You have been with FIRST for just over six years now.
What are your main responsibilities and areas of focus?
IS: As Chief Product Officer at FIRST, I oversee the entire product offering, from the user interface to the odds, markets and featured content included in our solution.
My role is defined by continuous evolution, driven by the ever-changing habits of sports fans, tournaments, and formats. As the leading sportsbook provider, FIRST adapts accordingly, ensuring our platform consistently reflects the dynamic nature of the global sports landscape and its connection to betting.
The FIRST product team is actively engaged across every core function – from designing intuitive user interfaces and seamless partner experiences, to delivering comprehensive market and odds coverage, and applying advanced risk management to optimise trading and control liabilities.
Trading and risk management are key features of sports betting.
How does FIRST manage them and how do they impact the company?
IS: Being able to accept large volumes, and wagers, are key aspects of our work at FIRST (and in sports betting in general of course).
The reason may appear simple: it enables us to generate stronger margins and, therefore, more revenues for us and our sports betting partners. But not all providers have the ability to do this, because they are not as well-resourced, flexible or efficient as we are.
In practical terms, this is done through our ‘Trader and rule-based counteroffer’. As the visual below shows, players can place bets on specific betting markets, in this case Tottenham vs. Chelsea match result at odds of 2.93. But if the bet is above the risk limits set by our traders, our automated system will evaluate the bet and player profile, and, having analysed the risk profile, will make a counteroffer, which the player can decide to accept or simply turn down.
This ability makes a major difference for our partners because it manages their liabilities but also enables them to accept large wagers that are so important in driving up margins and revenues. The feature also means we don’t ban players, instead we manage them with higher/lower limits on specific markets.
How does this resonate with the comprehensive odds
and markets portfolio that FIRST focuses on?
IS: It’s all part of our comprehensive offering. Our teams create and add markets for different sports, leagues and events – and because we create our own markets, we also produce all the derivative markets that go with them, which provides unique bespoke markets for our B2B partners.
These can be highly geo-targeted according to their players’ preferences and requests, but just as important, they provide great flexibility and differentiation and enable them to compete meaningfully with the largest betting brands in their markets.
What’s next for you and the product team?
IS: We’re working on more partner integrations and will continue to focus on Brazil and Latin America, while also setting our sights on Europe.
