Gaming & Analytics • Diligence

OddsJam closed a strategic acquisition after a 35% latency win

We handled technical diligence, stabilized the data pipeline, and told a compelling story to Gambling.com that accelerated the acquisition.

35%

Latency reduction

11

Critical issues fixed

42

Dataroom artifacts

8 weeks

Close timeline

Prep for diligence

Client snapshot

Company
OddsJam
Industry
Sports betting analytics
Stage
Growth → Acquisition
Headquarters
Remote (US)

Timeline

  1. Week 1

    Code + infra audit, cost benchmarking, incident review.

  2. Week 3

    Fixed ingestion bottlenecks and implemented observability.

  3. Week 5

    Produced complete dataroom documentation.

  4. Week 8

    Supported final diligence calls and integration planning.

Problem → Action → Outcome

A quick operator-level summary of what changed.

Problem

A high-volume betting analytics platform was heading into acquisition talks with latency issues, incomplete documentation, and limited visibility into infra risk.

Action

HyperNest joined as technical diligence partners, optimized the data pipeline, built dashboards, and produced the dataroom artifacts acquirers needed.

Outcome

OddsJam cut latency by 35%, resolved 11 critical issues before close, and completed the Gambling.com acquisition with a confident technical story.

The challenge

OddsJam had built a market-leading sports betting analytics platform that processed real-time odds data from dozens of sportsbooks simultaneously, delivering arbitrage opportunities and positive expected value bets to tens of thousands of subscribers. The data pipeline ingested millions of odds updates per day through Kafka, cached hot data in Redis, and served it through an API layer that subscribers relied on for time-sensitive decisions where even a few hundred milliseconds of extra latency could mean the difference between capturing and missing a profitable line. The platform was generating strong revenue and had attracted acquisition interest from Gambling.com Group, a publicly traded online gambling affiliate. But the technical story had gaps that would not survive diligence. The streaming ingestion pipeline had developed bottlenecks as the number of sportsbook integrations grew: Kafka consumer lag was spiking during peak event windows (NFL Sundays, major European football matches), and p95 API latency had crept above acceptable thresholds. There was no centralized observability: engineers used a mix of ad-hoc CloudWatch dashboards and manual log searches to diagnose issues, which meant that when something broke during a high-traffic event, triage took hours instead of minutes. The infrastructure ran on a mix of manually provisioned EC2 instances and ECS tasks with no Terraform or infrastructure-as-code, making it difficult to answer basic acquirer questions about reproducibility, disaster recovery, and multi-region failover. The acquisition timeline was aggressive. Gambling.com’s corp dev and engineering teams would be conducting technical diligence within weeks, and any unresolved reliability risk or missing documentation could delay or derail the deal. OddsJam’s leadership needed to maintain focus on customer commitments and negotiations, not spend weeks producing architecture diagrams and runbooks. Without a dedicated diligence partner, the founding team would have been pulled in two directions at the worst possible moment, risking both the deal and the product experience their subscribers depended on.

  • Kafka consumer lag spiking during peak event windows (NFL Sundays, major European football matches), causing delayed odds delivery to subscribers
  • p95 API latency had crept above acceptable thresholds as the number of sportsbook integrations grew, directly impacting subscriber experience
  • No centralized observability: engineers relied on ad-hoc CloudWatch dashboards and manual log searches, making incident triage take hours
  • Infrastructure provisioned manually with no Terraform or infrastructure-as-code, making reproducibility and disaster recovery questions unanswerable
  • No formal security posture documentation, vendor inventory, or SOC2-aligned controls for acquirer security review
  • Aggressive acquisition timeline with Gambling.com’s corp dev and engineering teams expecting technical diligence within weeks

What we built

We joined as dedicated technical diligence partners with a single goal: get the platform acquisition-ready in eight weeks without disrupting the product experience for existing subscribers. The first week was a comprehensive audit. We reviewed every service, mapped dependencies, benchmarked costs against industry norms, and reviewed the last six months of incident history. We produced a prioritized list of 11 critical issues ranked by acquisition risk: items that an acquirer’s engineering team would flag as deal risks versus items that were real but could be addressed post-close. This prioritization was critical because it focused engineering effort on the issues that mattered for the deal, not on a generic cleanup that would have taken months. The highest-impact technical work was optimizing the streaming ingestion pipeline. We identified that the primary bottleneck was a single Kafka consumer group that was processing all sportsbook feeds sequentially. We re-partitioned the topics by sportsbook and event type, added a Redis caching layer for frequently accessed odds that reduced database reads by 60%, and tuned the ECS task scaling policies to pre-warm capacity before predictable peak windows. These changes cut p95 API latency by 35%. We then containerized the remaining manually-provisioned services, wrote Terraform for the entire infrastructure footprint, and stood up Grafana dashboards backed by Prometheus metrics so that both OddsJam’s team and the acquirer’s engineers could see real-time platform health. For observability, we chose Grafana and Prometheus over Datadog because OddsJam’s existing infrastructure already had Prometheus exporters in place, and the open-source stack avoided adding a new SaaS dependency during a cost-sensitive acquisition period. Our Staff Security Engineers Naveen and Rohan ran a comprehensive VAPT in parallel with the infrastructure work. They conducted automated vulnerability scanning across the full API surface, manual penetration testing of the authentication and payment flows, and a review of third-party dependencies for known CVEs. They produced a SOC2-aligned security checklist, a complete vendor inventory with risk ratings, and remediation documentation for every finding. The dataroom we assembled contained 42 artifacts in total: architecture diagrams, API documentation, infrastructure-as-code repositories, disaster recovery runbooks, security assessment reports, cost models, and a technical roadmap that showed the acquirer how the platform would scale to new markets post-close. We participated in live diligence calls with Gambling.com’s engineering and security teams, answering questions in real time and providing follow-up documentation within hours rather than days.

