Betting on compliance

A minor glitch during a major sporting event can prove disastrous for online betting platforms, which need strong, resilient IT infrastructure. Losses can run into the millions of dollars as players take their business elsewhere and the reputational and brand damage can be hard to reverse. Robust data systems are also needed to comply with the myriad regulations that online bookmakers are subjected to, such as providing reports and information to authorities and racing organizations to meet license conditions. PointsBet turned to Talend to build a responsive, cloud-first data infrastructure and help meet compliance standards in Australia – a highly regulated market for betting in the world – and beyond, as it enters new markets.

“PointsBet is fully digital, and it’s critical we can access data in every system to ensure a streamlined platform. Talend helps us quickly and efficiently integrate all of our data and ensure we’re compliant across the board,” said Maayan Dermer, BI, and Data Engineering Lead, PointsBet. “Talend is the glue between our systems, and has enabled us to reduce troubleshooting times from four to eight hours weekly down to an hour, while simultaneously improving our data reliability and stability.”

With Talend, PointsBet uses data to improve the customer experience for new products and promotions and ensure it delivers personalized offerings based on customer variables. PointsBet also uses data to determine the relative success of its different wagering products, including which products attract more people, deliver better margins, or have better engagement.

PointsBet standardized on Microsoft Azure due to its scalability to handle peak online gaming requests and agility to quickly spin up new projects. Talend was a natural fit with out-of-the-box native support for Azure Blob Storage, CosmosDB, SQL Data Warehouse, SQL Server, Azure SQL Server, and Native SQL Server, as well as the flexibility to run workloads in the Cloud or on-premises. As PointsBet, who just recently was licensed to operate in New Jersey, starts expanding throughout the US, Talend will play a vital role in supporting the roll-out of its Data Analytics infrastructure and ensuring the company maintains compliance with varying state regulations. With Talend Cloud, PointsBet is able to provide a unified view of all of its data and comply with the periodic reports and requests of the online betting industry.

Dermer added, “What was estimated for an engineer to hand-code in two weeks can now be done in four hours with Talend.  We can now move faster and have better visibility into our business. Additionally, with Talend, we can work better with the regulators. When they see how responsive you are, how compliant you are, it gives them confidence in your business.”

“It’s critical for data systems to maintain reliability and trust, especially in the cloud- and digital-first systems, not to mention when you are managing significant sums of money,” said Ciaran Dynes, SVP of Products, Talend. “PointsBet is using data to quickly respond to dynamic requests internally and externally. We’re proud to support the company as it grows and expands into new markets.”