Eugene Ocheredko, DATA.BET: “Integration is rarely a purely technical task — it’s about aligning multiple departments and connecting them effectively”
Eugene Ocheredko, B2B Integration Architect at DATA.BET, discusses the sportsbook or esports betting solution integration.
Exclusive interview.- In the following interview with Focus Gaming News, Eugene Ocheredko, B2B Integration Architect at DATA.BET, shared insights about integrating a sportsbook or esports betting solution. He talked about the most common challenges operators face and how the company keeps the process smooth and efficient.
He also discussed the technical and operational aspects that should be taken into account when migrating from one sportsbook or data provider to another. He shared details of an interesting integration case.
From your experience as an Integration Architect, what are the most common challenges operators face when integrating a sportsbook or esports betting solution, and how can they better avoid delays?
From my perspective, most challenges come from operational and regulatory differences. They are usually shaped by the historical evolution of an operator’s platform or by local market requirements.
Common examples include differences in how bet resettlements and negative balance cases are handled, settlement rules for edge cases such as a player refusing to continue a tennis match, and regulatory constraints. For example, DGOJ requirements to specify the country code for each match, as well as restrictions on events with a high percentage of underage participants, which is particularly common in esports.
These specifics are often not fully visible to technical teams. That’s why early involvement of the operator’s Product Managers is critical. Proper planning at the start of the integration significantly reduces unexpected delays later.
In practice, the most time-consuming part of almost any integration is entity mapping — markets, leagues, tournaments, teams, and players. Since our integration is unified across all sports and markets, the most effective approach is a soft launch: start with one sport and a limited set of markets, then gradually expand coverage.
Integration is often described as a “two-way process.” What challenges usually arise on both the supplier and operator sides, and how does DATA.BET work to keep the process smooth and efficient?
If the same issue appears more than once across different operator integrations, I consider that an oversight of our team. Our job is to learn from every case and make sure it doesn’t happen again.
To support this, we analyse all recent integration challenges and resolve them by automating processes, strengthening QA checklists, improving documentation, refining the onboarding flow, and implementing operational changes on the DATA.BET side.
That’s why integrations must be handled by a dedicated team that understands not only technology, but also trading, product, operations, and commercial realities. Integration is rarely a purely technical task — it’s about aligning multiple departments and connecting them effectively.
“Proper planning at the start of the integration significantly reduces unexpected delays later.”
Eugene Ocheredko, B2B Integration Architect at DATA.BET.
Many operators are considering switching suppliers. What are the key technical and operational aspects they should take into account when migrating from one sportsbook or data provider to another?
The most important factor is ownership and responsibility. Operators want suppliers who are responsible for their product and can minimise operational overhead.
Key points to evaluate include the quality of technical and trading support, particularly whether the supplier actively assists during incidents, as well as what differentiates the supplier in the market. Operators should also consider the supplier’s development speed and openness to feature requests. Another important factor is the source of the data, whether it is based on official data, proprietary models, or scraping, along with the associated dependency risks, as relying on third parties means inheriting their outages. In addition, platform scalability and proven uptime under high load are critical, as is portfolio coverage, since operators generally prefer working with a small number of strong suppliers rather than managing dozens of separate integrations.
A supplier with official data and its own models has full control over its product, providing stability and predictability for the operator.
Can you share an interesting or unusual integration case you’ve worked on that highlights how flexible or complex sportsbook integrations can be?
One particularly unusual integration involved a client whose entire infrastructure was built around an event-driven architecture, while our API at the time was HTTP-based and synchronous. In practice, the two approaches were fundamentally incompatible.
To address this, we had to implement new asynchronous protocols for both our Odds Feed and MTS integrations using message brokers instead of synchronous HTTP communication, within a very short timeframe.
“A supplier with official data and its own models has full control over its product, providing stability and predictability for the operator.”
Eugene Ocheredko, B2B Integration Architect at DATA.BET.
ICE was your first exhibition. What were you most looking forward to at the show, and what kind of conversations did you have with operators regarding integration and technical collaboration?
Engaging directly with our existing partners was extremely valuable. With some of them, we’ve been working together for the last two years, and face-to-face conversations add a completely different level of trust.
At the same time, conversations with potential partners were equally important. In this industry, long-term collaboration is built on trust, and in-person meetings remain the most effective way to establish it, especially when discussing integration, reliability, and sustained partnership.
