The owner of Bally Bet is relaunching the online sportsbook in the United States after an in-house platform failed to deliver the desired results and with the help of a well-known technology provider.
Bally's Corp. announced Tuesday that “after conducting a thorough evaluation,” the Rhode Island-based operator of casinos and online sports betting sites had struck multi-year agreements with Kambi Group PLC and White Hat Gaming to power its retail and mobile operations.
Bally Bet is taking action in Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa, New York, and Virginia, with future launches in Massachusetts and Ohio a possibility. However, Bally’s signaled a shakeup was coming after taking a $390.7-million non-cash impairment charge in the fourth quarter of 2022 that was tied in part to its purchase of Bet.Works, a U.S.-based sports betting platform provider.
Looking for solutions
Despite its brick-and-mortar casino presence, proprietary technology, and familiar name, Bally's remains one of the smaller players in legal sports betting in the U.S. Now, though, the company has restructured its management and is reshaping its sports-betting operation by switching from an in-house platform to an exterior one.
“On sports, we recognize that the Bet.Works acquisition did not give us the platform required to develop a competitive product,” now-CEO Robeson Reeves said during a February conference call for analysts and investors. “We didn't react fast enough there, and this will not happen again. We are confident there are more economical and nimble solutions out there and have spent the past five months analyzing them deeply.”
White Hat hack
Enter Kambi (which is partners already with operators such as BetRivers and Unibet) and White Hat. Bally’s says it will use the two technology providers to help relaunch Bally Bet, which the company expects will happen in the U.S. by the end of 2023. In addition to driving down costs and improving its online sportsbook, Bally’s also sees the potential to grow globally.
Furthermore, Bally’s noted that it has an option, “pending the satisfaction of certain material performance metrics,” to buy a license to part of Kambi’s online and retail technology source code.
“Kambi provides an award-winning sportsbook that delivers unrivaled sports betting entertainment,” Reeves said in a press release on Tuesday. “By incorporating that with White Hat's [player account management] platform solution, as well as our geographic reach, customer base, and marketing prowess, Bally's will be optimally positioned to achieve significant scale and capture substantial market share in the global gaming market.”
