Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/750768
maltatoday, SUNDAY, 13 NOVEMBER 2016 VIII Gaming Because sports betting is not a question of chance – even for the house Mention sports betting, and more than one person you speak are bound to raise their brows and look at you with suspicion. PAUL COCKS spoke to one man providing the tools to sports betting companies and who insists his duty is to protect the house. RUMOURS abound of people betting their livelihoods online, of bookmakers fixing games and of online sports betting houses luring unwary players to their sites to strip them of their cash. MaltaToday spoke to Dinos Stranomitis, founder and CEO of Altenar Ltd and iTain- ment Ltd, two Malta-based companies that are intricately involved in the online gaming industry. The companies do not offer gaming services to players but instead create and administer sector-specific tools for the gaming operators, the houses, them- selves. Altenar specialises in sportsbook with its BetInAction Sportsbook software, but also provides casino and trading platform solutions. i-Tainment Ltd is a leading business advi- sor and service provider in the gambling industry with specialty in the sports betting, trading, risk management, customer sup- port, payment solutions and marketing me- chanics. Since 2014, we are also providing solutions for new start ups entering the gaming business in online sports betting. For many years, all the online sports- betting companies used to develop their own software, having to employ in-house developers to design and maintain their platforms, including registration, wallet, payments and betting. "It was a patchwork really, everything in one system," Stranomitis said. "But then, some companies decided to add a casino to their services, and they connected an online casino to the software they devel- oped." But as years went by, more and more providers began to specialise in creating specific systems, such as payments and marketing; this was referred to as client retention management (CRM) or BI – busi- ness intelligence. "So providers started becoming spe- cialised in specific services, but the core system still retained the registration mod- ule, the wallet, client data and the sports betting," he said. What Altenar has done – and though it is not the only one, not many companies have – to create specialised software for sports betting alone. Sports-betting companies can buy this software and set it up according to their needs. The company would already have its own wallet software and client data, which it would then be able to link to Alte- nar's tool to create different programmes, like a sports book. "In a way, we have turned sports-betting to become outsourced like casino, but remember that for the operator, sports bet- ting is always a risky business," Stranomi- tis said. "Everyone know that if you go to a ca- sino, sooner or later you will lose, because you are fighting against a machine, so the programme, at the end of the day, will return 90% or 95% of the casino's money." Stranomitis said that sports betting was different, in that people would be betting on actual real events and they therefore believed they have a chance to win. Since it's dependant on outside factors, players can win if they are careful. "What we have done is create software that analyses client patterns, so that sports betting is no longer a risk for companies operating online sports books," he said. Stranomitis was keen to stress that sports betting was a form of entertainment and not gambling. "A typical player will spend €20 over a couple of hours," he said. "Maybe this might sound different from what many people believe, but it's the truth. This is absolutely the truth." He said there could be many reasons why a person would want to bet €1,000 on a sport event, with the most probable being that the player is out of control. "I do not think allowing such a player to place that bet is the right approach," Stranomitis said. "If a person is rich enough to afford to lose €1,000, that is a different matter." He said it was his company's job to protect the house from players wanting to place large bets because of secret, insider information that they might have obtained about a particular event. The software will analyse a player's pat- tern of previous bets and bring up an alert if its discerns a notable deviation from that pattern. "When such suspicious cases arise, where fraud is the most probable reason, we not only have a duty to protect the house, but we are also obliged to report, even to the relevant authorities," Stranomi- tis said. He said that while it was true that the software's main criteria was to protect the house, the end result was that it would also protect the other innocent players who would have placed bets on the same event. "It is a myth that bookmakers fix the games, because bookmakers actually love clean games, because they will make more money if every game is straight," he said. Stranomitis said his company did not only provide the software but also offered a full spectrum of services, including running the back-end on behalf of the house. Human intervention remained an integral part of the software, in that when a bet is flagged for immediate attention, a human operator would decide on what action to take, not the system. Once the system issues an alert, the operator, or trader, would have to decide whether to accept or reject the bet within – usually – 60 seconds. "I tell you with absolute conviction, this is not a risky business for the house, but only if it adheres to one very simple rule: KYC, know your client," Stranomitis said. "And that is what we do here, we provide operators the ultimate tool to let them offer sports betting knowing that the software is protecting them from those looking to misuse the system." Dinos Stranomitis