For years, a pair of companies appeared to have de facto monopolies on two critical corners of the gambling industry. For geolocation, there was GeoComply, and for education, there was EPIC.
But as representatives from both companies will tell you, neither expected their paths to stay clear for long – if they were ever that clear to begin with.
“We started as the little guy when New Jersey opened [its online gaming market],” said Sam Basile, vice president of business development for GeoComply North America. “Eventually, we were able to demonstrate that our product was the better, more fully featured product. New Jersey mandated it, we perfected it, and that’s ultimately how we became the choice of most of those companies. It wasn’t just about geolocation, it was about everything a device was encountering and whether an operator and regular can trust that someone was betting within the state.”
John Millington, senior director of EPIC Global Solutions (formerly known as EPIC Risk Management), said the notion that EPIC was the only name in the education game “might have been a misconception in some areas.”
“IC360, Sportradar, Genius Sports — those integrity-monitoring agencies have been delivering education in this space for years,” explained Millington. “I think maybe the difference is that nobody’s approached it the way EPIC has approached it. We’ve approached it from a human element and not the mechanical compliance end. How do we protect athlete integrity and well-being by minimizing gambling harm? Somebody suffering from a serious gambling addiction is more likely to [breach integrity].
“Outside of the NCPG (National Council on Problem Gambling) and the councils in certain states, EPIC is the only one who comes at it from a perspective of lived experience. Our founder and CEO (Paul Buck) suffered from a very serious 10-year gambling addiction.”
IC360 is short for Integrity Compliance 360. Long a leader in the integrity monitoring space when it was known as U.S. Integrity, the company underwent a recent rebrand that makes its intent to evolve into a full-service supplier quite clear.
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But at first, founder and president Matthew Holt had second thoughts about the pivot in nomenclature.
“As we started to expand internationally, did the U.S. part hinder us in some new jurisdictions?” he wondered aloud. “If we didn’t do a rebrand, might we have to have an international brand? But I think it’s been great. Right out of the gate I was nervous about it, but it’s actually gone a lot smoother than I thought. For us, it was always about the fact that operators have told us that it’s not practical or profitable to pay retail rates to 15 difference compliance providers for 15 different services.”
The goal, Holt added, was to bundle an array of products into “a literal one-stop shop solution, and one of those services is geolocation.”
'A Juicy Niche'
In the geolocation space, IC360 has partnered with Radar, which recently branched into the gaming industry after previously servicing the retail and food sectors.
“Radar had a proven track record in other industries and had some great tech, and they’re ready to bring that great tech into the gaming side of the industry,” said Holt.
But that sort of versatility is exactly what another gaming geolocation upstart, Xpoint, feels is one of Radar's most vulnerable traits.
“Gaming is full of nuances and idiosyncrasies. You can’t just take a solution that works for Dick’s Sporting Goods and Panera Bread and apply it to our industry,” said Xpoint CEO Manu Gambhir. “All we do is just gaming. We are never gonna get into anything else. We’re solely focused on the needs of this particular space. I wish them (Radar) luck. They’re good guys and friends also.”
Back in 2023, a judge dismissed a patent infringement lawsuit filed by GeoComply against Xpoint, which Gambhir views as an inflection point for the likes of OpenBet to enter the space.
“That victory for Xpoint got everybody thinking, ‘Hmmm, maybe we should get in also,'” said Gambhir, whose company counts PrizePicks, Prime Sports, and Sporttrade among its clients. “We predicted this. We knew that if we won, there would be others coming. There’s no surprise that they’re here. Some are legitimate and not to be taken lightly, but at the end of the day, this market is a juicy niche of the entire sports betting industry. It’s big enough for two, maybe three players. Not everybody who’s entered right now is gonna make it.”
Xpoint's latest product rollout is Trust Mode, which decreases the amount of geolocation checks required for trusted locations along state borders, an efficiency that saves operators money and bettors phone power.
“There are a lot of checks happening for players in a border situation,” explained Gambhir. “But let’s say a person is sitting at home or their office near a border and the accelerometer on their phone is telling me they’re not moving much. Why are we checking these players all the time? If we’re just being greedy, we get paid for every location check we do. That’s good for us but not for our customers. If someone is connected to an office or residential wifi, we can slow down the checking to the minimum permitted in that state.
“Location checking uses a lot of hardware. It drains the phone battery to a degree, and if you’re near a border, your battery is going to get drained faster.”
For its part, GeoComply isn't resting on its laurels. It has diversified from a straight geolocation company to one that has fraud detection, KYC, and licensing components, and recently took a minority stake in Betting Hero, a customer activation and research company.
“Competition is always going to be the way in business,” said Basile. “Our internal moral compass has always been about being bigger, better, and having the best product, [and] the thought of having additional tools to be able to allow the customer experience.”
'Big Blow, But Not Catastrophic'
Earlier this year, IC360 made waves in the education space by hiring three key employees – Mark Potter, Ryan Tatusko, and Dan Trolaro – away from EPIC, which specializes in lived experience outreach, where recovering gambling addicts or those close to them act as group facilitators and share their stories of woe and redemption.
“We just started doing education on collegiate campuses a couple years ago at the request of our clients,” said Holt. “We found that some universities liked the lived experience, some didn’t. We found that people liked both, so why not combine both? No longer can these leagues just get away with, ‘Hey, we can just do this 20-minute session.’ I think education is more important than ever, and that’s why we made such a big commitment to it.”
“I wish those guys all the best,” said EPIC's Millington of the departed trio. “They’re gonna bring something unique and new to what IC360 do. We were sad to see them go. They were three really integral members. They made a choice to move in a slightly different direction and work for a company on the compliance and regulatory side.”
Adding that the departures were “a big blow, but not catastrophic,” Millington said, “EPIC has never revolved around one or two individuals. We need to continue to grow a team that speaks to the audience. The feedback from our clients was to get some diversity of story, but also diversity of our facilitator group — cultural diversity. As three key members of the team left, we’ve had three new members join.”
EPIC recently released a report, titled “Taking on an Invisible Rival,” which took the temperature of student-athletes, administrators, and others who've born witness to its workshops. The results only served to strengthen Millington's belief in EPIC's approach.
“The thing that really shone through was that organizations had always grappled with the mechanical nature of compliance,” he said. “The common theme that comes through is the need for that human approach. The league office itself, the gut feeling was if we don’t take a human approach to this, we miss the mark in terms of how we protect student-athletes and the integrity of the sport.
“Historically, integrity education has come from the perspective of the people who have experience of trying to manipulate competition. In the past, that’s missed a huge cohort of athletes who are at risk.”