BtoBet CEO Alessandro Fried, an industry veteran, gives exclusive interview to SBC News
In the interview Fried discusses the intelligent B Neuron solution and the AI behind it.
SBC: Hi Alessandro, at ICE 2016 your team debuted its ‘B Neuron- intelligent sports betting platform’, what does this product bring to market and how do you define an ‘intelligent sports betting platform’?
Alessandro Fried: BtoBet has presented at ICE the second version of its platform B Neuron a product which is superior to what the industry is already offering.
B Neuron is intelligent because it assists both the operator and the player, enabling the operators to reduce the manual procedures and consequently reduce operational costs. B Neuron analyses the bettor’s behaviour in depth. This helps to anticipate his desires by suggesting the bets that can trigger interest in him. This type of recommendation system ultimately centralises more the business of the operator. AI is applied to our fraud and risk management can be fully optimised through a sophisticated rules engine. Our risk analysis gives deep insight of every bettor to always limit the fraud risk.
SBC: You mentioned that the development of your platform was focused away from current betting processes. Why did you undertake this strategy, and why do you see it as beneficial to your overall development?
AF: We wanted to develop something new. At BtoBet we strive to anticipate the future needs of the gambling market and this sets up apart from our competitors. We do not follow others. We work to set the bars higher.
If your focus is to build a new product on what already is in the market, it is impossible to come up with a new design. We found inspiration from other successful online industries to then apply it to the iGaming industry.
B Neuron poses certain AI that enables some modules to make decisions and take actions on the players based on the system knowledge and player behaviour without any assistance from human. But at the same moment, this is not enough nor is intelligent as we would like it to be. So we are still working and improving some of our models, and algorithms. Improving is a must for us.
SBC: Your team has placed a great focus on market curation and recommendation through your platform. How do you see this function working for igaming and betting operators, what will be the benefits to their operations?
AF: B Neuron constantly monitors the player behaviour and shapes the business rules according to their preferences and needs while protecting the operator’s business. One example is the clustering of the players. While most of the operators offer tools for player segmentation based on different parameters and rules, B Neuron additionally clusters the players based on their behaviour and actions in the platform
This enables the operators to get to know their players really close, and shape their marketing materials accordingly. Additionally this can be used in the anti-fraud module, where depending on the player’s behaviour the player can move from one to other cluster to another thus inheriting a different set of restrictions and limits. For example if the payer makes a move that is classified as severe fraudulent activity it can be automatically blocked and kicked-off from the platform.
Beside the manual segment configuration, B Neuron is able to monitor the player behaviour from different angles, and based on that, it forms player clusters which in most of the cases differ from the manual segmentation on which the operators are used to.
This depends from operator to operator and for different modules of the platform. For example, the operator is targeting players from 21-30 years of age playing video slots and forces its marketing more for this segment and these types of games than from the others. The clustering will analyse the players and will point out that most of the players on the platform are 25-30 years of age and are playing more video poker, the second cluster are players from 19-24 which player mostly video slots. This will enable the operator to tweak their manual segments, adjust their promotion as well as games offer to their real customers and not the theoretically targeted markets or industry standards.
SBC: As a leader of BTOBET you have placed a great emphasis on creating a ‘platform that learns from each partner client’. Can you detail more information on this function?
AF: Since BtoBet is a firm believer of AI we are working intensely with our R&D team to launch the first version of our Recommendation Engine in the next quarter of this year. Our tool will be able to anticipate the player’s or bettor’s desires by suggesting games and bets that are of interest to him. This will be possible by specific programming of the algorithms which are designed according to the needs of the operator.
SBC: Looking at platform innovation outside of the betting and gaming sectors, which sectors and companies should operators and developers look to for inspiration?
AF: When we were planning to build our platform we were inspired by industries which value customer satisfaction. The e-commerce and telecommunications sectors are two of which give priority to customer experience. Big companies like Amazon are an example of this. This made us understand how we can use AI to develop a software which values the bettor’s and gamer’s needs. The software analyses on what does the bettor has the frequency to bet, what type of games, from which location, how much etc. This in return will serve the operator to guide the bettor to the bets which are suitable for him.
Both e-commerce and telecommunications focus their core business on knowing customer trends, behaviour and any data which drives the customer to what he is looking for. So does telecommunications and this is why we believe that the gaming industry has much more to learn from these two important sectors.
SBC: Finally, looking ahead how do you see your platform evolving as betting user trends change and are affected by new technologies?
AF: Our intention is to set trends. We are not followers. As a company, we are firm believers in research to always improve what we already have. Our R&D team is working on several interesting new features for which I will be able to disclose at a later stage.
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