SBC News Voice of the Sports Betting Industry
“To me, the team that sits out there is my product.”
A clear message for the growing sales team at Digitain from Simon Westbury, as he spoke exclusively from the igaming software provider’s head office in Armenia.
Westbury, Digitain’s Chief Business Officer, caught up with SBC News to discuss preparing for Euro 2020 and longer-term plans for international expansion.
He began: “We’ve spent a lot of time and effort on the sales team over the last 18 months. I’m delighted to say two of them have now had a pathway into their first management roles.
“Armenia will always be the mothership for want of a better phrase. But the plan is to have more international offices with sales managers in those countries and regions.”
The Digitain sales team, which Westbury confirmed has grown from 6 to 13 since he joined two years ago, has been hard at work onboarding new clients in preparation for this summer’s football showpiece.
“A lot of the strategy for this year was set around September or October of last year, but with Covid it wasn’t clear how it was going to pan out. So we’ve been flexible in terms of how we organise that. But obviously you can’t produce new functions overnight, or launch a few days before a major tournament. You want to bring things in gently to make sure they work.
“We’ve been busy developing new bet types, such as our new Pre-Match Combo markets to boost our partners’ offering for the Euros. As well as this, we’ve introduced a number of exclusive match consolation bonuses to add to the excitement.
“We’ve been doing the load tests this week to make sure everything works nicely. There’s a genuine excitement – not just in the gaming industry but for so many others on a global level – for what is likely to be the biggest sports event post pandemic.”
To explain the volume of new clients Digitain is now serving, he shared: “We’ve done 59 deals this year already. So that’s 59 new partners, not advances to existing projects. There’s only a couple signed in the last couple of weeks that we won’t get live for the Euros.”
When quizzed about how these 59 partners are split across Digitain’s multi-vertical product range, Westbury said: “I’d say a large majority of our deals this year have been for our turnkey product, which is our platform with the sportsbook and casino aggregator included. But we have also done a number of sportsbook API deals, which are very interesting.
“If someone comes to you with a sportsbook API request, they have – in my view as a salesperson – a large amount of credibility, because it means that they’ve got their own platform. And if they’ve got their own platform, they’ve got existing revenues. And you can do proper due diligence compared to someone who’s coming to you for a turnkey.”
While for Westbury the sportsbook platform remains “at the core of everything we do”, he admitted that disruption caused by Covid accelerated the company’s diversification plans.
We talked about how this extends to virtual sports and Digitain’s esports platform, but he was keen to talk more about the development of its ‘Fast Games’ division. The success of the in-house developed games, which includes the likes of Keno Express and Rocketon, might even influence the structure of Westbury’s sales team looking ahead to 2022.
He explained: “By restructuring, it’s not the dreaded ‘I’m gonna get rid of people’. It’s actually just restructuring it because the team’s growing. Within the sales team, I’m looking at having what I call a tier one for larger scale sportsbook clients.
“Then a second for ancillary products. It probably isn’t the right word for it but the additional products as an extra to our core service. And then there’s a little third sales department that I’m looking to grow which is for Fast Games, which we are planning to take away from just Digitain partners to sell independently.”
