The DATA.BET blueprint: a practical guide to fast sportsbook launches

From sports betting and casino operators to large iGaming platform providers, speed to market has become a clear competitive advantage.

With forecast global growth of 11% in 2026 alone, online gaming is continuing to expand at pace – and the market demands agility from enterprises that seek to take advantage.

Therefore, speed is of the essence. However, in their pursuit of quick launches, many operators have faced a trade-off, with providers cutting corners that undermine reliability and the ultimate user experience.

“A fast launch is valuable, but if you’re trying to launch quickly, rushing every stage of the process, without a strong plan and a highly skilled team, the risk of mistakes inevitably increases,” says Eugene Ocheredko, head of integrations at sportsbook solution supplier DATA.BET.

“Speed is valuable, but it shouldn’t be the only priority. If every decision is driven by speed, other parts of the launch can suffer. For example, the sportsbook integration might be ready, but another part of the platform, such as the payment provider, hasn’t been fully tested, and that’s where problems begin.”

Striking the right balance

Ocheredko insists it is possible to strike the right balance between prioritising fast integration whilst ensuring quality is not compromised.

DATA.BET offers Single Page Application (iFrame) integration in one to two weeks, with API integrations – including odds feeds and risk management – taking about one month. Clients include sportsbooks looking for an iFrame or individual products, casino operators aiming to add sports betting, and large platform providers seeking either to broaden their content portfolio or integrate standalone products such as widgets, odds feeds or risk management solutions.

In each case, the speed of integration depends on the client’s needs, Ocheredko says.

“For smaller operators, a fast integration is definitely valuable, but there are still many other things they need to solve before they can go live,” he says.

“A fast sportsbook integration doesn’t automatically mean a fast launch. If you’re a small operator without an existing audience or product, fast integration is a nice advantage, but it’s probably not the deciding factor.

“For larger operators that already have significant traffic, it’s different. Integrating quickly is much more important because any delay during integration means lost revenue and delays in generating additional income.”

Relationships built on trust

DATA.BET has completed more than 15 integrations so far this year, with a significant proportion of those coming ahead of the start of the FIFA World Cup. The company’s track record includes integrations with small and large operators, as well as leading sportsbook and iGaming providers like Altenar, which has been working with DATA.BET for several years.

Regardless of the client, a common denominator is that successful quick launches are built on trust and collaboration, Ocheredko says.

“Sometimes suppliers have a ‘fire and forget’ model, where operators are handed the documentation and left to figure everything out themselves, so the timeline depends entirely on them,” he adds. “Our approach is different.”

“One of the biggest mistakes is having the integration led by someone who isn’t technical or doesn’t fully understand the business”

In fact, a collaborative spirit is encouraged long before contracts are signed, with Ocheredko underlining the importance of meeting potential clients in person at industry events like iGB L!VE.

“It’s much easier to work with people you’ve already met,” he says. “I’m involved in the pre-sales process because it’s important that the person leading the integration understands the client’s challenges, their goals for the coming months and what they’re trying to achieve.”

Once an integration agreement is confirmed, a dedicated communications channel is established, usually via Slack or Microsoft Teams, for day-to-day interactions throughout the integration.

Leading by example

Ocheredko also insists that a single point of contact should provide technical expertise. Crucially, this individual should be able to understand the technology and requirements, diagnose problems, and recommend existing solutions without defaulting to unnecessary new features.

“One of the biggest mistakes is having the integration led by someone who isn’t technical or doesn’t fully understand the business,” Ocheredko explains.

“Sometimes a client asks for a specific feature, but our job is to understand why they’re asking. Rather than simply building exactly what they’ve requested, we try to understand the underlying need. In many cases, we don’t need to build anything new because the solution already exists.

“At the same time, we believe innovation means anticipating market needs rather than simply responding to them. Our goal is to deliver solutions that outperform what’s already available. Our widgets are a great example: they were originally developed for a specific client, but after identifying a broader market gap, we evolved them into one of the most popular products in our portfolio.

“This is also how we became the first sportsbook supplier to introduce Pitch Tracker – a 2D map that visualises player activity across the game map, offering deeper insights for esports betting.”

