Radar CEO Nick Patrick tells SBC Americas why the geolocation provider is capable of providing a valuable alternative in the gaming market. He explains that Radar has over a decade of experience working in other industries, during which the company has been able to optimize its technology to offer a robust platform at a reasonable price.
SBC Americas: What are the main features of the Radar geolocation tool and how do those features give the best possible experience for your clients?
Nick Patrick: Radar has long been a leader in geolocation, processing over 100 billion API calls per year from over 100 million devices across hundreds of enterprise customers. Last year, we brought our geolocation technology to the gaming space as an alternative.
Our geo-compliance solution for gaming detects dozens of forms of location spoofing, current jurisdiction, and so on across mobile, web, and desktop.
Radar’s low cost, low latency, and high accuracy enable the best possible experience for operators and players.
SBC: What are the main differences between the Radar technology and that of other geolocation providers in the space?
NP: There are three key differences between Radar and geo-compliance incumbents.
First, cost. Radar is 50-90% less expensive than alternatives. Because we’ve spent the last decade optimizing our infrastructure, we can operate sustainably at this price point. We also price differently than incumbents. Our pricing is based on monthly tracked users, not location pings, making it easy to forecast costs, check a player’s location as often as needed, or enable new use cases.
Second, latency. Because we can check a player’s location as often as needed at no additional cost to operators, we can cache geolocation tokens and almost always have a fresh one available. This means near-zero latency on location checks after initialization.
Third, flexibility. Beyond geo-compliance use cases, Radar can power other use cases like location-based messaging, on-property app experiences, address validation and mapping, and more. For example, Everi uses Radar for location-based messaging, and PrizePicks recently switched from Google Maps to Radar for address autocomplete.
SBC: It seems like ease-of-use is a key priority underpinning the Radar platform. Is this the case and what is the driver behind this strategy?
NP: Yes. We want to make it easy for everyone to implement Radar, from new startups to tier 1 operators.
For tier 1 operators, we recently shipped new SDK patterns that make it easy to migrate from other geo-compliance solutions.
For new startups, we have self-serve signup, open-source SDKs, and open developer docs that make it easy to get started. Think “Stripe or Twilio for geolocation.”
SBC: Who are some of the partners and clients in the gaming space who are using Radar?
NP: Since our launch, dozens of operators and vendors have turned to Radar for geolocation compliance, spanning sportsbook (Ballers Sportsbook), iGaming (Everi), sweepstakes (Fliff), fantasy (Sleeper), horse racing (1/ST), and lottery (large iLottery platform). We’ll have many more customer and partner announcements to share soon.
SBC: How does your experience and expertise from outside of the gaming industry give Radar an advantage? What are your biggest experiences outside of gaming?
NP: Outside of gaming, Radar powers geolocation for enterprises like Panera, DICK’S Sporting Goods, T-Mobile, Zillow, and hundreds more.
We power use cases like highly accurate drive-thru arrival detection for restaurant apps, indoor location for retail apps, or location tracking and spoofing detection for logistics apps. We’ve optimized our location infrastructure so we can serve these use cases extremely cost-effectively. And we handle Super Bowl-like traffic spikes on a weekly basis, processing over 100 billion API calls per year.
Our technology translates naturally to gaming use cases, like detecting which state a player is in or which part of a casino a player is in. Our expertise outside of gaming means that we enter the space with unparalleled accuracy, efficiency, and scale.
SBC: In which states is Radar licensed to offer geolocation tech for gaming? Can we expect any more states to come?
NP: Radar is now ready to operate in 11 US jurisdictions, including CO, AZ, WV, PR, AR, VA, OH, WY, TN, MS, and NV. We have applications filed in 11 more, and we expect to be licensed in every state where iGaming or OSB is legal by the end of the year.
We’re also ready to operate outside of the US, and we’re seeing demand for Canada, the EU, and Brazil (ahead of 2025).
SBC: What can we expect from Radar in terms of both your products and partnerships throughout the rest of 2024 and beyond?
NP: On the product side, we’re continuing to invest in our back office and reporting capabilities as our roster of gaming customers grows.
On the partnerships side, we recently announced a strategic partnership with IC360 and we’ll be announcing more strategic partnerships this summer. Stay tuned!