Below, iGaming NEXT caught up with Radar CEO Nick Patrick.
iGN: Give us a one-sentence summary of Radar as a company and the service it provides
NP: Radar is the all-in-one location platform: geofencing, geocoding, maps, and now a geo-compliance solution for gaming.
iGN: Is Radar new to iGaming? Which industries has it served previously?
NP: We’ve worked with companies in the gaming space for years, such as Sleeper and Everi, but now we’re leaning into iGaming.
We’re planning on launching with our first sportsbook customers in regulated jurisdictions in the next few months. We’re currently licensed in CO, AZ, and WV, with several other states in process.
We’re planning to be licensed in all remaining US states in 2024 and are accelerating our licensing timeline given the immense demand from operators.
In addition to gaming, we also serve customers in retail, restaurant, payments, travel, logistics, and more. Examples include DICK’s Sporting Goods, Whataburger, T-Mobile, and Zillow. We process over 100 billion API calls per year from over 100 million devices.
iGN: Why is geolocation so important in iGaming?
NP: The geo-compliance use case is obviously most important: detecting a user’s current jurisdiction as well as detecting fraud like GPS spoofing, proxy and VPN usage, screen sharing, and so on.
Outside of compliance, Radar can serve many other impactful (but today, underserved) use cases like on-property app experiences, location-based messaging, address validation, mapping, and more.
iGN: What feedback have you heard from the gaming community?
NP: Over the past year, we’ve talked to dozens of experts in the gaming community, including product and compliance leaders at tier 1 sportsbook operators, other vendors, regulators, compliance experts, investors, and more.
Operators want more choice, and they want more cost-effective choices.
iGN: Why is competition in this space important?
NP: Competitive markets are good for customers. Competition drives down prices and stimulates innovation. Both of these things are sorely needed in the geo-compliance space.iGN: What does your product do differently and how will it attract iGaming customers?
NP: Our industry-leading Geofencing Platform has long supported highly accurate and reliable geofencing, country and state detection, Bluetooth beacon detection, and place visit detection.
With our new fraud detection capabilities, Radar can also detect location spoofing, VPN and proxy usage, device tampering, screen sharing, and more.
These capabilities are supported across all platforms, and our SDKs have passed an audit by Gaming Labs International (GLI).
A few things differentiate our offering:
First, our developer-friendliness. Think of Radar as a “Stripe for geolocation.” Technical teams love our open-source SDKs and our developer docs.
Second, fair and simple pricing. Our solution is significantly more cost-effective than alternatives, with pricing based on monthly tracked users instead of location pings, making it easy to forecast costs and to check a player’s location as often as needed.
Third, more location use cases supported. We recently launched Radar Maps Platform, and our Geofencing Platform supports a wide range of use cases other than compliance, including on-property app experiences and location-based messaging.
Fourth, enterprise-readiness. Unlike other upstarts in the space, we already work with global brands. Our customers also love us for our support, and we think of ourselves not just as a vendor, but as a true partner.
iGN: How does geolocation tech differ when used for iGaming compared to other sectors?
NP: We fundamentally see these as geofencing use cases with fraud detection and compliance layered in. Long recognised as the geofencing industry leader, we’re confident in our technology’s ability to support these use cases even in the most demanding situations.
Many of our non-gaming customers have also expressed interest in our fraud detection capabilities. For example, some of our retail customers have challenges with users claiming in-store offers when they aren’t actually in-store, or region-specific offers when they’re not actually in-region.
And some of our logistics customers have challenges with users spoofing their location to prematurely clock in our clock out of work sites. We expect to see broad adoption of our fraud detection capabilities among our non-gaming customers as well.
iGN: What message are you eager to get across at G2E this year?
NP: A viable alternative is finally here! We’ll be sharing our vision for the next generation of geo-compliance solutions. Come hear our talk at 10:30am on Tuesday or come visit us at booth #5427. We’ve heard rumours that a celebrity might be there…
iGN: Do you have plans to expand outside of the US?
NP: Yes. We’re already talking to several potential gaming customers based outside of the US. Outside of gaming, about 30% of our customer base is already outside of the US.
Nick Patrick is the CEO and co-founder of Radar. Companies like Sleeper, Panera, DICK’s Sporting Goods, T-Mobile, and Zillow use Radar’s geofencing SDKs and maps APIs to power location-based experiences across hundreds of millions of devices worldwide. Nick was previously the director of product at Handy and a product manager at Foursquare.
