The Client and the challenges of a growth crisis
Our Client is a major online sportsbook honored with many prestigious awards in the betting industry. Their app and website attract hundreds of thousands of users monthly, generating around 10 million sessions.
In 2019, our Client faced a growth crisis. Despite their high expertise and 70% of their business already being digitized, their operations weren’t fully aligned with the newest trends. They needed to focus more on what their users wanted and make their development process centered around that.
The company launched a large-scale digital transformation. They aimed to become a source of top sports entertainment with user-friendly betting products. They also sought to speed up feature releases and build transparent, efficient partnerships.
The strategy was defined. It was time for actual changes and the search for a technical partner.
Why did they choose SENLA?
In the Client’s industry, time is measured in milliseconds and precision is key. Any numerical mistake can lead to multimillion-dollar losses. That’s why the Client had extremely high resource requirements.
Among the 5 outsourcing companies under consideration, each was expected to provide only senior-level teams. SENLA's strong .NET expertise ensured that all our specialists cleared the demanding interviews, outperforming our competitors. Besides, we provided very favorable cost optimization possibilities.
We commenced the project in early 2022. SENLA had previously partnered with this Clietn on a major project in 2015 and was pleased to work together again.
The lineup
We provided 10 experts organized into pod teams, each focused on a separate major task with their own OKR (Objectives and Key Results). The specialists included an architect, a back-end tech lead, 6 senior back-end developers, 2 senior manual QA engineers, and a middle back-end developer.
The teams develop and test front- and back-end modules, databases, gamification events, and partner programs. Let's take a look at some of the features in more detail.
Improving and testing the database performance
Our Client provides thousands of constantly updated betting options, operating 24/7. Any delay can cause great losses. That’s why the speed and correctness of data flow are critical.
We needed to keep the Client’s internal systems running smoothly and integrate them flawlessly with external data providers. We also had to provide thorough testing to prevent any costly glitches.
Database performance
A monolithic database was at the center of the whole system. And it wasn't coping with the load anymore. It couldn't manage the stream of events from providers, often requiring the Client's staff to manually manage all processes 24/7. A new architecture was urgently needed.
Our back-end and QA experts joined the significant task of splitting the old database among microservices and shifting all providers to the new architecture. We've been working on it for 2 years so far.
The final goal is to make the system faster and more stable under any load. With these improvements, the Client will be able to provide their customers with a wider variety of betting types and markets. It'll also reduce overall system risks by increasing the independence of its components.
Integration with data providers
Our Client works with several data providers that collect and deliver real-time sports and esports event data, including betting odds, scoring, and statistics. They often add new sports and markets for more betting options.
These providers are integrated with the Client’s central database via APIs and message brokers RabbitMQ and Kafka. For each provider, there's an admin panel and a suite of internal tools where the Client’s staff can manage the data flow and address any issues manually.
Typically, though, the data moves through the system automatically. SENLA’s specialists oversee this entire process from receiving the data to making it accessible to users on different platforms like websites and apps.
We also add, integrate, and test new betting options and sports types as providers make them available (like cricket or drone races).
Quality assurance
Our Client outsources software testing to SENLA to cover multiple areas of the product with hundreds of tests.
"The scope of tests and the technology stack we use are one of the largest I've encountered, and I have a very rich expertise. We work with Docker, ELK, GitLab, Amplitude, Lens, Putty, and mRemoteNG among many others. We also perform as release managers, writing release notes, maintaining test environments, and verifying everything in production."
The categories of testing we perform include:
- By type: functional and non-functional (reliability and recovery).
- By level of testing: component, integration, system, acceptance.
- By chronology: confirmation, regression.
Failover testing
It's one rather unique procedure we do for this project.
When testing a multi-component system, it's crucial to check how it reacts if a component fails, such as a database, message broker, or file storage.
With failover testing, we aim to avoid data loss, maintain the system’s functionality, and ensure users can still access all information and place bets.
Using Docker Compose, we locally test the system's behavior in case of network slowdowns, data loss, and recovery.
Enhancing the internal system
The Client's staff uses an internal tool to manually add customized events and bets to the front end. It’s also used to correct odds calculations and handle critical cases when automation fails.
