SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
As 2019 comes to a close SBC looks through the year to highlight major news that you might have missed in the sports betting world.
This tenth edition looks at November and more specifically at an interview with BtoBet’s CEO Alessandro Fried, the future of retail, Trustly’s Pay N Play celebrations and the four pillars supporting state lottery success.
Alessandro Fried: BtoBet – Providing a real omni-channel environment
Alessandro Fried, CEO of BtoBet, has emphasised how finding the right technology partner is vital for operators who are looking to establish themselves in the African market.
Speaking to SBC, Fried looked into the differences between the established markets of Europe and new markets such as Africa whilst also discussing how betting brands risk wasting years attempting to understand the African markets if they don’t find the right technology partners to help make the transition.
He stated: “An operator that wants to move from Europe to this country first of all with have to find a partner for the technology. There is no way that with the same technology that they have [in Europe] they will be able to go [to Africa], no way.
“So the first thing is they will have to find the right partner. When they find the right partner then the journey will be quite simple. Otherwise, they will lose some years in understanding [African] markets.”
The future for retail: Could ‘staff-less’ shops become a reality?
It is widely accepted that we are entering a new era for retail betting, ushered in by the fast-tracked fixed odds betting terminal (FOBT) legislation and an increased expectation of technology amongst customers – for so many of whom digital is now king.
Yet will this new era include the advent of ‘staff-less’ betting shops? Are bookmakers likely to respond to declining retail business by running shops without any need for human intervention?
This issue was raised by Howard Chisholm, who operates 38 shops mainly in the north-east of England, as part of his presentation on offsetting FOBT losses at last month’s Bookmakers Trade Fair.
He pointed to the “radical measures” introduced by BetXS for three shops in Ireland. All of the shop systems are controlled remotely, from doors and lights to security, CCTV and TV, while bets are placed and settled through self-service betting terminals (SSBTs) complete with a customer service terminal set up to deal with any problems.
Trustly celebrates 100 live brands for Pay N Play
Trustly is celebrating a huge company milestone after Pay N Play, the company’s innovative player registration and verification product, reached 100 live gaming brands.
Introduced in 2015, Pay N Play allows customers to register and get verified to start playing on a gaming site simply by making a deposit. The KYC data for the customer is collected by Trustly during this same significantly shortened and fully compliant process.
We took a trip down memory lane with Vasilije Lekovic, Director of Gaming at Trustly, to discuss the history of Pay N Play, why it has been so disruptive, which brand helped surpass the milestone and what the future holds for the product.
Lekovic stated: “We recently surpassed 100 Pay N Play brands with Coolbet, an online sportsbook and casino live in Sweden, Finland and Estonia. It’s a huge company milestone, and shows how quickly confidence in the product has grown over just a four-year period.”
Keith O’Loughlin: The four pillars supporting state lottery success for Scientific Games
Scientific Games is now serving seven lotteries with sports betting solutions in Canada, Europe and Asia after a second half of 2019 littered with lottery contract wins.
After closing the summer by finalising a fresh deal with Milli Piyango (Turkey’s National Lottery), Scientific Games has celebrated an autumnal double by extending its player account management (PAM) and instant games partnership with Nederlandse Loterij(NLO) to include sports betting before securing a five-year renewal with Canada’s British Columbia Lottery Corporation (BCLC).
Keith O’Loughlin is the SVP for Sportsbook and Platforms at SG Digital, the digital division of Scientific Games. He told us about the four key “pillars” of a successful sports betting offering for a lottery operator and how it is “absolutely crucial” that OpenSports – SG Digital’s sportsbook proposition – puts the NLO in a strong position to compete with other Dutch licensees from 2021.
O’Loughlin stated: “There are four significant areas that lotteries are keen to establish from their sports betting supplier – scalability, trust, differentiated and competitive features, and flexibility.”
