Entain bets on Syntropy to improve global network performance in sports gaming

Sports betting giant Entain has contracted Syntropy to connect its growing global estate of datacentres and ensure next-generation technology capabilities for industry.

Operating both online and in the retail sector, Entain is one of the world’s largest sports betting and gaming groups. Tax resident in the UK, with operations in 31 regulated or regulating territories, the group employs more than 25,000 people in 20 offices across five continents. Its portfolio of brands includes bwin, Coral, Crystalbet, Eurobet, Ladbrokes, Neds International and Sportingbet, and games brands include CasinoClub, Foxy Bingo, Gala, Gioco Digitale, partypoker and PartyCasino.

In the US, the group operates BetMGM, a joint venture with MGM Resorts, created to capitalise on the opportunities presented by the regulation of sports betting and gaming. It also owns proprietary technology across all of its core product verticals and as well as its B2C operations, provides services to third-party customers on a B2B basis.

To support operations, the company is leveraging Syntropy’s global relay network with its decentralised autonomous routing protocol (DARP) to connect the company’s datacentres across the globe. Syntropy’s technology is designed to reduce latency and packet loss, improving the overall performance and reliability of Entain’s network for its core offering as well as its future expansion into the metaverse with Ennovate Labs.

The Syntropy Relay Network runs on top of the public internet and is fully programmable. It provides a global digital fabric on which to create a network of networks comprising what are claimed to be the best-connected ISPs, clouds, datacentres and devices, ensuring the optimal possible performance and security. Syntropy further claims that its blockchain-based technology solves the fundamental issues with the internet.

“With many exciting Web3 and metaverse projects in the making, we have to face the fact that the current internet infrastructure and routing protocol was not designed for performance optimisation, which is a fundamental requirement to make digitally immersive experiences a reality,” said Syntropy CEO Domas Povilauskas. “Syntropy’s open, decentralised technology overcomes this technological roadblock. Entain’s forward-looking networking team recognised the need for a Web3-ready connectivity system as they move into entertainment in the metaverse and NFTs [non-fungible tokens].”

Ahead of deployment, Entain conducted a technical proof of concept (PoC), revealing that the default internet path suffered a substantial latency increase with spikes over 1500ms for 35 minutes, which rendered the connection unusable. Without any human intervention, Syntropy’s DARP technology immediately detected the performance problem and switched to an alternative, best-performing path.

“Syntropy’s segment-routing approach goes beyond the scope of traditional SD-WAN solutions and perfectly fits to our strategy to connect all Entain’s worldwide distributed sites only over the internet,” said Markus Röglsperger, head of network, datacentre and infrastructure automation at Entain.

“Instead of relying on internet service providers where Entain must give up control once a packet leaves the private network, Syntropy’s Relay Network continues to optimise Entain’s traffic while in transit all the way to the destination. This not only significantly reduces packet loss and round-trip times, but also saves a lot of time previously spent on troubleshooting issues between various service providers.”

After the technical PoC, Entain is already planning a roll-out across the rest of its global footprint, including its 40-plus geographically dispersed private datacentres.

Syntropy believes Entain’s success with Relay Network shows how the technology can be deployed by an enterprise network and managed through Syntropy Stack, a collection of tools and libraries built to enable enterprises to create, automate, scale and optimise encrypted connections between any devices or services running on a cloud, on-premise or edge location. Using the Stack, Relay Network introduces a layer of programmability with enhanced encryption-based security that Syntropy says is critical for enterprise adoption.

“It is exciting to see the critical data routing protocol that will enable Web3 being used to drive better customer experiences in a live enterprise scenario,” said Shawn Hakl, former SVP business product at Verizon and adviser to Syntropy. “The implementation of Syntropy’s blockchain-based technology at Entain demonstrates the evolution of enterprise networking to deliver a dynamic, decentralised network topology.”