This system directly uploads data to the database. Its capabilities far exceed those of the automatic tools and allow the Client’s employees to manually update and customize events (like adding more betting options to matches). Other uses include pushing events to the front manually, withdrawing matches from betting in case of suspected fraud, etc.
The Сlient wanted to make this internal system more efficient and faster. Previously it took 20–30 seconds to load tabs and pages.
Our team worked on moving the tool from the less user-friendly desktop version to a more convenient web-based one with new technologies. We also developed a suite of microservices for it and established message exchanges among them via Kafka.
We released the MVP in 2023.
The shift to a new tech stack and updates we made resulted in a significant increase in speed, reaching over 10 times. The system performance increased by 200%. Also, the staff could now more conveniently add and modify very profitable custom manual events.
Introducing gamification
Faced with the need to attract more users, our Client evaluated options like new loyalty programs and gamification. Drawing from the success of other businesses and their own experience, they chose to pursue gamification.
Tournaments
Tournaments are activities in the app that are parallel to the bets, featuring a leaderboard with points and rankings.
During betting, if a customer’s bet falls within a certain range and wins, it counts towards the tournament. Points are awarded based on the bet's odds—riskier ones yield more points. At the end of the tournament, the leader receives the big prize.
SENLA developed this feature for the mobile and desktop versions of the platform. The project's engineering phase took 2,5 months, and with load testing, optimizations, and release, the total duration was 5 months.
The result was a complete solution with a web interface and an admin panel built on Blazor. This language was chosen for the speed of development without involving front-end programmers.
Kafka and RabbitMQ served as message brokers while separate services managed recalculations of points and leaders according to a schedule.
To maintain performance, the team decided to schedule such recalculations instead of making them real-time. The tasks were sent over to several RabbitMQ subscribers for processing. That allowed for shortening and effectively scaling the recalculations.
Jackpots
Jackpots, another gamification feature, allowed customers to win large prizes for correct match bets. Players earned a code for each winning bet above a certain amount, with daily, weekly, and monthly lotteries.
For 2.5 months, SENLA’s programmers developed microservices for this event. One service monitored Kafka for eligible bets, generating and recording codes for users. Another passed code details via API to the front end, allowing players to track their codes and potential winnings.
Both tournaments and jackpots ranked as the most profitable events for the Client this year multiplying the number of placed bets.
Building a partner network
To expand its reach and attract more customers through diverse, trusted marketing channels, our Client collaborates with 800+ affiliated partners.
The partner system is a platform for promoting the Client's product through third-party websites. The Client’s managers collaborate with partners to create appropriate promotional content and generate links.
Previously, multiple separate systems existed for affiliates. SENLA's experts were tasked with consolidating partner management and integrating it with the internal database and data bus. The team ensured accurate data extraction, transfer, and updating for collaborative activities running 24/7.
The transition to a unified platform simplified all operations. Besides, partners could now independently view their statistics and data, requiring fewer, less specialized managers on the Client’s side.
The value: Gamification and modernized software make the number of bets soar
Our Client’s goal is to become an international entertainment holding with a top-class sports betting product. SENLA supports them in making all of their software more efficient and catering to the interests of end-users.
After 2 years, the Client benefits from several key improvements:
- Processing speed increased by over 10 times and system performance by 200% thanks to internal system upgrades with a modern tech stack and a web-based interface.
- Gamification tactics like tournaments and jackpots significantly increased revenue and user growth in 2023, ranking as the most profitable events for the Client this year.
- Stable data streams from providers guaranteed uninterrupted betting for customers, minimizing failures and losses.
- Custom manual events, accounting for over 50% of the Client’s revenue in 2023, were now handled and added to the front more efficiently.
- Quality assurance improvements led to a 5-day reduction in development cycle time, 15% less change-induced failures, and −25% of the average time it took to repair the system.
- Partner system overhaul simplified all operations and reduced the need for highly specialized staff on the Client’s side.
All you need for your software product to succeed is a defined strategy and clear goals. For everything else, there’s SENLA. Let's talk.