When an integration is required, DATA.BET hands over comprehensive documentation and step-by-step instructions to support the process. For iFrames, a Figma file is provided so clients can customise the design and choose colour schemes, but “making changes after launch is very common,” Ocheredko adds.

“Many clients initially launch with a limited number of sports and then gradually expand their offering over time,” he says.

“There’s flexibility throughout the process. For example, if a client is in a hurry and doesn’t want to spend time choosing layouts or colour schemes, we can do that for them.”

Comprehensive testing

Rigorous testing is non-negotiable for quick integrations, Ocheredko insists.

While regular meetings are scheduled with the client’s integration team members – who are provided with tools that allow them to validate an integration themselves – DATA.BET’s quality assurance (QA) team also undertakes comprehensive testing.

“What used to take our team an entire day now takes around 20 seconds to run through an automated pipeline”

“We simply don’t allow a client to go live until our QA engineer has completed the full end-to-end testing process,” Ocheredko adds.

Increasingly, this testing process is automated, ensuring ambitious integration deadlines are met.

“We started from a completely different place, with much longer timelines, and we’ve continuously refined our internal processes and automated tasks that previously took a lot of manual effort,” Ocheredko says.

“Today, integration testing – including payments, callbacks and other critical components – is fully automated. What used to take our team an entire day now takes around 20 seconds to run through an automated pipeline.

“Our QA engineer runs automated pipelines through our internal tools before manually validating the core user journeys, and our sportsbook manager also reviews the final product. We can complete all of that in hours rather than days or weeks.”

These accelerated timeframes are thanks to the introduction of AI into workflows.

“A good engineer using AI tools can increase their productivity five or even tenfold,” Ocheredko says. “AI is also extremely valuable for managers, helping them monitor KPIs, track progress and understand what’s happening across the team.”

Continuous improvement

Ocheredko anticipates further progress as part of this “continuous improvement” and believes DATA.BET’s API integration timelines will be reduced even further – possibly down to around two weeks.

Indeed, he highlights how speedy integrations also benefit DATA.BET, which typically handles multiple integrations simultaneously.

“Our team’s capacity is limited, and if we want to maintain a high level of support and responsiveness, we need to complete integrations efficiently,” Ocheredko says.

“Growing the team isn’t an instant solution. Hiring and onboarding someone so they can start adding real value usually takes months, so improving our integration process is extremely important.”

Such a perspective is notable in an industry in which headcount – widely portrayed as an automatic metric of success – is sometimes confused with real-world capabilities.

Indeed, Ocheredko believes a staffing structure that exceeds eight team members per manager may undermine communication, collaboration and quality control.

“Once a team grows beyond that, you have to split it, add more management layers and coordination becomes much more complicated. It’s harder to maintain the same quality of service,” he adds.

“With our relatively small team, we review every ongoing integration during our daily meetings. We understand the blockers, what each client expects from us, when testing needs to happen and what the timeline looks like for every project.

“Of course, if we scale significantly, the team will need to grow as well, but at our current size we can stay very close to every integration.”

Beyond integration

Successful integration, though, should only represent the end of beginning rather than the beginning of the end.

In this regard, DATA.BET emphasises post-integration support, with the company’s average response time to a customer issue being only 105 seconds and the average issue resolution time being just two hours and 16 minutes.

“Once a client goes live, the operational phase starts, and that’s just as important,” Ocheredko says. “My team stays in close contact with clients, whether they want to clarify something, request a new feature or discuss a different way of solving a problem.

“We always communicate with our clients – and this is the core of our approach on a par with unique and personalised offerings. Based on the dynamics of their projects, we propose custom, individual propositions for them. Also, our trading and technical teams work 24-seven to ensure that all requests are handled quickly, efficiently, and deliver better results.”

Such support helps to build trust – and, in a space like online gaming, reputations and relationships matter. With this in mind, Ocheredko adds, providers that make grand integration claims should be treated with scepticism until the evidence is indisputable.

“There’s marketing, and then there’s reality,” Ocheredko says. “This industry is built on trust and reputation. The more successful integrations you deliver, the easier it becomes to win new clients.”

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