At this year’s Betting on Football conference at Stamford Bridge, Altenar COO Dinos Stranomitis more than played his part in a Q&A session designed to force the industry’s leading suppliers to face the questions ‘you’, as show delegates, want answered.
Just six weeks on, we caught up with him to revisit some of the session’s key talking points, including key roadmap features and the user experience ‘battleground’ for sports betting suppliers, as well as why Altenar will press ahead with innovation in other jurisdictions while others get caught up in the scramble for US market share.
SBC: What stands out on the Altenar development roadmap for 2019?
DS: The Altenar development roadmap is quite “lengthy” and “promising” I would say. Since last year, we started a process to reconstruct our software or we simply move to newer modern technologies that allow us to add more features to the existing sophisticated product.
In terms of look and feel, we are working to improve the user experience element all the time. At this moment, we specify a new approach to offer sportsbook to casino players. This will possibly be the new trend of how to engage a casino player with a sports product. Stay tuned with us!
SBC: Are there certain things that are ‘must-haves’ across the board, or do you always treat the priority of new technology on a region by region basis?
DS: Technology is one and we usually do not treat it on a “region by region” basis. However, for the look and feel, definitely a regional aspect is applied.
On the “must-haves” list someone can easily find the classic ones of a sportsbook, which is simply software stability and scalability, a wide offer and of course a high quality of services such as 24/7 support and sophisticated risk management that improves profitability.
SBC: How can you bring about the best user experience for your operators?
DS: User experience is not a single element exercise. I would emphasise to anyone that user experience starts fr om “listening” to the operator and its users.
Then it goes down to analysing the market approach and coming back to the development team to explain what is necessary to do in order to create a bespoke user interface that will allow the operator to gain market share. Just to recap, it is all about “listening”.
SBC: Speaking on the panel at Betting on Football, you said that innovation is driven by fresh minds and newcomers; how confident are you in Altenar’s ability to outperform legacy technology?
DS: Challengers and newcomers are, historically, the ones to drive innovation. No doubt about it. Altenar is already shaking waters and comes into the panel of leading sportsbook providers. Probably more time is necessary to get established further, but our customers loyalty is the best pass to the confidence field.
SBC: You also suggested that companies such as Altenar might not have the immediate resources to secure the biggest US contracts, but would be well placed to “listen” and drive innovation elsewhere; wh ere are your next target markets?
DS: Altenar have invested over the last two years into regulatory markets and certifications from most “difficult” jurisdictions such as Spain and Romania and, on the side of the light ones, those including Sweden, Colombia and the UK.
In addition to the fact that we are working with regulated operators under Maltese MGA, Greece, Bulgaria, Latvia, Nigeria and Mexico, plus entering Italy, the obvious target for Altenar at this moment is Europe and Latin America.
User experience is not a single element exercise. I would emphasise to anyone that user experience starts from “listening” to the operator and its users.
Dinos Stranomitis, COO at Altenar
Written by SBC News
