AWS re:Invent 2025 - DraftKings: Meeting gaming regulations at Super Bowl scale with AWS Local Zones

AWS re:Invent 2025 - DraftKings: Meeting Gaming Regulations at Super Bowl Scale with AWS Local Zones

Overview

• Presentation by Jake, AWS Sports Betting and Gaming Specialist, and Zach Mayberry, Chief Technology Officer at DraftKings
• Discusses how DraftKings leverages AWS Local Zones to meet low-latency and data residency requirements in the regulated gaming industry

The Challenge of Regulated Gaming

• DraftKings is a publicly-traded company operating in 46 jurisdictions across the US and Canada
• Handles over 1 trillion public API requests per year across thousands of microservices
• Faces strict regulatory requirements around sports betting and online gaming:
  • The Wire Act restricts sports wagering across state lines
  • Each state has its own regulations and enforcement around data residency, access control, and retention
  • DraftKings must operate with "virtually perfect accuracy" to comply with regulations and maintain licenses

Traditional Solutions and Tradeoffs

• DraftKings has used traditional colocation and on-premises solutions, which have tradeoffs:
  • Physical constraints: Upfront capital investment, time to market, supply chain issues
  • Digital constraints: Operational complexity, managing multiple SLAs and configurations across jurisdictions

Leveraging AWS Local Zones

• AWS Local Zones bring AWS services closer to end-users in metropolitan areas
• Provide the same AWS services and experience as the parent AWS Region
• Allow DraftKings to deploy regulated workloads closer to customers while meeting data residency requirements

DraftKings' Architecture with Local Zones

• Deployed regulated components (bet placement, iGaming) in Local Zones within each jurisdiction
• Leveraged VPC subnets and routing to seamlessly integrate Local Zones
• Able to use the same logging and monitoring tools (CloudWatch, CloudTrail) across Local Zones and parent Regions

Business Impact

• 25% improvement in P95 latency for over 500 million transactions since September 2025
• Significant reduction in end-to-end user transaction times
• Exploring expanding use of Local Zones for other latency-sensitive workloads, such as AI solutions

Looking Ahead

• DraftKings plans to continue expanding its use of Local Zones as more become available
• Sees potential to leverage Local Zones for additional use cases beyond regulated gaming workloads