Spotlight: Advanced Betting Platform

One of the leading IT solution providers in London, Laverock von Schoultz, has developed new betting software for Internet sports books. The company's "Advanced Betting Platform" offers automated bet settlement and live-feed integration as its biggest selling points. One of Britain's biggest bookmakers, Victor Chandler, is already using its system , and the company is aggressively seeking new licensees. Company officials acknowledge the product is just one option in an ever-increasing array gaming software products, but they're confident they can effectively corner a part of the Internet sports betting market.

The Company

ABP was developed by Laverock von Schoultz (LVS), a software company that formed in 1992 and ventured into the gaming arena in 1997. The company said that when it started, most betting operations were paper-based, manually intensive and prone to error.

The company was approached by bookmaking firm Victor Chandler International (VCI) and asked to automate VCI's operations. The company developed BOS, a solution that automated the majority of front- and back-end processes for VCI's telephone-based betting system. The software is still in use today.

In 1999 VCI needed to get up and running on the Internet, after a largely unfruitful exploration of the marketplace for online software suppliers. The company found its solution closer to home. LVS was able to meet the requirements of giving VCI a presence on the Web with a fully integrated, scalable software solution.

Shortly thereafter, LVS partnered with Chartwell Technology to integrate a casino product into VCI's existing Internet betting system.

The Product

The Advanced Betting Platform (ABP) is a betting platform catered for sports, casino and financial betting. Company officials pride themselves on the fact that ABP is not a shrink-wrapped software solution; it is tailored to meet client requirements.

Many features that most operators would expect, such as automatic settlement and data-feed integration, are incorporated into the platform as standard features. By adding these features as standard fare for ABP customers, LVS is able to supply clients with customized systems quickly because of all the work that has already been done.

ABP is a truly integrated solution, created with scalability, security and openness in mind. Scalability is achieved because the system is compatible with large-scale databases and is designed to run on multiple machines, thus spreading the load of users to maintain high performance.

Security is achieved through the system's tracking every transaction that takes place. The historical information can be examined effortlessly to resolve disputes.

System openness is achieved by using Java-based application programming interfaces (API's). The interfaces facilitate the creation of system hooks, which can be used for connecting third parties to the system.

Examples of the API technology include live data-feeds, which automatically populate the system with events and results, as well as casino games supplied by a casino software company.

The system was also designed with an international focus. It possesses multilingual capability for customer access to Web sites in any home language. Major bet types include U.K. odds, American lines and Asian handicaps. ABP can also accommodate multiple currencies.

The company has used its relationship with VCI, the most widely recognized brand in the ABP stable, as leverage and credibility when seeking new clients. ABP prides itself on not being a sports book operator on its own, something that many of its competitors can't say.

Company officials say they prefer to concentrate on their core strength - delivering world-class technology solutions, instead of being a provider and an operator.

The Future:

Within the next 12 months LVS expects to be working with three of the world's top 10 sports books. To lure some of the bigger names in sports betting, the group will look to broaden its scope of product solutions.

Many sports book operators are expanding to include casino components. LVS will try to help them ease the burden of integrating new options into their sites. Company officials feel it is important for operators to have their customers maintain one account, whether they're backing a horse or playing roulette.

LVS feels the openness of the ABP system and integration are paramount to the company's success. More and more of its licensees are forging international partnerships with organizations across industry sectors, such as telecommunications and sporting organizations. As more and more cross-sector agreements are made, ABP is confident the one thing that will remain the same is technology.

LVS will also continue its efforts to become a truly international platform. The company has no geographical boundaries when signing new licensees, although it has focused on the European market to date. It now has its sights set on the American markets.