What was your perception about this edition of BiS SiGMA South America? What were operators’ main demands?
I would say that the show looked busier than previous years, so it was very interesting to Games Valley. https://gamesvalley.com/ We met with clients, operators, even platform providers. They all pretty much want to get a platform that doesn’t just provide more games or a better commercial deal. They want to get something that is really going to improve the way they work. In Games Valley, we are able to give them some really good insight or tools that will drive efficiency and increase revenue. Any other aggregator can come out with thousands of games. A true strong partner can really drive revenue together with the operators, generating a good differentiation.
Your company also offers fast integration. Can you explain more details on this characteristic?
When I’m meeting a new client, and I tell him that we have quick integration, everybody looks at me like, no way, you cannot do it in a day. Actually, last week, we had a client that actually broke the record. He was able to complete the integration in three hours. The reason for that is that we developed a very smart wizard that communicates between the servers and provides real-time feedback using AI to help him complete the integration faster.
We are about just a couple of months from the FIFA World Cup. All the operators are waiting for the event to increase their revenue and the number of registered users. Sometimes, they don’t take very good care of the infrastructure of their platforms. What would you advise them before the event to be aware that they need a very strong platform to support all the high traffic they will receive during the World Cup?
I used to be a B2C operator. You need to do a lot of load testing, check that the servers look supported and everything. That is something that goes almost without saying. But you need more than that. You need to be able to track when you are not actually performing. In Games Valley, we have a tracking alert system that notifies the operator of every single bet, and if each single bet is not working. If you have a platform like that, before this madness starts, you are in a good position because you can track and you can react quickly.
Thinking about Brazil specifically, are you optimistic about the future of the gambling sector?
I’m in the industry for over 17, 18 years, and I saw tough regulators and I saw more lean regulators. It has to be an ecosystem that raises good balance. If you overprotect the client and you damage the operator, it’s come out with a grey market. If you’re basically being too strict with taxation, eventually you push customers to the grey market as well. I believe that if the regulation in Brazil will push to be stricter on the taxation level and on requirements, it will push customers to the black market. It’s a balance we cannot control. Eventually the player chooses it, not us.
Let’s talk about the strategies of the company beyond Brazil. What other markets in Latin America are you interested in and are you planning to advance territory by territory?
We see Latin America as a very interesting area to go and focus on. In Latin America, there are more and more regulations coming in. We are investing more in adapting our platform to other jurisdictions. At the same time, we know how to support also a territory in which still there is no regulation. Keeping that flexibility for both sides will be our key focus. We want to make sure that we are there to support operators to drive revenue. We will create more tools to improve engagement, help them not just with the tournaments or other promotional tools that everybody else is providing. We will try to offer them unique tools that will help them improve the engagement. It’s going to be AI-based, which we are working on at the moment. Second thing is we believe that providing an insight into regulation will help the operator to understand how they can improve. Those are the key areas we’re going to focus on, especially in Latin America, because I see that in that region there are many places where the analytical side is not really getting the right priority, so we will help with that too.