The challenge
Establishing the geo-compliance infrastructure to scale sports betting across the US
bet365’s online sportsbook spans 40+ countries across five continents. At this scale, compliance is never a one-size-fits-all operation. Each region bet365 operates in imposes its own gaming regulations, some of which require dedicated geo-compliance infrastructure to verify player location and enforce those local regulations in real time.
Standing up this layer for the company’s U.S. footprint was especially complex. Years earlier, bet365 had already moved away from relying on a single geo-compliance vendor, shifting to a multi-provider model so the company could keep accepting bets even if one provider went offline. As the U.S. footprint kept growing, the product development team kept looking for partners who could take on more of that footprint outright, not just add redundancy on the margins.
“The state-by-state structure of U.S. gaming regulation offered us a unique opportunity to diversify,” a bet365 spokesperson explains. “If we had different providers owning different states, no single outage could take down our entire U.S. business.”
So, the product development team searched for a geolocation partner who could meet or exceed their current provider’s high standard. One with:
- Certified, state-by-state compliance: U.S. geo-compliance means contending with IP routing limitations that can’t always resolve which state a user is in, particularly in border-adjacent cities. To maintain their licenses and avoid costly fines, bet365 required a solution that could pinpoint a user’s location and confirm whether it fell within a state where wagering was legal, especially as regulations were ever-evolving.
- Reliable, enterprise-grade performance: Spikes in betting traffic can easily overwhelm geolocation systems, so maintaining steady performance is essential. bet365’s new partner needed to sustain high pass rates and low latency, with minimal API downtime, especially during marquee events.
- Real-time fraud detection: bet365’s geolocation partner would serve as the first line of defense against today’s increasingly sophisticated bad actors, who often use location spoofing to abuse and cash out bonuses. Instant, granular visibility into fraudulent activity, rather than just a pass/fail signal, was non-negotiable.
- Flexible pricing: As a high-volume, multi-state operator, bet365 needed a pricing model that scaled with their business, not a per-transaction structure that penalized them for positive traffic spikes.
Radar easily cleared the bar, especially impressing bet365 with a competitive MTU pricing model that other providers couldn’t match. And the Radar team’s hands-on, bespoke approach sealed the deal.
“Geo-compliance is uniquely complicated in the U.S. because betting rules are so tightly tied to state lines. Finding a provider who could handle those nuances was crucial to keeping our licenses.”
The solution
An API-first geolocation platform for always-on compliance and fraud detection
Radar integrated seamlessly with bet365’s existing architecture, plugging in via SDK. Throughout the guided implementation process, Radar’s team quickly responded to and actioned the product development team’s feedback. This included adjusting their API model so Radar could be switched on only in specific states while bet365’s additional provider stayed active in others.
“Radar definitely owned the bulk of the implementation lift,” the bet365 spokesperson shares. “And they went out of their way to tailor the solution to our multi-vendor approach.”
Today, Radar is fully equipped to support bet365’s geo-compliance requirements across the entirety of their U.S. footprint, offering a scalable solution for all jurisdictions where bet365 is active.
This compliance layer runs in the background 24/7, safeguarding the company from regulatory risks. The verification flow is simple: whenever someone tries to place a bet, Radar uses an administrative boundary dataset to detect their country, state, and postal code in real time. Only once the user’s location has been checked against the relevant state’s requirements can the bet go through. Crucially, Radar handles location checks at remarkable speed and scale, maintaining fast response times, strong pass rates, and consistent API uptime.
Once a state is configured, it runs largely on its own, which frees up bet365’s product development team to focus elsewhere. The hands-on work happens earlier, around every new state launch. Ahead of each rollout, Radar’s team works through a shared readiness checklist with bet365, covering exclusion zones, buffer distances, and allowlist timing, so nothing is left to chance before go-live.
The same goes for regulatory changes that demand on-the-fly adjustments. After Illinois introduced a new location-based tax structure, including a city-specific tax layered on top of the state tax in Chicago, Radar jumped in to ensure their location verification data supported the updated tax calculation logic.
When it comes to fraud detection, bet365’s fraud team drills down in Radar’s dashboard on all device-level signals: GPS spoofing, proxy and VPN usage, and device tampering. Radar additionally flags broader patterns, like sudden upticks in accounts in a certain location that could signal coordinated fraud rings.
With this visibility, the bet365 team rapidly detects well-disguised bonus abusers who'd otherwise slip past a binary check, as well as account sharing, multi-accounting, and other fraud. And as bad actors grow stealthier, Radar’s team fine-tunes their detection rules and alert thresholds to keep bet365 vigilant.
For bet365, adding Radar to their multi-vendor geo-compliance stack was the best way to future-proof their U.S. sportsbook. Now, they can comfortably expand to more U.S. states without incurring risk or unpredictable partner costs.
“Radar is always enforcing compliance and detecting fraud, and our team barely has to touch it. Having such a trustworthy, low-lift solution running in the background has been incredibly valuable.”
The results
bet365 cuts geo-compliance costs by 50%+, without sacrificing speed or accuracy
With Radar, bet365 maintains effortless compliance with constantly changing state gaming regulations, stays one step ahead of fraud, and captures meaningful savings.
After nearly two years of productive and iterative partner support, bet365’s product development team is excited for their future with Radar. As they chase an ambitious goal of making bet365 the number one sports betting company in the U.S., using Radar to expand into more states will be key.
“Radar isn’t just another vendor trying to sell us a service. They’re genuinely invested in listening to our feedback and customizing their offerings to help us succeed.”
About Bet365
bet365 is a global leader in online sports betting and gaming. Founded in 2000 and trusted by millions of players worldwide, bet365 is committed to promoting safer gambling and providing tools that help customers stay in control, including spend and session limits. bet365 has a range of useful tools to help customers stay in control of their gambling that can be found at: https://responsiblegambling.bet365.com/en
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