iNTERGAMINGi catches up with Jeeve Jeyaratnam, Chief Betting Officer at Abelson Sports, a few months on from the company’s rebrand
As the sports betting world has evolved in recent years, so too has the breadth of technology and services it offers. Running in parallel with that have been the companies either driving these changes or keeping up with them. That has certainly been the case for Abelson Sports, which, after 21 years in the industry, rebranded its Abelson Odds and Abelson Info divisions into a single, unified entity in February this year.
“We felt that the business had outgrown its ‘Info’ moniker,” Chief Betting Office Jeeve Jeyaratnam tells iNTERGAMINGi. “Initially, in 2003 when the company was formed, ‘information’ was all it did. While Abelson still provides information services, including fixtures and resulting for Sporting Solutions, it is now more diverse, with three clear strands.
“We felt that changing the company name to Abelson Sports better reflects where the business now sits, with the tagline ‘Odds, Data, Tech’ more clearly outlining the company’s breadth of product verticals. In fact, Odds had no direct role in the business until the 2017 acquisition of Super Soccer Oddsfeed; now it comprises around 60 per cent of our revenue.”
PROVING ADAPTABILITY
“Competition in our niche has increased and we felt we needed to make certain changes to make sure folks realise we are still the top dog,” Jeyaratnam further explains.
“We have masses of experience within the team and have seen every issue you can imagine, from every angle. Our success is testament to our ability to adapt while maintaining our core principles of exceptional customer service, quality pricing and settlement, and the widest and most flexible approach to coverage. The business continues to grow organically, without outside investment, and we are highly motivated to see how far we can go.”
Abelson Info’s Simon Temple, previous the chief operations officers of Abelson Info, is now COO of the overall business, with Jeyaratnam labelling Temple the “obvious fit” for the role given his knowledge of “every aspect of the business.”
For Jeyaratnam, chief betting officer was a “logical fit” following his leadership of Abelson Odds. “While chief betting officer more accurately describes my position, nothing has fundamentally changed and I am still fulfilling the same role,” he says.
“We run a lean business and certainly among the senior team – [founder and CEO] Ed Abelson, Simon and me – we get involved across every aspect of the business’ operations.”
AMERICAS EXPANSION
Jeyaratnam says swapping Info for Sports in Abelson’s company name helps “frame the business more accurately” while also helping cross language barriers – something he admits was “understandably not considered back in 2003.” The new name, he adds, also helps position Abelson Sports towards further progress in the Americas, where he reports the business has made “massive progress” in the last 18 months.
Key deals have included a reseller agreement with SportsContentCo, which works with US sportsbooks.
“Our Football Player Markets product is used by a number of the top operators in teh LatAm region, including Betano, Betsson, Betfair, Sportingbet and Caliente,” Jeyaratnam explains. “Our coverage in the region continues to increase, and as well as covering every match in the Argentine top division in-play, we’ve also picked up coverage of our fourth Brazilian state league, the Campeonato Gaúcho, which encompasses clubs from the state of Rio Grande do Sul.”
US OBSERVATIONS
Abelson Sports’ focus on the US market comes amid a range of high-brow regulatory discussions in the country.
The slowdown of state sports betting regulations in recent years is, for Jeyaratnam, “pretty far down the pecking order of concerns” for US online sports betting operators. Instead, he says, the lack of igaming regulation is a “huge issue and one of the reasons that so many operators have already pulled the plug on the market.” Meanwhile, the arrival of prediction markets from the likes of Robinhood and Kalshi have the potential to be “hugely damaging” to operators, Jeyaratnam adds.
“Investment bank Citizens JMP estimates that sports-based contracts markets will have a total addressable market (TAM) worth US$555m in 2025; from a standing start this represents a significant figure. Indeed, Kalshi reported trading volumes of $504m for the March Madness tournament, trumping both FanDuel and DraftKings and suggesting that the Citizens estimate is conservative.
“While we await the results of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) review into the legality of offering these markets, decisions on how to counter will be ongoing. It’s more than possible that should prediction markets be allowed to persist, operators will join in. A series of cease-and-desist orders from states worried about tax revenues bypassing them on their way to federal government coffers has only accelerated the panic.”
LATAM AMBITIONS
“Abelson Sports is proud to have supplier status in Peru, through the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Tourism (Mincetur), and Buenos Aires, through Lotería de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (LoTBA), showcasing the firm’s strong intentions to operate within the region,” Jeyaratnam concludes.
“We will continue to arrange supplier licensing wherever it becomes a requirement. The Football Player Markets product now encompasses goalscorer pricing in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador and Mexico. One region that is attracting interest outside of those key markets is Paraguay. President Santiago Pena has recently said that the government wants to overhaul and de-monopolise gambling laws. Should that come about, we’ll have goalscorer markets available from the outset.”
