Business of Betting - Ep 214 Scott Sadin / US Integrity

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hagrinBPR Review Date: 2024-06-25 03:43:47
Rating: 4.50

Notes:
Right out of the gate, take a shot, politics talk. 5 minutes to start, brutal.

5:25 - What is Sports Integrity?: Not easy to detect, attack by getting the most data possible. Sort of used to work as "if you see something say something" with the regulated sportsbooks, but US Integrity decided to attack this issue more proactively from a combined data perspective. "Science + Art approach" where context is super important. Analysts drill into alerts to provide context before sending out alerts to operators, etc.

9:00 - Jason smartly asks about what is "insider information" when it comes to futures / wagering. The answer is sort of world salad. Sports properties (governing bodies) are basically looking for "data leaks" to see who might be profiting off information. (This all sounds good in theory, this seems pretty tenuous in practice.) 11:45 - They don't do any drugs / doping stuff, but they just merged with Odds on Compliance forming something called IC360 (Integrity Compliance) that provide more diverse, global services.

13:30 - What Triggers An Alert: Depends on factors. 1) If their system catches something (line movement, wagering activity either at 1 book or many), officiating anomaly, etc. 2) "See Something, Say Something" - sportsbooks providing them with information, "hey have you seen anything?" which they then anonymize it and distribute it. Operators have to fill out surveys on alerts (which seems cumbersome despite it being described as "quick"). 3) Alert from another integrity provider or governing body.

15:45 - We aren't law enforcement, we have no enforcement power, but they collate and aggregate info vs doing investigations themselves (despite having an investigations team), but there's a limit that's quickly reached after an alert is sent out.

19:40 - US Integrity gets bombarded with media requests for info on scandals, etc. (pretty good branding, scandal happens, media runs to USI).

24:00 - "Undercharge and overvalue." Try to provide as much value to the clients as possible (which does beg the question, if you're an operator, what's the ROI on a USI data sharing agreement / partnership?). 26:20 - Think they are well-positioned for future consolidation. Makes it seem like properties in the US are under stress outside of the top properties so they may be doing future M&A. Always looking for value providers to both books AND properties (mentions Radar geolocation service partnership). 30:00 - B2C consolidation might squeeze data providers (pretty interesting point).

31:00 - "The Big 4 approach integrity like something they want to do themselves." Scott mentions that while you can in-house integrity efforts, you need that cross market data visibility so there's some insulation there.