FanDuel’s bold leap: Bringing Canadian ops in-house

FanDuel, owned by Flutter Entertainment since 2018, is a powerhouse in the US gaming industry, offering sports betting, online casino games and fantasy sports across 37 states. Not only is FanDuel the premier mobile gaming destination in North America, it also holds the title of #1 gaming operator and the fastest-growing iGaming operator in the US.

Renowned for its innovative approach and customer-first services, FanDuel has been our long-standing, trusted partner on multiple major projects over the years.

In 2022, FanDuel set its sights on Canada, aiming to become the go-to platform for Canadian sports fans. And we were more than happy to help.

FanDuel’s Canada operations, initially handled by a third-party provider (GAN), needed a fresh approach to tap into the booming Canadian market.

They wanted to bring operations in-house for better control and to fully leverage their innovative edge. Their goal? A bigger market presence and an exceptional experience for Canadian sports fans.

Our mission was to help FanDuel make this exciting transition smoothly, so they could rise to the challenge and dominate the Canadian sports betting scene.

This project came with its fair share of challenges, especially when migrating over 600,000 users without impacting US operations. We had to work carefully and intelligently, seamlessly embedding our expert teams to ensure minimal fuss – and maximum impact.

Our challenge involved:

• Completely redeploying all of FanDuel’s services onto a brand-new infrastructure – a first for everyone

• Using shared code with the US team, ensuring we didn’t cause any US platform downtime or negatively impact the operations of the platform on the other side of the border

• Getting six usually siloed verticals to play nice together because of high interdependencies around infrastructure and shared services

• Modifying existing services and introducing new ones to meet all the Canadian regulations

We also were tasked with navigating all of the above whilst ensuring that we did not disrupt the roadmap of new feature and technical development for FanDuel’s US platform.

Discover

We kicked off with a two-week discovery phase to map out the project’s scope and identify potential risks.

This initial phase was all about understanding the big picture and laying a solid foundation. By diving deep into FanDuel’s needs and the Canadian market’s specifics, we could pinpoint exactly what needed to be done and how to tackle any challenges that might arise. The outcome of this was a definition of the high-level technical solution, working assumptions and a proposal on how we could make it happen.

Design

Next, we assembled eight new teams and integrated two existing ones to focus on the new features required for the Canadian launch.

Our leadership team, consisting of a Lead Delivery Manager, Lead Product Manager, Principal Engineer, Lead Automation Engineer and Client Principal, were pivotal in building strong relationships with FanDuel’s stakeholders. Guiding the project’s direction by making critical technical, product and commercial decisions, they made sure that everything stayed on track and aligned with the vision by managing ever-changing scope, risks and dependencies.

Alongside the above, our DevOps team were building the necessary infrastructure, setting the stage for a smooth deployment.

Deliver

We orchestrated several week-long “deployathons” to roll out all existing FanDuel services onto the new Canadian environment. This involved meticulous planning and coordination across all verticals to ensure seamless integration (including third-party payment and KYC vendors) and compliance with Canadian regulations.

Our teams worked tirelessly to develop one new payment provider from scratch and modify the flow for two others to function in Canada. We also revamped the registration flow to meet Canadian legal requirements.

By leveraging our expertise and using CreateFuture, the US teams could continue their roadmap delivery without disruption, while our teams focused on the Canadian functionality and deployment.