From sports betting and casino operators to large iGaming platform providers, speed to market has become a clear competitive advantage.
With forecast global growth of 11% in 2026 alone, online gaming is continuing to expand at pace – and the market demands agility from enterprises that seek to take advantage.
Therefore, speed is of the essence. However, in their pursuit of quick launches, many operators have faced a trade-off, with providers cutting corners that undermine reliability and the ultimate user experience.
“A fast launch is valuable, but if you’re trying to launch quickly, rushing every stage of the process, without a strong plan and a highly skilled team, the risk of mistakes inevitably increases,” says Eugene Ocheredko, head of integrations at sportsbook solution supplier DATA.BET.
“Speed is valuable, but it shouldn’t be the only priority. If every decision is driven by speed, other parts of the launch can suffer. For example, the sportsbook integration might be ready, but another part of the platform, such as the payment provider, hasn’t been fully tested, and that’s where problems begin.”
Striking the right balance
Ocheredko insists it is possible to strike the right balance between prioritising fast integration whilst ensuring quality is not compromised.
DATA.BET offers Single Page Application (iFrame) integration in one to two weeks, with API integrations – including odds feeds and risk management – taking about one month. Clients include sportsbooks looking for an iFrame or individual products, casino operators aiming to add sports betting, and large platform providers seeking either to broaden their content portfolio or integrate standalone products such as widgets, odds feeds or risk management solutions.
In each case, the speed of integration depends on the client’s needs, Ocheredko says. “For smaller operators, a fast integration is definitely valuable, but there are still many other things they need to solve before they can go live.
“A fast sportsbook integration doesn’t automatically mean a fast launch. If you’re a small operator without an existing audience or product, fast integration is a nice advantage, but it’s probably not the deciding factor.
“For larger operators that already have significant traffic, it’s different. Integrating quickly is much more important because any delay during integration means lost revenue and delays in generating additional income.”
Relationships built on trust
DATA.BET has completed more than 15 integrations so far this year, with a significant proportion of those coming ahead of the start of the FIFA World Cup. The company’s track record includes integrations with small and large operators, as well as leading sportsbook and iGaming providers like Altenar, which has been working with DATA.BET for several years.
Regardless of the client, a common denominator is that successful quick launches are built on trust and collaboration, Ocheredko says.
“Sometimes suppliers have a ‘fire and forget’ model, where operators are handed the documentation and left to figure everything out themselves, so the timeline depends entirely on them,” he adds. “Our approach is different.”
“One of the biggest mistakes is having the integration led by someone who isn’t technical or doesn’t fully understand the business”
In fact, a collaborative spirit is encouraged long before contracts are signed, with Ocheredko underlining the importance of meeting potential clients in person at industry events like iGB L!VE.
“It’s much easier to work with people you’ve already met,” he says. “I’m involved in the pre-sales process because it’s important that the person leading the integration understands the client’s challenges, their goals for the coming months and what they’re trying to achieve.”
Once an integration agreement is confirmed, a dedicated communications channel is established, usually via Slack or Microsoft Teams, for day-to-day interactions throughout the integration.
Leading by example
Ocheredko also insists that a single point of contact should provide technical expertise. Crucially, this individual should be able to understand the technology and requirements, diagnose problems, and recommend existing solutions without defaulting to unnecessary new features.
“One of the biggest mistakes is having the integration led by someone who isn’t technical or doesn’t fully understand the business,” Ocheredko explains.
“Sometimes a client asks for a specific feature, but our job is to understand why they’re asking. Rather than simply building exactly what they’ve requested, we try to understand the underlying need. In many cases, we don’t need to build anything new because the solution already exists.
“At the same time, we believe innovation means anticipating market needs rather than simply responding to them. Our goal is to deliver solutions that outperform what’s already available. Our widgets are a great example: they were originally developed for a specific client, but after identifying a broader market gap, we evolved them into one of the most popular products in our portfolio.
“This is also how we became the first sportsbook supplier to introduce Pitch Tracker – a 2D map that visualises player activity across the game map, offering deeper insights for esports betting.”
When an integration is required, DATA.BET hands over comprehensive documentation and step-by-step instructions to support the process. For iFrames, a Figma file is provided so clients can customise the design and choose colour schemes, but “making changes after launch is very common,” Ocheredko adds.
“Many clients initially launch with a limited number of sports and then gradually expand their offering over time,” he says.
“There’s flexibility throughout the process. For example, if a client is in a hurry and doesn’t want to spend time choosing layouts or colour schemes, we can do that for them.”
Comprehensive testing
Rigorous testing is non-negotiable for quick integrations, Ocheredko insists.
While regular meetings are scheduled with the client’s integration team members – who are provided with tools that allow them to validate an integration themselves – DATA.BET’s quality assurance (QA) team also undertakes comprehensive testing.
