HITTING HOME RUNS

  • Post published:November 30, 2024
  • Post category:Blog

Paddy Casey talks with Andrew Behan on how The Unit swings for the fences in iGaming and sports betting

Ever wonder who’s behind the betting applications that you use? Some of the work you’re admiring is that of The Unit. A development-and-marketing services provider, The Unit specializes in online gambling of various kinds. To obtain a clearer view, we spoke with co-founder Paddy Casey, Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

What was the background to the development and launch of The Unit and what prompted the creation of your bespoke sports betting apps?

The Unit’s story stems from an influential digital agency I worked for called Grand Parade. It was founded by our strategic director, Andy Clerkson, who eventually sold to William Hill. Following that sale, we had the funds to launch The Unit.

paddy casey
The Unit Co-Founder Paddy Casey

We were founded as a development-and-marketing services provider that specializes in the betting, iGaming and sports industries. With our team possessing decades of industry experience between us, we were well positioned to offer sports-betting-app development. This has allowed us to deliver excellent results for our partners, such as when we developed a bespoke front-end for TXOdds or when we delivered a first-of-its-kind, drag-and-drop voting system for Low6. Our experience has been key to delivering on an eclectic range of requests from our clients, which has helped single The Unit out as the leader in nearshore product development for the sector.

When was the company founded? What are the primary product development and marketing services provided to the sports betting and iGaming communities?

The Unit was founded in 2017. When it comes to product development, we design and deliver custom applications from interactive widgets to frontends, and backends. We can provide mobile development, custom software development and dev-ops. It really comes down to what works well for our partners, so we take time to listen to them and focus on how we can provide a bespoke service that suits their needs. We offer a range of strategic marketing to budgets and planning. We specialize in tailored SEO and PPC services designed to enhance online visibility, and drive targeted traffic to a gaming platform.

the unit

What will be the main areas of collaboration with XCLSV and what will this partnership bring to the sports betting and iGaming markets?

This is an exciting partnership for us, as we will be focusing on several areas, including PPC, SEO, social media, influencer marketing and website development. XCLSV is a digital marketing agency that shares our vision and dedication to elevating clients to new levels of success, and they already have a track record of success in North America. We’re focusing on expanding our presence in that particular territory, so this is an ideal collaboration. It’s an invisible proving ground and we are very excited about the opportunities it presents.

There must have been a lot of development since inception. Would you say is a totally different company to the one you started with?

We’ve been very pleased with the strides and developments we have made since 2017. Our list of partners now includes TXOdds, Low6, 10star, PlayStar Casino,and of course XCLSV.One broader development, as we’ve just touched on, is how we’ve started to look at the U.S. for growth. We still see great opportunities in the U.S., which we began to utilize with our partnership with NorthStar in the New Jersey online casino market. We are still very keen to explore opportunities in North America, especially with sports betting now being regulated in a majority of states, while we also hope regulators turn their attention back to iGaming soon.

the unit app

Can you go into further detail about the SEO services you provide?

Our SEO services cover several verticals. We provide a targeted service that can help a website place higher on search engines and can drive targeted traffic to our partner’s platform. When it comes to iGaming SEO, we provide a range of services, including auditing, strategizing, monitoring and reporting. In sports betting, we can grow an operator’s online presence by attracting organic traffic that is relevant to their services.
Thanks to the level of experience we possess in the team, we can work out an SEO strategy that provides growth for any of our partners. Our team of experts will work to make sure sites can be optimized and stand out from the competition.

You mentioned sports betting and the U.S. That brings us neatly on to the upcoming NFL season. Do you see single-game parlays (SGPs) winning the day here for driving operator turnover and margin?

I do. Given the rich daily-fantasy-sports heritage in the U.S., this insatiable demand for bet-builder-type products, especially in the NFL but across all major sports, shows no sign of abating. Sports bettors are obsessed with individual player stats (props), which they can then combine with core markets. That behavior generates great margins for operators because bettors typically overestimate the correlation between player and team performance, perceiving the jaw-dropping odds as value when in fact they’re actually rather stingy. No one is doing SGPs better than FanDuel. In fact, it’s been lauded as one of the key drivers of Flutter brand’s market dominance in winning the early skirmishes of the still-nascent U.S. battleground.

Can you unpack the margin side more for our readers?

The power of the SGP offering is all down to those superior margins applied by its bet-building capacity compared to others in the market. After all, the challenge with an SGP is to solve for the problem of pricing related outcomes more quickly and more accurately across a wider range of content than the competition. With FanDuel’s parlay engine, almost every single market type and market offer is fully combinable with next to no latency, priced at a level of accuracy that can enable the next generation of lower-margin, more-customer-friendly parlay products. Throw in cash-out functionality with limited downtime and you’ve got the dream outcome.

the unit playstar

U.S. sports forecasting specialist Angstrom’s own standout SGP was singled out by market commentators for similar reasons amid its landmark acquisition by that mega-merger operator, Entain, whose product strategy has been to house everything under one roof. However, that technology came with a hefty price tag. MGM CEO Bill Hornbuckle had even gone on the record to say that Angstrom would act as a catalytic force for improving BetMGM’s product deficiencies in 2024, “enabling us to expand our parlay product in particular, which lags behind FanDuel and DraftKings whose margin is up maybe 200 or 300 basis points because of their parlay product, and other things, but that is the principal reason.” No pressure for Angstrom, then! But that testimony makes our margin point for us.

And how would The Unit look to assist its partners in this regard?

When it comes to in-play, live SGPs (especially those offering actionable cash-out values) are still thin on the ground. FanDuel, DraftKings and bet365’s live SGPs make up around 10 percent of total SGP volume, per Eilers & Krejcik’s channel checks in the first quarter of 2024. Of course, it can be practically tricky for bettors to construct multi-leg wish-lists while a game is unfolding, with the aforementioned live suspensions, invalid or related legs, not to mention other long-list menus to negotiate. Therefore, live pre-packaged templates which can subsequently be set live (for instance: X player to score next, Y team go over their quoted team total and cover the spread) could offer a simple solution to help improve this gap in the live SGP market. That’s the kind of niche product-development fix on which we pride ourselves at The Unit.

the unit smart pick

What other plans and aspirations do you have for the organization?

I think I would refer back to my previous point about potential expansion in U.S. iGaming. While only seven states currently offer regulated online gaming, we are hopeful this will change and we are keeping a close eye on things there. Aside from that, we want to sign up more partners globally and continue to utilize our expertise so that we can provide the best possible service to those partners.

What trends will we see developing, especially around any work you’re doing in emerging and developing casino markets?

This ties in well with a panel which Adam Noble, our chief commercial officer, will be speaking on at SBC Summit Lisbon in September. Adam will be offering insight on niche gaming trends in emerging and developing casino markets, so the focus will be on things like sweepstakes casinos, crash games and video bingo. Sweeps are currently the number-one trend and buzzword stateside, despite a recent tide of bad press. While elsewhere, with markets like Brazil and LatAm more generally opening up, it will be interesting to see how more niche products fit in alongside more traditional games, and these are certainly trends that we are trying to keep on top of.

Are there any exhibitions or conferences where readers can learn more about The Unit?

We will be in attendance at both SBC Summit Lisbon and then G2E in Las Vegas in October. We look forward to any opportunity to catch up with industry friends and partners, as well as potential new ones, so to anyone reading this, please feel free to get in touch and schedule a meeting. It would be great to chat about what we can do for you.

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