SBC - Odds88: overhauled Yolo Group brand to maximise product and profitability

As internal ambitions for the year continue to soar, collaboration with partners to maintain a consistent stream of innovation and unique, customisable features form a central component of staying ahead of a wave of competition.

Speaking on the showfloor of the recent ICE Barcelona shortly after news of the rebrand broke, Forslund broke down the key reasons behind the move, how Odds88 will become the cream of the crop, what role emerging tech will play, and much more.

Ecosystem consistency

Common sense, insufficient identification, alignment under the Yolo Group portfolio and achieving synergies were all cited as key motivations of the aforementioned shift to the Odds88 moniker.

Despite detailing such a wave of reasoning upon delving into the rationale behind this move, Forslund elaborates to touch upon an ambition of cementing the brand’s place within the wider ecosystem of its parent company.

“Yolo Group is all about ecosystem services and Odds88 is our sports division that I’m happily running, and we see a lot of opportunity to innovate this legacy industry and find new creative ways to stimulate our partners,” he says.

With the roll-out of the newly altered sports aggregation vertical in full force, Forslund continues on the reasoning behind a belief that awareness of the former TradeArt was merely too weak.

“Odds88 goes very much into the same ecosystem as Hub88 and Live88, and we want to find synergies with existing partners, and it just makes more sense,” he adds.

“It may sound harsh, but that’s the true honest answer. We want to feel more part of the ecosystem.”

Customise, personalise, localise

How to maximise your appeal to players? On the surface, this seems a relatively simple conundrum, however, it is one that is undoubtedly pondered on a daily basis by a multitude of teams across the industry.

This, unsurprisingly, forms a central focus for Forslund, with a priority placed on transforming the opportunity available to bettors and putting players first.

“We’re building Odds88 around the player experience,” he continues. “We’re doing a lot to facilitate sports betting in localised markets with niche content.

“Wherever we decide to grow, we want to simply give those players relevant betting opportunities on events they find fun, attractive, and are passionate about.”

Customisation quickly became a central focus during the discussion, with Forslund keen to cite the flexibility available for partners to shape the product exactly to their wants and needs. This, he says, means that Odds88 will look very different based on the partner that they work with.

This is helped by a range of “unique” features, which it is highlighted have a particularly large influence over critical issues such as risk management.

“ When it comes to risk management, we do a lot of automation,” Forslund comments. “We use AI to detect different anomalies. We don’t like to throw bodies at resources. We rather like to grow our technology when it comes to scaling.

“We do a lot of background work comparing, and we measure the theoretical value of every single bet that is placed in the platform.

“We use that information for customer profiling. Everything’s automated so that for a trader it takes only perhaps 10 seconds to understand what customer you’re dealing with, rather than going through every single bet manually and starting looking for information. We’re really efficient when it comes to automation.”

It’s all about innovation

Ensuring consistent upgrades and improvements is undoubtedly essential in staying competitive and ahead of the game. This is especially true when competition is plentiful.

In a bid to build on the success previously enjoyed, Forslund points to the unique operational strategies of Odds88 as a prime example of how the brand will stand head and shoulders above its competition?

“We have something unique with a lot of features that are yet to be seen,” he states. “I also don’t believe in competition. I think the sports industry is at a stage right now where we need to grow together because it’s been declining.

“For me it’s all about finding innovation, features, and new player demographics, and we’re doing a lot to find the next generation of bettors in socially creative ways to uncover more betting opportunities that haven’t really been part of the sports industry legacy.”

For many, pushing these barriers often hinges around the ability to truly push the boundaries via the correct and full usage of emerging tech, with one acronym in particular a mainstay of many conversations across recent times

When pressed on how Odds88 will make the optimal use of new or developing tech to help shape the future of the industry and the brand itself, Forslund firmly pointed in one direction.

“The thing that makes us stand out is that we’re running sports a bit differently than the rest of the industry,” he says.

“We don’t have thousands of traders in-house. We base everything on scalable processes, automation. Yes, we use AI, and it’s facilitating these processes, but it’s all about scalability.”

Maximising product & profitability

As sights inevitably become focused on the future as the conversation draws to a close, ambitions of heightening the effectiveness of collaboration under the Yolo umbrella as well as maximising the benefits for clients came to the fore.

With sights set across the global gambling landscape, Forslund stresses Odds88 will do everything possible to help clients grow, with any request or need, no matter how large or small, given due care and attention.

However, when touching upon ambitions for the year, the discussion comes full circle through the desire to achieve increased brand recognition “to be known by everyone in the sports industry”.

He concludes: “We’re also targeting partners that have never thought about adding sports to their site. So, hopefully we will have a few new first timers in the sports industry.

“On innovation, we want the product to be exactly as creative as we think the next generation of players is requiring or demanding. I would probably, if, if players and our partners are happy, we’ve done a fantastic job.

“We will also become part of the Yolo ecosystem in a very synergized way, because we want partners to feel like they come to Yolo and we will help them with everything they need and want. Sports is part of it, but if we can also synergise that with Hub88 and our payment solutions, then that’s a win for us.”