Epoxy.ai interview: Bringing AI-based betting to Europe

Epoxy.ai has already firmly established itself as North America’s most exciting AI-personalised betting providers – with major deals signed with the likes of Playtech, AWS, Kambi and Nascar, as well as multi-million dollar investment from some of the biggest funds in the industry, including SeventySix Capital.

With exciting plans to cross the Atlantic and bring the AI betting revolution to Europe, we caught up with Epoxy.ai’s Co-Founder and President Jason Angelides, to talk through the tech behind providing individual personalised betting offers for each player.

For our European readers who might not yet know about Epoxy.ai’s success stateside – can you talk us through your company and what you bring to the market?

Sure.  Thank you for your interest in our business.  Our business really is all about the end user and making the betting experience easier, more engaging, and most importantly – driving retention.  I understand that that claim is somewhat cliche, but in the case of Epoxy.ai, it’s completely true.  We do this by harnessing the power of our proprietary AI – providing technology that personalises the end-user experience and takes into account the specific preferences of each individual player to give them a unique and fully tailored betting experience based on their preferences.

I use this analogy a lot – think of us as the technology behind what powers the way Spotify helps listeners find and discover new music via automatic suggestions.  Or how Netflix, or any other leading video service, puts the content you want directly in front of you without being prompted. Of course, this personalisation really streamlines and improves the user experience with navigation, discovery and selection.

Just like with Spotify and Netflix, we provide what can broadly be termed an AI-driven personalisation platform, and it’s a true gamechanger for operators when it comes to creating a

much more personalised experience for their end users.  It is a proven method of driving engagement, retention, and customer lifetime value – and in my view, the technology that will transform betting and iGaming in the years to come.

How much of a game-changer do you see AI being for the European market? How essential is it to improving the European UX and what are the real benefits in terms of engagement and incremental revenue?

We see AI and personalisation being a game-changer globally – and Europe’s certainly no exception. Being one of the world’s most advanced markets when it comes to the end-user experience, we’ve already seen how much of a difference-maker personalisation has been for leader companies in other verticals such as Search, Advertising, Social, E-Commerce, Video, Music and Retail.

Winners in all of these industries have mastered delivery (ease of consumption) and delivering an individually tailored UX for each customer. For example, Netflix and Amazon first made it easier to consume their offerings, and then via the extensive use of data, they then honed personalisation to the point that it has become synonymous with their product.

We’ve already covered how Spotify’s hyper-personalisation AI keeps customers engaged by consistently suggesting new music that aligns with their listening preferences. The number of resources they’ve channelled into AI-driven personalisation has ensured that it has become the dominant music streaming platform with little or no competitors to take them on.  And, nearly 35% of Amazon’s sales come directly from personalisation efforts while 56% of these shoppers are more likely to be repeat buyers. We see the gaming industry as being no different.  It’s really just the next tech sector where personalisation will create meaningful revenue benefits.  Thus far, no one has emerged as the winner in iGaming, and we’re here to change that.

In terms of adoption – are you one of the first to be offering AI-based personalisation for sportsbook and casino? Do you see Europe as being slower to adopt than the US?

Yes, we are certainly one of the first, if not the only company taking a different approach to addressing the problem.  There are some legacy providers that utilise different methodologies, but we are certainly breaking new ground in the space. We actually have received over 30 claims of our Omnibus patent (which is part of our proprietary AI) – so I guess we are doing something unique!

I believe the major advantage we have here is how long we have been doing this as a business.

The last company we founded built personalised fan engagement experiences for viewers across North America.  That company, largely because of its personalisation platform, was bought for millions by Comcast and now powers some of the largest personalised sports video portals across Sky TV, NBC, and Comcast Xfinity.

In terms of the adoption of personalisation in the EU, I think the interest and pace of adoption are going to be equally as aggressive as it is in the US right now.  The EU is a mature market with established players that can meaningfully impact their businesses with AI and ML.

While the US is innovating more with personalisation, the US is still a growing market so there are many other things happening at the same time such as new market rollouts and platform migrations that can get in the way. Europe on the other hand, is an established and mature market – where tech solutions to give operators an edge over the competition are already in hot demand.

You recently launched Personalised Same Game Parlays in time for the US football season, can you see products like these being easily adapted for European betting habits – such as pre-match accumulators for soccer?

Absolutely.  It’s all about making things easier and more entertaining for the end user – regardless of the market or sport.  In the case of our Personalised Parlay generator (or accumulators, as we would call them in Europe), instead of the user having to bounce from screen to screen to create a Parlay / Accumulator, our system automatically generates the parlays for the end user based on their preferences. This helps the gaming operators as well since many of them use manual processes for putting specialised offers in front of their customers.  Now this can be customised around user preferences automatically, which is real gamechanger for engagement and retention.

Last but not least – looking at the European market, what’s your take on the current state of play here in comparison to the growth of sportsbook in the US over the last 5 years?

That’s hard to answer in just a few words but certainly, the adoption of iGaming in the US is nothing but astounding.

While not without its hiccups, iGaming will no doubt continue to expand as a form of entertainment in the US markets as more and more states begin issuing licences for online casino.

I think what is really notable about the US in comparison to the EU (and indeed the rest of the world), is how AI and personalisation are at the forefront of the US growth strategy.US operators clearly understand that they cannot compete without product differentiation and multiple ways to monetise their customers.

We can see this with the shift into entertainment. So many more brands are now taking this to the next level by providing an ecosystem that is so much more than just a place to make a bet or play a casino game.

Fanatics, for example, who really are a major online retailer of licensed sports merchandise, is now going full bore into the iGaming space, and at the forefront of its strategy is personalisation.  To put this into perspective – this is like Amazon when it was just selling books. So much more now lies ahead. In the future, just like Amazon, you can expect Fanatics to offer a lot more, whether it’s shirts, merchandise, NFTs -you name it. Of course, AI and machine learning driven personalization are going to be at the forefront of their strategy.  The same goes for the other leading companies in the US.

Of course, given we’re leading the AI adoption charge, we see this a very good for iGaming as competition, and the search for differentiated will always lead to innovation. For companies like us at Epoxy.ai – we’ll be here to provide that technology and truly power the next era of innovation.