Multi-tenant gaming platform

Multi-tenant approach.

The development of multi-tenant gaming platform technology is closely related to the unprecedented growth of online gaming. During the last 10-15 years the changes are particularly noticeable. A lot low regulated markets adopted regulation. But still, international markets with little or no regulation vacuum in international dot com operators.

DotCom operators.

It’s common that a company operating a dot com gaming platform in a low regulated environment has a licensed business in one of the European or Eastern European states. And it is done for a good purpose. Such setup allows a company to use the local license in order to establish stable relations with banks and payment solutions. Those financial institutions often require one of the well-recognized and reputable licenses to successfully take the company through the KYC and on-boarding procedures. 

Once all those things are in place and relations established, a company can start multitasking. Usually, it will juggle between highly regulated established markets and low-regulated maturing ones.

Paradigm change.

While legal setup can be done by the legal team, most companies’ biggest operational challenge is a platform technology. After a while, it becomes impossible for an operator to successfully use the same online gaming platform in different and rapidly changing environments.

Multi-tenant gaming technology in this case is a paradigm change.  A multi-tenant approach to solving operational issues of operators serving multiple markets allows much greater flexibility and scalability.  It ensures that all tenants/brands act as independent business units. It is important that a multi-tenant solution provides a single point of managing all of the tenants with ease and convenience.

Tenants and technology provider – 101

There are several terms used for platform operators that rent or buy the platform from a technology company. The most universally used term is “Tenant”.

A technology company that develops and provides an online platform mostly employs 3 distinct models of conducting business with the operators.

White Lable is probably the most common one. When a technology company provides a gaming platform under the White Lable model, an operator rents the platform and receives all technical and legal support he requires. Usually, it’s done for a fee. Legal support means using the Technology company license to operate the platform in various markets this license allows to cover.

The second popular model is called Turn Key. This is very similar to the White Label model but does not include Legal Support. Any operator who is using this model is required to use his own licenses to operate the markets. Under the Turn Key model, an operator is still renting the platform.

The third model is called the Complete package. It is not as common as the previous two. Usually, this model is popular among large operators. They are capable of acquiring the whole technology (know-how and source code). Large operators usually do not want to operate under the Tenant Agreement. Anyone who chooses this route must be capable to support and service technology in the long run.

The same three models are also applicable to the multi-tenant gaming platform.

B2C as a starting point.

The vast majority of online betting companies providing gaming platforms started their business as a B2C business. The architecture of their gaming platforms was initially designed to service one operator. The multi-tenant gaming platform approach was developed just recently.

As time passed such Business to Customer (or rather Business to Player in our case) companies grew and obtained experience. Those of them with more technical knowledge started testing their strength in the B2B vertical. But only very few succeeded. And there is a reason.

Multi-tenant gaming platform – the right fit for low-regulated markets.

Those who started operations in multiple markets simultaneously, quickly realized the need for something very different from the modified and repackaged version of the B2C platform. Most of the gaming platforms are offered by the technology providers deeply rooted in the “one operator-one platform paradigm”.

The very essence of the foreign markets that are still establishing a regulatory framework is their unpredictability and uncertainty. Being fast is more important than being first or even being best. To succeed, an operator must learn to benefit from the environment.

A permanent, intolerable uncertainty has to become a new normal, and an operator must surf on its waves and flourish in order to make online operations possible and, what’s more critical – profitable.

Balancing risks and the law of averages. 

To succeed in foreign low regulated markets, operators try to use the law of averages. Operators hedge their market-bets by placing eggs in more than one basket. They are filling in individual baskets for every market. Or is it just what they think they do?

Essentially, when an operator acquires a traditional gaming platform it asks a technical company – platform provider to launch different localized instances of the platform for each of the markets. But even when the platform provider fulfills the request – the eggs still remain in the same basket. They just become different colors. What’s even more tragic, most of those eggs will never hatch. 

There are many reasons as to why it happens. Local governments decide to take their share of taxes, they often bind to pressure to legislate the industry, block specific payment getaways, impose gamble-aware procedures, etc.

Local players require distinct localizations, risk management, and personalization. And we are just scratching the surface. A multi-tenant gaming platform solves most if not all of those problems.

Multi-tenant architecture – Go Global Stay Local approach.

A multi-tenant gaming platform that employs multi-tenant architecture is the technology built from the ground up. A multi-tenant gaming platform is free from all the diseases of the standard modified platform.

It offers unseen before flexibility and provides infinite opportunities for customization of each of the tenants and brands. All tenants stay completely independent from each other. And what is a very important thing to keep in mind, all tenants not only look different, but their behavior is different also.

Go Global by Staying Local strategy of the multi-tenant gaming platform pays off big dividends. 

Independent management of the tenants and brands as a new industry standard.

Every tenant/brand can have its individual settings that do not affect other tenants/brands. Some of them are risk and limit settings, taxation rules, sportsbook margins and pricing, bet delays, invoicing, enhanced marketing offers.

The personalization engine is responsible for delivering a unique experience to payers based upon individual tenant settings. Tenants and brands are completely independent of one another.

Easy-to-use CMS makes it convenient to apply not only cosmetic and structural changes to the front end but sets individual back end changes to the processing logic for each tenant and brand. Especially multi-tenant setup is important for the companies providing sportsbook solutions.

Multi-tenant gaming platform combined with an omnichannel delivery infrastructure.

Multi-tenant technology becomes especially powerful when it is combined with an omnichannel delivery infrastructure. Whilst multi-tenancy allows operators to manage tenants independently, the omnichannel infrastructure delivers the same personalized experience across various channels.

The players can use their unique personalized offers and keep their personal settings unchanged across all available points of access such as website, native apps, stand-alone kiosks, and land-based solutions.

Pioneers in the multi-tenant platform technology.

To become really successful in creating multi-tenant software solutions a company must not only use the latest technology but also be able to employ a different methodology and philosophy when it comes to platform management and distributed functionality.  The context of the concept of parts in their relation to the whole must be reevaluated and clearly understood by engineers and businesses.

INPLAYSOFT

INPLAYSOFT has pioneered the field of multi-tenant solutions for the sports betting industry. It became the first company in sports betting that developed a completely functional multi-tenant and multi-brand sports betting system from the ground up.

The system is very much unique and has no analogs. It is absolutely free from the common limitations attributed to the standard gaming and sports betting platforms. The multi-tenant platform offers unique customization and personalization freedom of managing tenants independently. 

Aristotle said that “The whole is more than the sum of its parts”. INPLAYSOFT multi-tenant gaming platform developers have re-evaluated this statement and took it one step further: “The part stays equal to the whole ”.

Go Global, Stay Local!