Beyond the World Cup: How SIS will continue making a splash for operators

Paul Witten, Managing Director EMEA at SIS, tells SBC News how the supplier successfully scaled its high-integrity, short-form eSports sports simulation products to bridge vital betting gaps during the World Cup, outlining why a 24/7 esports offering is now a strategic necessity for year-round sportsbook retention. How did eSoccer perform once the World Cup kicked off, and where did you see the biggest surges in bettor activity? Paul Witten, Managing Director (EMEA) at SIS. This was the biggest World Cup that we have ever seen, and the increased number of teams and matches meant fans were repeatedly engaging with sportsbooks around the live action. The way that our short-form eSoccer events work is by filling the periods between matches with additional betting opportunities for sports bettors. We felt that by increasing our output during the tournament, we could provide sustained engagement across the competition and that was borne out by the results we saw. One of our major operator partners recorded a 31% jump in daily eSoccer turnover on day one of the World Cup, despite the fact our additional content had already been running for 10 days. It shows the crossover appeal between the real-world sport and our simulated version of it. Over the course of the competition, Argentina v England was the most popular match-up, with a strong average stake per event. How do you balance contests to make sure that they are fair, in terms of player skill and the teams they are using? The structure of our eSports sports simulation offering means that the onus is on the gamer to perform to the highest level in every game. A stronger gamer playing eSoccer as Jordan, for example, should be more than capable of beating a weaker opponent playing as Spain. Our aim is to create a compelling dynamic where the prestige of real-world teams – be it the Chicago Bulls in eBasketball, Dallas Cowboys in eAmerican Football or Barcelona in eSoccer – drive betting volumes, but where gamer capabilities determine the outcome of contests. This helps to keep margins consistent while keeping bettors engaged. What nobody wants to see is events that are weighted heavily in favour of one team or gamer, and we have systems in place to ensure this does not happen. You have scaled up output across the H2H Global Gaming League of late, both for the World Cup and in eBasketball during the NBA off-season. How do you cope with the increase in demand that this generates? For the World Cup we expanded the H2H Global Gaming League with an extra 50 eSoccer games per day, doubling the number of international matches featured from 25% to 50%, and extending pre-match window availability to 90 minutes. All of that was achieved against a background of experience of running hundreds of games a day and thousands per week without a hitch, so we were able to expand our offering throughout the World Cup, with trading margins remaining strong throughout. The same has been true for eBasketball, where we have increased what we offer to operators in between NBA seasons. We have had positive feedback from operators, and it has reinforced that scalability is a key selling point for our product. Delivering across an event like the World Cup smoothly is strong proof that our workflows hold up under intense pressure, and it has given us confidence to lean further into big events like this in future. Now that the World Cup experience is over, how can operators carry this momentum into the domestic season? The World Cup reinforced a lot of our prior product assumptions. Crossover from real-life sport works, and familiarity is king. These findings elevate the need to respond to the trends and behaviours evident in real soccer betting products, which in turn will help eSoccer go from strength to strength. One obvious place to start is replica games built around major Premier League or Champions League nights. We’re already building a calendar of these events and planning which ones we can replicate with the teams available in the game. It is also important to stress that maintaining the long-term engagement of sports fans requires a sustained level of absolute trust from all parties. What end users see in terms of eSports sport simulation events must be the highest possible level of integrity throughout, and this has been a fundamental building block for creating all our products. Everything we do is underpinned by ESIC Gold Standards, professional studio setups, and dedicated integrity refereeing, ensuring a fully future-proofed proposition.