“What used to take our team an entire day now takes around 20 seconds to run through an automated pipeline”
“We simply don’t allow a client to go live until our QA engineer has completed the full end-to-end testing process,” Ocheredko adds.
Increasingly, this testing process is automated, ensuring ambitious integration deadlines are met.
“We started from a completely different place, with much longer timelines, and we’ve continuously refined our internal processes and automated tasks that previously took a lot of manual effort,” Ocheredko says.
“Today, integration testing – including payments, callbacks and other critical components – is fully automated. What used to take our team an entire day now takes around 20 seconds to run through an automated pipeline.
“Our QA engineer runs automated pipelines through our internal tools before manually validating the core user journeys, and our sportsbook manager also reviews the final product. We can complete all of that in hours rather than days or weeks.”
These accelerated timeframes are thanks to the introduction of AI into workflows.
“A good engineer using AI tools can increase their productivity five or even tenfold,” Ocheredko says. “AI is also extremely valuable for managers, helping them monitor KPIs, track progress and understand what’s happening across the team.”
Continuous improvement
Ocheredko anticipates further progress as part of this “continuous improvement” and believes DATA.BET’s API integration timelines will be reduced even further – possibly down to around two weeks.
Indeed, he highlights how speedy integrations also benefit DATA.BET, which typically handles multiple integrations simultaneously. “Our team’s capacity is limited, and if we want to maintain a high level of support and responsiveness, we need to complete integrations efficiently,” Ocheredko says.
“Growing the team isn’t an instant solution. Hiring and onboarding someone so they can start adding real value usually takes months, so improving our integration process is extremely important.”
Such a perspective is notable in an industry in which headcount – widely portrayed as an automatic metric of success – is sometimes confused with real-world capabilities.
Indeed, Ocheredko believes a staffing structure that exceeds eight team members per manager may undermine communication, collaboration and quality control. “Once a team grows beyond that, you have to split it, add more management layers and coordination becomes much more complicated. It’s harder to maintain the same quality of service,” he adds.
“With our relatively small team, we review every ongoing integration during our daily meetings. We understand the blockers, what each client expects from us, when testing needs to happen and what the timeline looks like for every project.
“Of course, if we scale significantly, the team will need to grow as well, but at our current size we can stay very cl...
从体育博彩和赌场运营商到大型iGaming平台提供商，上市速度已成为明显的竞争优势。
