Case Study: Hard Rock Digital achieves compliant, multi-region, high-performance sports betting at scale with Cockroach Labs

How Hard Rock Digital is using CockroachDB to become a top sports betting and interactive gaming platform

Hard Rock Digital, the online arm of Hard Rock, set out to build Hard Rock Sportsbook to entertain players anytime, anywhere but faced strict U.S. sports-betting rules (The Wire Act) that require in-state data processing, plus the need for 24/7 high availability, strong consistency, and rapid multi-region scale across hybrid infrastructure (AWS Outposts and cloud). To meet these requirements they selected Cockroach Labs’ CockroachDB as the core database to replace a traditional Postgres-only approach.

Cockroach Labs implemented a multi-region CockroachDB topology with per-state gateway nodes, Postgres-wire compatibility, Raft-based consensus, and customizable survival goals so data can be pinned locally while remaining a single logical cluster. The deployment runs across AWS Outposts and AWS US‑East‑1, supports Hard Rock Sportsbook in Arizona, Indiana, Tennessee and Virginia, survives single Outpost/AZ failures, handles large event traffic without performance loss, and has reduced operational overhead and TCO—letting the Hard Rock team scale into new states more quickly.

Hard Rock

Mick Giles

SVP & Head of Technology