Scientific Games Corporation, provider of games, systems and services for casino, lottery, social gaming, online gaming and sports betting, on Monday said it processed a record-breaking 50m bets during the recent Grand National Horse Racing Festival.
The Grand National race has been contested since 1839, traditionally at the Aintree Racecourse in Liverpool, England.
Last year’s race was cancelled due to Covid, and this year’s version was run without spectators for the first time ever.
Officials for Las Vegas-based SG said they saw the highly anticipated 2021 event as the “ultimate test of the robustness and stability” of its OpenSports technology stack.
The company said it processed 60.5% more bets on the Grand National race than 2019, with 100% uptime and a record 115,000 peak bets per minute across the UK's most established operators.
One OpenSports customer reported a record for its Grand National betting volume, with peak bets exceeding 57,000 per minute, a 128% increase over 2019.
According to SG, long-term clients Sky Betting and Gaming, Paddy Power, Betfair, Ladbrokes, Coral, and William Hill all reported significant increases in volume this year.
Over the three days of the festival, SG said total account transactions were up 55% compared to 2019.
“Over the last three years, teams across SG Digital have transformed our OpenSports technology to meet the demands of the world’s leading operators,” Jordan Levin, Group CEO, Digital, for Scientific Games, said in a statement. “Whether it is the Grand National, the Big Game or the Melbourne Cup, we have a responsibility to the largest sportsbooks in every corner of the world to deliver on our promises and exceed their expectations.”
Keith O'Loughlin, SVP sports at Scientific Games added: “We set about completely modernizing our technology by shifting services to the cloud and using cutting-edge frameworks such as React and Python for our artificial intelligence needs.”
