Paddy Power

Case study | Paddy Power plc
Challenge
Punters ock to racing spectacles
The months of March and April witness two
exciting spectacles in the UK’s National Hunt
racing calendar; the four-day Cheltenham
Festival followed by the Grand National handicap
steeplechase at Aintree, near Liverpool. Both
meetings oer racehorse owners opportunities
to win the sport’s two largest prizes.
During these events, high-street, online and
mobile bookmakers such as Paddy Power look
forward to the busiest ve days of the year.
Over 150,000 spectators attended the 2014
Grand National, hundreds of millions viewed
the event live on television and innumerable
people placed bets on their favourite chargers.
Whether punters jumped for joy or
shredded their betting slips in frustration
as winners crossed the nishing line, they
knew nothing about the stresses their bets
placed on the bookmakers’ IT systems.
Website trac levels rise six-fold
“Compared with a typical Saturday afternoon’s
online transaction level, our website needs to
handle 300 per cent more trac during the
Cheltenham Festival while this gure rises
six-fold on Grand National day,” explains David
Valentine, senior performance engineer, Paddy
Power plc. “Furthermore, within ve minutes
of the Grand National nishing, website
activity climbs exponentially as our customers
log-in to check their accounts for winnings.”
Like many online betting providers,
Paddy Power has experienced application
performance issues over recent years during
high trac levels, especially 10 to 15 minutes
before a race. “Working to prevent website
performance issues and outage threats is an
industry-wide theme,” continues Valentine.
“We have adopted a proactive approach,
simulating high load conditions to verify
all customer journeys and ensure we can
oer our full experience at peak times.
“We required a robust application
performance testing tool to create stable,
high-availability online applications,
deliver an enjoyable customer experience
and safeguard our revenue stream. In our
competitive industry, customer retention and
acquisition is paramount,” adds Valentine.
2