bet365, the world’s biggest online sports betting site says advances in HTML5 along with the penetration of high-end mobile devices is enabling it to deliver a near identical cross platform experience.
Over the last six-months, HTML5 has enabled bet365’s development teams to not only significantly increase the feel and function of its mobile platform but also considerably reduce the code needed to produce it.
Audio and video streaming is now powered by HTML5, allowing customers on any device to access the streams, without the need for a flash plugin. This is also true of bet365’s ‘Match Live’ service, which provides users with a graphical representation of a sport, when a stream is not available.
“Our focus is on ensuring our customers have the same rich experience, no matter how they access our products, said Martin Davies, CTO, bet365. Using HTML5 we are able to serve more functionality than ever before.”
Critically HTML5 is enabling the company to move away from an application based development model to the creation of a universal product. One of the most important benefits of HTML5 is its ability to unify bet365’s codebase. This has delivered a number of efficiency gains including shorter development timescales and a lower cost of development.
“The mobile landscape has changed very quickly. Until recently we had to juggle a whole host of operating systems, screen sizes and system capabilities. Previously we designed changes for the web, then we looked at mobile and then tablet. Now we design with the aim of ensuring the same design will work across all three platforms and associated operating systems,” said Davies
The penetration of high-end mobile phones across the globe and introduction of 3G and now 4G are also major contributors to bet365’s progress.
“Historically we’ve had to create something that will work both at the high and low-end of consumer technology. The popularity of high-end phones and advances in mobile internet provision has made us feel comfortable moving to HTML5 because the majority of customers are ready for it,” said Davies.
50% of bet365’s customers now access the company’s services via a mobile device but this is not to the detriment of other channels, which also continue to grow.
“The line between mobile and web is certainly blurring. From our perspective, there is very little difference between what we deliver via the internet to what people can get on their phones and tablets.” concluded Davies.