Kindred Sports Platform

Background

Unibet, a subsidiary of the Kindred Group, serves over 9.5 million customers across 100 countries. Known for its broad range of sports betting and racing options, Unibet aims to deliver a seamless gaming experience, but despite its global presence, the brand has struggled to compete in certain markets, often falling behind more established competitors.

Following the successful redesign of the racing experience, Unibet decided to take an even bigger step and bring the entire sportsbook platform in-house. By doing so we aimed to gain greater control over the product ecosystem and introduce innovative features that had been missing from the sports experience.

Starting Point

The existing product design needed a full update to match the brand’s vision and introduce new features to stay competitive. We began by researching our customers needs and expectations.

Understanding User Needs
The user experience was closely examined to uncover any pain points, supported by direct conversations with existing sportsbook users to understand preferences and platform choices. Feedback from VIP customers offered insights into desired features and highlighted areas of improvement to enhance retention.

Competitor Analysis
Leading sportsbooks such as Bet365 and Sportsbet were evaluated to benchmark key features and identify gaps within our product offering. This analysis informed potential enhancements aimed at delivering a more compelling and competitive experience for our users.

Modernising the Product
While some minor updates have occurred over time, the product had not been fully aligned with current design standards. This initiative provided a good opportunity to address accessibility concerns and refresh the overall user experience, aligning it with modern expectations and mobile app usage habits.

Findings

Our research revealed several issues with the current user experience.

Inconsistent Interface
‍The visual difference in branding between our sports and racing products created some confusion for our users, while the inability to place bets on both within a single transaction further fragmented the overall experience.

Lack of Key Features
‍We realised our product was missing some vital features that had become standard across the industry and expected from our customers, most notably same-game multi, which allows users to combine multiple bets from a single match into one wager.

Customer Rewards
‍While we did already offer our users betting rewards, they were limited and failed to drive meaningful user engagement. Customers had little reason to return as the incentives weren't very substantial, and the rewards lacked visibility or clear explanation within the sports product, reducing their overall effectiveness.

Solution

As part of our effort to unify the experience, we led a redesign of the product interface to establish the first phase of visual and functional consistency between the sports and racing sections. This included introducing both light and dark modes for the product, which gave users greater control over their viewing preferences and laying the groundwork for a more cohesive, accessible experience across the platform.

To unify the experience across betting categories, we designed a betslip that worked seamlessly across both racing and sports.

This allowed customers the ability to place bets on both within a single transaction, eliminating a key point of frustration. The redesigned betslip also presented available rewards in a clearer, more intuitive way, making it easier for users to understand and engage with their incentives during the betting process.

As part of enhancing multi-bet functionality, Bet Builder was introduced as our solution for integrating same-game multis into the product experience. This feature enabled users to combine multiple bets from a single event directly from that page, significantly streamlining the process. By presenting all the betting options in a single page and providing complete wager details before needing to add them to the betslip, we made complex multi-leg bets more intuitive and accessible, enhancing both usability and engagement.

To improve transparency and user control, the Rewards page was also redesigned for greater clarity and usability. Customers could now easily see which rewards were available in their account, along with clear explanations of what their rewards offered. We introduced detailed views for each reward, direct access to eligible markets, and a comprehensive history of previously used or expired rewards, giving users full visibility over their benefits.

Recognising the importance of live updates, enhancements were made to the My Bets page to support real-time bet tracking. Live event results were now displayed as they happened, giving users constant updates. We also clearly highlighted cash-out opportunities when eligible, making real-time event data essential for users to make informed decisions about their open bets. This update not only improved transparency but also enabled users to take timely action based on live event outcomes.

When I exited Unibet, the Kindred Sports Platform was still in active development, so user engagement metrics were not available at the time. However, stakeholder feedback on our proposed changes and improvements was overwhelmingly positive, and early planning had already begun for the second phase of the project vision.