In today’s blog, The Unit’s Chairman Andy Clerkson joins Paddy Casey to share what goes into building top-quality sports betting platforms. Reflecting on their time together at Grand Parade, they recall how product development evolved from early advertising banners to free-to-play games, then mobile apps, and eventually “full-scale fixed odds sports betting platforms”. The conversation then moves into the process of turning an idea into a scalable product that can power some of the industry’s leading operators.
Andy shares insights from his experience launching major betting and iGaming solutions, working with global brands, and now applying his expertise to support The Unit’s continued growth. It’s a practical look at how outsourcing development to companies like The Unit, where teams are built with deep industry knowledge and strong technical skills, can often be more efficient than in-house development. In a fast-moving iGaming landscape, that kind of expertise can make all the difference.
Reminiscing About Their Time At Grand Parade
Paddy Casey: “Andy, when we got together back in 2015, I came into Grand Parade and we were building a fixed odds sports betting platform, which is still being used by a lot of operators in lots of different regulated markets around the world today. So, it’s nice to see that our initial hard work has been picked and continued on.”
Andy Clerkson: “Yeah, I mean, it was a kind of amazing time because we had started doing odds comparison work very early days, which meant we had to understand pricing and we had to understand…I was going to say APIs, but I think when I started with Grand Parade, when we founded the company, the only betting company in the world that had an API was Betfair. Everybody else was some kind of feeds or whatever that we had to harness.”
“And then as we grew, we built peripheral but interesting products, such as advertising banners with contextual information in them. In the very early days, we created small games, which would now be called free-to-play games. Back then, we didn’t even refer to them in that way. We simply used them as marketing tools to get people to interact. As mobile came into play, we started developing apps, some of which were marketing focused. Just as the company grew, and just like The Unit has grown, we realized that we started to have all of the skills necessary to build a full-blown fixed odds sports betting platform.”
“So we got it right. But we got it right because we also brought in some really experienced people like yourself (referring to Paddy Casey) and others from operators and put together that team, which I know The Unit is doing. I was never sure whether a sports betting platform ultimately would be the thing that brought the most value (because it costs quite a lot to do it, takes up a lot of energy, takes up a lot of people). But actually, it showed a lot of our other clients that we just had real deep knowledge and understanding as a company of what everybody’s business was.”
How Does The Unit Handle The Development Of Betting Solutions?
Andy adds: “So although development maybe has changed, things are delivered in slightly different ways, I think that core experience and knowing that you’ve built a team of devs that are enterprise level, at operator level, is really where the success will lie. That’s the uniqueness of what The Unit is doing!
That’s where we’ll be able to really offer great value to bigger companies along the way, and smaller companies wanting to build the whole thing, or just a siloed piece done quickly, on time and to budget, which you do when you’ve outsourced it. I think that’s what’s really valuable as we move into another stage, where people want to move quickly.”
Watch the full video to hear the full story about their collaboration from Grand Parade to The Unit, and how industry operators can benefit from The Unit’s expertise.
