture what’s on the screen and calculate the odds. Currently it works in Apex Legends and Fortnite and we have plenty more titles in the works. The technology we have built here is completely out of this world in terms of the rest of the industry. Again, this is all approved by our regulator, so everywhere our sports betting licence applies, Unikrn Streamer Betting is available.

EGR Technology: Were there any technical challenges you came across with Streamer Betting?

RS: Yes, lots of technical challenges. When you think that every stream, streamer, layout and gameplay is different. How good they are at the game is also different. Just having these AI trading bots being able to adjust the odds on the fly, this is all happening with computer vision tech. It was certainly very challenging to create, but this is why I often describe Unikrn as a tech company first. On top of all of this we had to get it approved by our regulator. None of this is easy but it’s well worth it in the end.

EGR Technology: Can you tell me more about your Connekt and Umode products?

RS: With Connekt, we came up with a way where customers can connect their favourite games to the platform. So you can come to the Unikrn platform and connect your League of Legends, CS:GO, Dota2, Fortnite, and Halo accounts. You earn coins for participating (UnikoinGold and UnikoinSilver) that you can use to bet.

With Umode, this is where it gets super interesting. In the past, if you wanted to bet on a skill game you bet on yourself and I bet on myself. The problem with that is you get the poker effect. In online poker, when you bet on yourself if you lose you’re never going to come back and play if all the sharks are coming in and beating you. Now you can bet on yourself (against the house) on Halo for the first time. Umode launched at the beginning of January and we’ve spent 0 dollars on marketing. All we’ve been doing is testing it (live testing). We wanted to make sure the odds were working right, the customers are having a good experience and we’ve been fixing all the bugs. Now we are very confident in it, which is why we low key launched Halo in May and we are ready to start marketing it.

The key difference between sportsbook and this is Umode is skill betting. We can take UKG (UnikoinGold) and local currencies such as Euros or US dollars in multiple markets globally. What makes this super unique is our regulator applied a licence to this as well, which in many countries we don’t need – like in the US. Unikrn Umode is available in 41 states. It’s truly incredible, we hope more people take notice soon. Think of it this way, while slot machine companies are working on ‘skill-based slot machines’ by combining games people don’t know or care about with wagering and an RNG, Unikrn is taking games people love to play and building wagering experiences around them. We tend to think our model is better and we are certain the customers agree with us.

With Umode, you can back yourself to win

EGR Technology: What is your product development strategy for this year?

RS: Now that we’ve launched these products and we have our licence, which we acquired late last year, it’s just about localising in various markets so adjusting languages, spending money on marketing and bringing on payment processors. Believe it or not, we’ve never had a payment processor. We’re looking for payment processors that will allow us to accept Visa, Mastercard, credit cards etc. We’re ready to grow the business. Anyone that wants to talk about partnerships, we’ll be open to it but for now we are purely focused on growing the Unikrn platform. Everything is ready and the technology is built. We’re just ready to put fuel in the engine and start marketing.

EGR Technology: You’ve ventured into crypto, can you tell me more about that? Do you still use Unikoins too?

RS: Yes, we do. The challenge with crypto is the lack of regulatory clarity in the US. We see it as the future in the States especially with younger people. We launched our original token in 2015, UnikoinSilver, then in 2017 we introduced a blockchain version called UnikoinGold. The way it works is you connect your game account to the platform and you earn Unikoins. You also get betting bonuses if you place a bet on the platform and you can deposit Euros, USD or UKG. We’re building an ecosystem around the Unikoin and you can assume that our customers will bet with all options we offer them.

EGR Technology: What opportunities are you seeing with blockchain?

RS: A lot of companies out there are just shoehorning blockchain into their platform somehow so they can say they are doing blockchain. Unless you have a real reason for it, it doesn’t make sense. In our case, we have a real reason. We built an entire back-end on blockchain and we built a wallet system, and a transaction engine that supports 9,000 transactions per second.

We have three types of betting – casino, spectator and skill betting. No company – no IGT or Scientific Games, or anyone else we spoke with – has a back-end capable of handling those types of betting as well as different cryptocurrencies. So, we decided to build everything ourselves on the blockchain. The blockchain-based wallet works really well from a regulator standpoint because we have a full history of customer bets and we can do forensic wallet tracking. It’s easier to track anti-money laundering with blockchain. There are tons of opportunities for gambling with blockchain. We’re on the edge of it. Every major gambling operator is going to build something on blockchain in the next five years.

