Playtech

Gaming without disruption: Playtech levels up global performance with Cloudflare

Playtech has grown into one of the largest and most influential technology providers in the global iGaming industry. They power a wide spectrum of digital gambling services, from casino content and live dealer studios to sports betting platforms, mobile apps, and backend systems like player account management (IMS). As a strictly B2B provider, Playtech delivers the infrastructure behind many of the world’s most recognized and regulated iGaming brands.

Every component of Playtech’s ecosystem must perform at scale, across jurisdictions, and under regulatory scrutiny, all while providing a seamless experience to millions of users.

When global scale meets patchy infrastructure

While cloud infrastructure had long been part of Playtech’s architecture, limitations around data residency and provider inflexibility began to hinder their ability to innovate and scale efficiently. Playtech was seeking a partner who could support their long-term vision.

“Eventually, it boils down to our trust in the partner’s ability to deliver their promise, and their availability and ability to stand with us when needed,” says Shmuel Goldberg, Head of Engineering at Playtech.

Performance and security were non-negotiable. Playtech designs their systems to deliver low-latency, high-availability experiences by default, leveraging autoscaling, edge compute, CDN, and real-time observability to catch degradation before it affects users. On the security front, the company follows the strictest global standards, from network hardening and endpoint protection to frequent pentesting and threat monitoring. But without the right global foundation, even the best internal engineering has its limits.

Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud delivers security and performance without compromise

Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud helps Playtech meet their applications’ need for strong security and performance. It’s a unified platform of connectivity, security, and developer services powered by a programmable global network that spans over 330 cities. These services support Playtech’s requirements through:

• Global scale and interoperability: Cloudflare services are built to run in any network location, meaning security protections and performance enhancements always run close to the end-user.
• Simplified management: Every Cloudflare service can be managed from a single UI or API, providing easier visibility, and don’t require professional services to update.

Cloudfare activates always-on DDoS protection in less than 12 hours

Playtech required infrastructure that could anticipate, absorb, and neutralize threats without interrupting gameplay without adding operational overhead. That’s where Cloudflare came in.

Cloudflare’s Connectivity Cloud secures and accelerates everything connected to the Internet across clouds, on-prem infrastructure, networks, and users. By acting as an intelligent control layer, it inspects traffic, blocks threats, applies security and access policies, and optimizes performance in real time. This gives organizations the visibility, resilience, and simplicity they need to scale without compromise. For Playtech, Magic Transit was the first piece of the puzzle, and the full implementation was completed in under 12 hours.

“Once deployed, Magic Transit is as easy to use as it gets, and delivers what it promises – Layer 3/4 DDoS mitigation. In our experience, it’s been smooth sailing since having the service, with the vast majority of DDoS incidents being mitigated in less than 10 minutes, and for the most part, without user impact,” says Goldberg.

Cloudflare’s team, including senior leadership, remained hands-on and available throughout the entire process — even over the weekend.

With Magic Transit in place and the relevant rules fine-tuned to Playtech’s needs, even large-scale DDoS attacks were mitigated almost instantly. In addition, Playtech adopted several other key services from Cloudflare’s portfolio to enhance their security, performance, and development velocity:

• Web Application Firewall (WAF) – Adds an additional layer of defense to protect critical web-facing assets against application-layer threats
• CDN with Argo Smart Routing – Accelerates content delivery and intelligently routes traffic to reduce latency
• SSL for SaaS – Enables encrypted, branded customer experiences across Playtech’s platforms
• Workers (Developer Platform) – Allows Playtech to run logic at the edge, reducing reliance on origin infrastructure and improving response times for critical workflows

This stack created a resilient, scalable foundation for secure global operations. With observability tools built into Cloudflare’s network, and 24/7 hands-on support that included weekend availability and involvement from senior leadership, Playtech gained a level of visibility and control that matched their internal standards.

Cloudflare helped Playtech automate and accelerate their global threat mitigation

During critical moments, Cloudflare’s Emergency Response Team supported Playtech by helping validate and fine-tune configurations in real time, ensuring optimal performance and rapid deployment across the global network. The result? Zero downtime and no disruption to users.

This level of automation and responsiveness freed up Playtech’s security teams to focus on proactive work instead of constant threat mitigation. With Magic Transit in place and configurations fine-tuned with help from Cloudflare’s Emergency Response Team, Playtech no longer had to rely on blunt tools like geolocation blocking. Large-scale attacks were mitigated in under 10 minutes, often with zero user impact, and the company could ensure uptime and fast performance for legitimate users, even during active threat scenarios. Cloudflare’s globally distributed network also brought most users closer to the edge, reducing latency by 35 to 40 milliseconds compared to previous providers.

Edge proximity also played a key role. With most of Playtech’s player base now served by nearby data centers, average latency improved by 35 to 40 milliseconds compared to the company’s previous CDN and edge compute providers, a noticeable difference in a performance-sensitive industry like iGaming.

What was the result?

• Near-zero user impact even during major DDoS attacks, mitigated automatically
• Real-time automation and ERT support eliminated the need for manual response
• 35–40 ms latency improvement for players across key global markets
• Geoblocking no longer needed as a fallback mitigation strategy
• Seamless mitigation, without service degradation or user disruption
• Consistent global performance regained through edge-optimized infrastructure

Supporting the next chapter of Playtech’s growth

As Playtech continues to expand into new markets and explore emerging technologies, the company sees their collaboration with Cloudflare as a strategic partnership. The teams are already experimenting with new features and conducting proof-of-concepts (POCs) to evaluate Cloudflare’s evolving platform. With Cloudflare, Playtech is able to scale faster, stay secure, and deliver strong performance without adding complexity.