Racing Post relies on Diffusion to distribute real-time betting prices and power its chart-topping mobile applications. Using Diffusion in a hybrid private cloud configuration to match their business requirements allows the company flexible ease of scale and assured real-time delivery of betting prices. Using Diffusion allows Racing Post to; provide customers with the latest racing info and prices at zero latency, be the number one sports app downloaded more than a million times, and support real-time mobile apps, and provide a seamless customer experience. Racing Post needed a scalable real-time data delivery solution to handle massive spikes in traffic during live horse racing events.
Stable performance even during Grand National and Cheltenham peaks.
Efficient delta-streaming minimized backend strain and costs.
Real-time odds and results enhanced user engagement across platforms.
Racing Post is the online home of the UK’s number one horse racing daily newspaper. Its website, bookkeeper kiosks, and mobile apps have become the online destination of choice for horse racing enthusiasts looking for the latest information. When it came to moving data in real-time between these interfaces, the company’s previous in-house legacy solution often resulted in forced bandwidth throttling whenever customer interaction levels spiked during major racing events, to preserve service. The main challenges were; in-house messaging system forced bandwidth throttling during high volume usage, meet customer demand for real-time data, and limit impact on IT infrastructure cost and complexity.
To meet its customers’ demands for ‘live’ data performance without a huge impact on IT infrastructure cost and complexity, Racing Post needed an enterprise-class, intelligent event-data platform for its online services. Racing Post required data management, integration, and distribution solution that could flexibly scale to peak demand and reliably deliver real-time data to thousands of online and mobile customers. “Our customers don’t accept anything less than real-time, reliable access to the latest racing information and betting prices,” explains Ed Braidwood, IT Operations Manager at Racing Post. “Previously during major events such as Cheltenham or the Grand National we had to limit performance, sometimes by up to 20 seconds at the busiest times to maintain online services.”
Racing Post found Diffusion at a perfect time, says Ed Braidwood. “Mobile apps were just starting to really take off and a huge benefit of Diffusion is the intelligent distribution of data to support real-time mobile apps and allow us to provide a seamless customer experience.” Using Diffusion, Racing Post now offers apps for iPhones, iPads, Android, and HTML5 and the number of Racing Post’s mobile users is growing rapidly. “It is definitely our most popular product,” confirms Ed Braidwood. Since 2013, Racing Post has also benefited from the partnership between Push Technology (DiffusionData formerly known as Push Technology) and Telefónica, with the solution now hosted in the cloud: “It’s simple, cost-effective, and we can easily triple our infrastructure for big events”.
Using Diffusion, Racing Post provides its customers with the latest racing information and prices at zero latency, while minimizing the volume of data it sends to its online customers – whether mobile, online, or accessing services via a Racing Post kiosk in a bookmaker’s shop. The result is massive growth in Racing Post’s online services, and its mobile solution is even more successful. Racing Post’s free iPhone app became the number one sports application in the iTunes store shortly after it was launched in 2011, and it has since been downloaded more than a million times. During key events in the racing calendar, such as Cheltenham Festival week or the Aintree Grand National, Racing Post has over 700,000 unique user visits daily with as many as 122,000 concurrent users on its mobile app, and over 54 million page views.
Racing Post currently displays real-time price feeds from eleven bookmakers, with the ability to let customers click through directly to the bookmakers’ websites. In addition to pricing and odds information, Diffusion also enables Racing Post to distribute a broad range of additional data. According to Ed Braidwood, “Diffusion has a very powerful and diverse toolset, allowing us to provide our customers with additional value-added services such as, pre-race live odds comparison across a range of leading bookmakers and in-race, live-text commentaries with race status and progression data and a fast results service. Diffusion can also generate triggers for Racing Post customers, letting them know when new website content, such as a live news ticker is available.”
DiffusionData’s flagship offering Diffusion® is a secure, real-time Pub/Sub server built for mobile, web, and AI applications. Its patented delta-compression reduces bandwidth by up to 90%, enabling scalable data streaming with minimal latency. Used across financial services, gaming, and transport for mission-critical applications where personalisation and speed matter.
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