EGR Technology: How has the popularity of streaming platforms like Twitch helped to fuel your customer numbers?

RS: We haven’t done any advertising directly and we haven’t tapped into that potential just yet. People associate Unikrn with esports and I think we are the biggest brand out there for esports so it’s been a good halo effect. Overall we will see growth this year as we see more paid acquisition. Now that Unikrn launched Streamer Betting, the two areas are intersecting. I can’t wait to see how it goes.

EGR Technology: You hired Ambika Zutshi to oversee Unikrn’s upcoming casino product. How is that vertical progressing?

RS: I can’t say much yet but we’re doing soft launches in various markets. We have a licence for it and the product is ready, Ambika is working hard and she’s also learning a new way of doing things at Unikrn.

A lot of companies out there are just shoehorning blockchain into their platform somehow so they can say they are doing blockchain. Unless you have a real reason for it, it doesn’t make sense.

EGR Technology: How is real-money esports betting taking off in Europe?

RS: We haven’t had a payment processor on our platform until last month. We’ve been doing free-to-play and Unikoin betting while we build out our tech but now it is time to grow the business. In Europe it’s actually very popular and it’s growing every day. As our platform grows and as we start to put money into marketing, along with products like virtual and streamer, it’s going to get much bigger from here.

EGR Technology: Is Unikrn experimenting with innovative technologies such as augmented reality, virtual reality, voice technology etc?

RS: We’ve been playing around with augmented reality in the background with various games. We created an AR game for the MGM Grand at one point. We haven’t launched anything in that area just yet. Quite frankly, just doing AI trading bots is probably the biggest deal ever. I don’t know how we are going to top that. The idea that I can legitimately put “AI, esports, blockchain, crypto, gambling” in my LinkedIn profile makes me laugh.

EGR Technology: What opportunities are opening up for Unikrn in the US since the repeal of PASPA last year?

RS: The opportunities are pretty significant but the US is very fragmented so every state that is opening up needs a local casino partner. There’s this whole skin business where you either get your own skin or you don’t. It’s pretty confusing. It would be really nice if there was a federal template that people could follow but right now there isn’t. The global market for gambling is huge for the online space and there’s tons of opportunities for us to grow globally. There is no reason for us to focus on the US just yet but there’s a few partnerships we are working on currently that will change that. I totally expect that this year Unikrn will be in the US with spectator betting. The largest casinos are banging at our door since the launch of Umode, and now Streamer and Virtual. Our Umode platform is available in 41 states in the US so skill betting is available today. The Isle of Man gave us a sports betting licence on Umode to cover other markets just because of how we cover odds.

EGR Technology: Is it easy or difficult for betting start-ups in the US trying to get a foot in the door and where will the innovation come from in the US?

RS: It’s probably hard to be a start-up in this space unless you operate outside of the law because the regulatory side is just a killer. It’s a necessary thing but it can be very complex. It can be very expensive. I think innovation is going to come from the esports space because it is more of a tech savvy area. We’ve just created betting on an area that no one has done betting on – streamer betting. No one has been able to solve that problem yet and we did it. There’s going to be a lot of greenfield opportunities in the space that we come up with. We created betting on Halo – who’s done that? Nobody’s done that? We created the Unikrn Virtual Betting Game, and man when you see what’s coming, I think you’ll be blown away.

Unikrn Virtual Betting

EGR Technology: How much crossover is there between online gambling and video games? What are the opportunities to bridge the gap between the two and also to cross-sell between verticals?

RS: Video games are played by all kinds of people, not just young people. But also older people, people in their 40s are certain anomalies. But as time goes on that’s only going to get bigger. So the opportunity is going to get bigger, it’s just going to take time.

EGR Technology: What is your technology strategy for 2019?

RS: We are going to continue to develop our AI and blockchain wallet system. We’re going to make cryptocurrency much more accessible and easier to use. That last point shouldn’t be undersold because crypto is very difficult to use but we’re going to make it much easier.