随着2026年全球在线博彩市场预计增长11%，在线游戏持续快速扩张——市场要求希望抓住机遇的企业具备敏捷性。
因此，速度至关重要。然而，在追求快速上线的过程中，许多运营商面临取舍，供应商偷工减料，损害了可靠性和最终用户体验。
“快速上线很有价值，但如果你试图快速启动，在每个阶段都仓促推进，没有强有力的计划和高技能团队，出错的风险必然增加，”体育博彩解决方案供应商DATA.BET集成负责人Eugene Ocheredko表示。
“速度很有价值，但不应该是唯一的优先事项。如果每个决策都由速度驱动，发布的其他环节可能会受到影响。例如，体育博彩集成可能已经就绪，但平台的另一部分，比如支付提供商，尚未经过充分测试，问题就从那里开始。”
找到恰当的平衡
Ocheredko坚称，在优先考虑快速集成的同时确保质量不受影响，是可以找到恰当平衡的。
DATA.BET提供单页应用（iFrame）集成，可在一到两周内完成，而API集成——包括赔率 feeds 和风险管理——大约需要一个月。客户包括寻求iFrame或独立产品的体育博彩公司、希望增加体育博彩的赌场运营商，以及寻求拓宽内容组合或集成独立产品（如小部件、赔率feeds或风险管理解决方案）的大型平台提供商。
Ocheredko表示，在每种情况下，集成速度取决于客户的需求。“对于较小的运营商来说，快速集成确实很有价值，但在上线之前，他们还有许多其他事情需要解决。
“快速的体育博彩集成并不自动意味着快速上线。如果你是一个没有现有受众或产品的小型运营商，快速集成是一个不错的优势，但可能不是决定性因素。
“对于已经拥有大量流量的大型运营商来说，情况不同。快速集成更为重要，因为集成期间的任何延迟都意味着收入损失和额外收入生成的延迟。”
建立在信任之上的关系
DATA.BET今年迄今已完成超过15次集成，其中很大一部分是在FIFA世界杯开始前完成的。该公司的业绩记录包括与小型和大型运营商的集成，以及与领先的体育博彩和iGaming提供商（如Altenar）的合作，后者已与DATA.BET合作多年。
Ocheredko表示，无论客户是谁，一个共同点是成功的快速上线建立在信任和协作之上。
“有时供应商采用‘发射后不管’的模式，把文档交给运营商，让他们自己解决一切问题，因此时间线完全取决于他们，”他补充道。“我们的方法不同。”
“最大的错误之一是由非技术人员或对业务了解不全面的人来主导集成”
事实上，协作精神在合同签署之前很久就被鼓励，Ocheredko强调了在iGB L!VE等行业活动中与潜在客户面对面会面的重要性。
“与已经见过面的人合作要容易得多，”他说。“我参与售前流程，因为主导集成的人必须了解客户的挑战、他们未来几个月的目标以及他们想要实现的目标，这一点很重要。”
一旦集成协议确认，就会建立一个专门的沟通渠道，通常通过Slack或Microsoft Teams，用于整个集成期间的日常互动。
以身作则
Ocheredko还坚持认为，单一联系人应提供技术专业知识。至关重要的是，这个人应该能够理解技术和需求，诊断问题，并推荐现有解决方案，而不是默认采用不必要的新功能。
“最大的错误之一是由非技术人员或对业务了解不全面的人来主导集成，”Ocheredko解释道。
“有时客户要求某个特定功能，但我们的工作是理解他们为什么提出这个要求。我们不是简单地按照他们的要求去构建，而是试图理解底层需求。在许多情况下，我们不需要构建任何新东西，因为解决方案已经存在。
“与此同时，我们认为创新意味着预见市场需求，而不仅仅是回应需求。我们的目标是提供超越现有水平的解决方案。我们的小部件就是一个很好的例子：它们最初是为特定客户开发的，但在发现更广泛的市场空白后，我们将其发展为我们产品组合中最受欢迎的产品之一。
“这也是我们成为首家推出Pitch Tracker的体育博彩供应商的原因——这是一个2D地图，可视化玩家在游戏地图上的活动，为电子竞技博彩提供更深入的洞察。”
当需要集成时，DATA.BET会移交全面的文档和分步说明来支持整个过程。对于iFrame，会提供Figma文件，以便客户自定义设计并选择配色方案，但“上线后进行更改非常常见，”Ocheredko补充道。
“许多客户最初只推出有限数量的体育项目，然后随着时间的推移逐渐扩展他们的产品，”他说。
“整个过程中都有灵活性。例如，如果客户很着急，不想花时间选择布局或配色方案，我们可以替他们完成。”
全面测试
Ocheredko坚称，严格的测试对于快速集成来说是不可或缺的。
虽然会与客户的集成团队成员定期安排会议——并为他们提供工具，使他们能够自行验证集成——但DATA.BET的质量保证（QA）团队也会进行全面的测试。
“过去我们团队需要一整天才能完成的工作，现在通过自动化流水线大约20秒就能运行完毕”
“在我们的QA工程师完成完整的端到端测试流程之前，我们绝不允许客户上线，”Ocheredko补充道。
这一测试流程越来越多地实现自动化，确保雄心勃勃的集成截止日期得以满足。
“我们从一个完全不同的起点开始，时间线要长得多，我们不断优化内部流程，并将以前需要大量人工努力的任务自动化，”Ocheredko说。
“如今，集成测试——包括支付、回调和其他关键组件——已完全自动化。过去我们团队需要一整天才能完成的工作，现在通过自动化流水线大约20秒就能运行完毕。
“我们的QA工程师通过内部工具运行自动化流水线，然后手动验证核心用户旅程，我们的体育博彩经理也会审查最终产品。我们可以在几小时内完成所有这些工作，而不是几天或几周。”
这些加速的时间线得益于将AI引入工作流程。
“一个优秀的工程师使用AI工具可以将生产力提高五倍甚至十倍，”Ocheredko说。“AI对管理者也极有价值，帮助他们监控KPI、跟踪进度并了解整个团队的情况。”
持续改进
Ocheredko预计作为这种“持续改进”的一部分会取得进一步进展，并相信DATA.BET的API集成时间线将进一步缩短——可能降至两周左右。
事实上，他强调了快速集成也使DATA.BET受益，该公司通常同时处理多个集成。“我们团队的产能有限，如果我们想保持高水平的支持和响应能力，就需要高效地完成集成，”Ocheredko说。
“扩大团队不是立竿见影的解决方案。招聘和入职一个人，让他们开始创造真正价值通常需要几个月，因此改进我们的集成流程极其重要。”
在一个员工人数——被广泛描绘为成功的自动指标——有时与现实能力相混淆的行业中，这种观点值得注意。
事实上，Ocheredko认为，每位管理者管理超过八名团队成员的人员结构可能会削弱沟通、协作和质量控制。“一旦团队规模超过这个数字，你就必须拆分它，增加更多管理层级，协调变得复杂得多。维持相同的服务质量变得更加困难，”他补充道。
“在我们相对较小的团队中，我们在每日会议上审查每一个正在进行的集成。我们了解障碍、每个客户对我们的期望、何时需要进行测试以及每个项目的时间线是什么样的。
“当然，如果我们大幅扩张，团队也需要成长，但在我们目前的规模下，我们可以保持非常紧...