Re-partitioned Kafka topics by sportsbook and event type, replacing a sequential consumer bottleneck with parallel processing that eliminated lag during peak windows
Added Redis caching layer for hot odds data, reducing database reads by 60% and cutting p95 API latency by 35%
Containerized all services and wrote Terraform for the complete infrastructure footprint, enabling reproducible deployments and multi-region failover
Stood up Grafana dashboards backed by Prometheus metrics for real-time platform health visibility accessible to both internal team and acquirer engineers
Produced 42 dataroom artifacts: architecture diagrams, API docs, IaC repos, DR runbooks, security reports, cost models, and technical roadmap
Comprehensive VAPT by Staff Security Engineers Naveen and Rohan: automated scanning, manual penetration testing, dependency audit, and SOC2-aligned documentation
Live support in technical diligence calls with Gambling.com’s engineering and security teams, with follow-up documentation delivered within hours

Impact

OddsJam closed the acquisition by Gambling.com Group with a confident technical story that addressed every question the acquirer’s engineering and security teams raised. The 35% latency reduction was not just a performance improvement: it directly demonstrated to the acquirer that the platform could handle the increased traffic that would come from Gambling.com’s distribution network without requiring a re-architecture. The 11 critical issues we identified and resolved before close meant that Gambling.com’s diligence team found zero blocking technical concerns, which kept the deal timeline on track at eight weeks from engagement start to close. Before our involvement, the founding team estimated they were months away from being able to produce the documentation and remediation an acquirer would need. The acquisition by Gambling.com Group is publicly verifiable and represents a successful exit for OddsJam’s founders and investors. The 42-artifact dataroom we produced became the template for Gambling.com’s post-close integration planning, and the Terraform infrastructure-as-code we wrote enabled the acquirer’s ops team to replicate the OddsJam stack in their own AWS accounts within days of closing. The Grafana dashboards we stood up continued to be used by the combined engineering team post-acquisition. For OddsJam’s leadership, the most valuable outcome was that they never had to choose between running the business and preparing for diligence. While we handled the technical workstream, the founders maintained full focus on customer commitments, subscriber retention, and deal negotiations, which is exactly the division of labor that makes fractional diligence partnerships work.

Closed the Gambling.com Group acquisition on an eight-week timeline, with zero blocking technical concerns raised by the acquirer’s diligence team
35% p95 API latency reduction through Kafka re-partitioning, Redis caching, and ECS scaling optimizations
11 critical issues identified, prioritized by acquisition risk, and resolved before the acquirer’s engineers reviewed the platform
42 dataroom artifacts produced covering architecture, security, infrastructure-as-code, disaster recovery, and post-close integration roadmap
Terraform IaC enabled the acquirer’s ops team to replicate the OddsJam stack in their own AWS accounts within days of closing
Zero disruption to subscriber experience during the entire diligence and remediation period

Stack & capabilities

Tools, platforms, and competencies we owned for this engagement.

Data & Infra

  • Kafka
  • Redis
  • AWS ECS
  • CloudFront

Backend

  • Node.js
  • Python
  • PostgreSQL

Ops

  • Grafana
  • Prometheus
  • PagerDuty
  • Terraform

Security

  • VAPT
  • Penetration Testing
  • SOC2 Prep
  • Security Audits

HyperNest anticipated every diligence question and backed answers with data. Naveen and Rohan made our security airtight for the acquisition—the acquirer's security team was impressed. They were an extension of our founding team.

Ankit Goyal

Co-Founder & CTO, OddsJam

Need these outcomes for your startup?

We'll replicate the playbook and customize it to your goals.

How this applies to other startups

  • If you are preparing for an acquisition or major round, you can reuse this diligence playbook to avoid late-stage surprises that delay or derail deals.
  • Analytics and fintech products with heavy data workloads can apply the same Kafka re-partitioning, Redis caching, and observability patterns we used to cut OddsJam's latency by 35%.
  • Founders who lack a full-time CTO can still walk into corp dev and investor rooms with crisp, data-backed answers to hard technical questions by partnering with a fractional diligence team.
  • Any company heading into technical due diligence can use the 42-artifact dataroom template we produced, covering architecture, security, IaC, DR runbooks, and post-close integration roadmaps.
  • If your infrastructure was manually provisioned and you need to demonstrate reproducibility to an acquirer or investor, the Terraform migration path we executed can be completed in weeks, not months.
  • Startups running streaming data pipelines that experience consumer lag during peak windows can apply the same topic re-partitioning and pre-warming strategy that eliminated OddsJam's peak-window bottleneck.