BetVictor's Kris Marshall on the big data myth

While big data has long been seen as one of the industry’s key battlegrounds, optimising that data and using it to drive commercial value has proven somewhat elusive for many operators.

However, BetVictor is aiming to change all that with its centralised-data strategy. Kris Marshall, the operator’s head of business intelligence and analytics, is responsible for driving the firm’s adoption of a big data architecture as it looks to create a 360 degree view of the customer.

“This whole 360 customer view idea is getting a clear understanding of our customers’ costs, their interaction with us and their behaviour across all channels,”he says. “Yes, we’re still learning to make our data commercially valuable to us and this is part of the exciting challenge that we are at the forefront of.”

EGR spoke to Marshall to find out more about the operator’s data strategy.

eGaming Review (EGR): How has big data progressed in recent years?

Kris Marshall (KM): I think this is a really interesting one. We’ve completely dispelled the myth that big data exists; it’s more about the technology that’s available to support the data. The data was there previously but the technology wasn’t; we were working with old SAS systems which were primarily set up for reporting. Now we’ve got new technology that fits in with our data strategy.

EGR: What opportunities does it now offer to operators?

KM: Modern data gives us the opportunity to interact with our customers in real-time using huge amounts of data. Before if you had a batch of data you would have to respond the day after, thus you might miss somebody or an opportunity to interact with them. With this new technology we can personalise the experience for our customers giving them a simpler and better experience.

EGR: What has prevented egaming firms from using it in the past?

KM: I think it’s been a combination of availability of data and availability of technology. If you think about it, a lot of business intelligence (BI) teams sit in trenches within the business, in marketing or finance for example. Getting marketing and finance to spend some of their budget on data and big data technology just isn’t going to happen.

Now there are more business leaders who are keen to adopt a centralised data strategy. We have a CEO at BetVictor (Andreas Meinrad) who is very keen to make data the heart of our business; if you have BI at the core it makes it quite easy to integrate data. If you’re archaic or traditional and have old systems, it’s much more difficult. All forward thinking and successful egaming companies must have data at the heart of the business.

EGR: But why has the egaming industry been behind other industries in leveraging big data?

KM: We have a very complex infrastructure, so it’s not as easy, as say retail, where you’re just buying something on a page. People are constantly interacting with our servers all the time, so there’s a lot of data to process. Historically we’ve been able to handle the volume of data we had but couldn’t do anything with it. Now the technology has caught up, we can do everything we want in one place which we couldn’t do before.

EGR: Another potential use could be for game recommendations like Amazon’s ‘recommended for you’ feature. Why haven’t most firms got this in place yet?

KM: It’s not quite as straightforward as Amazon, as they have lots of pre-canned ideas. For example, if you bought a Harry Potter book they will try and sell you another Harry Potter book or a DVD of the film.

At BetVictor there are a lot more markets we need to be able to prioritise. Are you a racing bettor? If so flat or jumps? Do you follow trainers? Jockeys? Do you bet on sprint handicaps or handicap chases? This is the challenge.

We use historic data to work out what the needs of the customers are; and that’s not as straightforward as the Amazon Harry Potter example. We have a lot more markets, a lot more opportunities and a lot more challenges.

EGR: How valuable is the big data you’ve gathered and how do you monetise it?

KM: The value is in understanding the customer. If you don’t understand the customer you can’t monetise any of your data. From the data we get a greater understanding of player values, their interaction with us, and how we need to interact with them as we know what they respond to.

Ultimately it’s about return on investment. Are we effectively acquiring customers? Are we paying too much from the very start? We probably know that if we’re paying å£50 from a certain source, it’s probably too much for us to get a good ROI.

You can very quickly change your marketing strategy to fit in with your budget. That’s what we’re beginning to do. We’re learning more about behaviour, player interaction, how we can extend player value and invest bonuses more effectively. These are the key ways in which we are monetising our big data strategy.

EGR: Which third party providers do you work with for your data strategy and how have they helped you to achieve your aims and goals?

KM: Datalytxx, Talend, and Alterix, help us bring our data sources together and they’re quality products which work very well with Tableau. Datalytxx, help us understand the new technology. Cloudera provide us the environment, the platform. Talend provide us with the facilities to transfer data through the Cloudera platform and Altrix brings all the data sources together and make it manageable through Tableau.

As I’m sure you are aware we’re not a big company for using third party providers; we try and do everything in-house. But we can’t obviously build a real-time database ourselves so we have to use technology like Cloudera. We try to partner with as few people as possible though.