Since 2017, when the law on targeted contributions was adopted, betting companies have become the main sponsors of sports in the country, after the state. This year, the burden on them may increase as annual target allocations will increase from 1.5% to 2% of revenue from all bets.
Such an increase may seem insignificant, but considering that in 2023 betting companies will pay 19.1 billion rubles in social contributions for the development of sports, an increase of a quarter becomes very significant. At the same time, exceeding the comfortable norm can lead to the fact that it will no longer be profitable for bookmakers to operate legally.
Import substitution in action
At the same time, in 2022, most Western software and equipment suppliers have left Russia. Bookmakers also had to make efforts to rebuild technological processes – to establish a continuous chain of work, acquire their own developments and purchase the necessary solutions from foreign partners – from servers to statistics, lines and odds. For example, previously foreign software was used to calculate rates. They calculated the probability of a particular event using special mathematical models.
Some companies have successfully addressed this issue before. For example, the betting company Fonbet had turned to Russian-style equipment and domestic vendors even before the tightening of sanctions. The company’s main IT facilities were located in Russia: the data center was in Moscow, the process server was in Serpukhov. Today, most decisions regarding the development of lines and odds are developed by the bookmaker’s own IT specialists, not only within the country, but also within the company itself.
However, it is not yet possible to completely abandon purchased software, for example in areas related to the protection of customer data. The same Fonbet also works with software providers such as Kaspersky. Fortunately, there was also the opportunity to choose a domestic solution. In practice, Russian solutions have proven to be better than expected; Temporary difficulties are behind us, and today companies are reaping the rewards of their efforts in import substitution.
“The experience of recent years has taught us that we should not rely on technological products from Western suppliers; that it is better to use our own internal developments or turn to our colleagues in friendly countries. Foreign partners can revoke their licenses at any time and deprive the company of the opportunity to work for a period of time. That is why it is very important for us as a large enterprise to work on our own technological sovereignty,” said Evgeny Voropaev, head of the information security department.
Using internal solutions allows you to create additional value for customers. Therefore, in the company’s experience, the use of its own mathematical models that calculate offers due to a wider coverage of the event allows one to get a more diverse range of odds and close the acceptance of bets later than other bookmakers. For this reason, and also due to the reduced delays in accepting bets in real time, customers have a greater chance of placing bets at the end of the game. While the market average is 4-5 seconds, Fonbet has managed to reduce the betting time to 1 second in some competitions. This became possible precisely thanks to import substitution.
The odds are set by the betting company itself – this not only makes it independent from foreign providers, but also provides a human contribution to the topic, because customers play against real people. Although the company uses mathematical models, all initial data in them is specified manually – the bookmaker’s specialists determine what data should be entered into the model, what is statistically valuable and what is not.
Thus, Russian solutions can help betting companies to ensure stable operation and also not to depend on foreign suppliers, which will avoid unforeseen situations and loss of income. In addition, developments in Russia make it possible to increase the number of lines, shorten the time for accepting bets, which is a competitive advantage in conquering the market, which means an increase in the number of customers, income and the ability to cope with the increase in interruptions.