What have been some recent developments for Playtech?
We’ve had a great first half of the year at Playtech, particularly celebrating a milestone for the business – Playtech’s 25th anniversary in the industry. We’ve entered new markets such as South Africa through our partnerships with Tsogo Sun, Hollywoodbets and Betway after growing demand for iGaming options in the region. Playtech has also signed high-profile deals in existing markets.
Across different verticals, our teams are continuing to develop games, particularly in response to increasing appetite for live casino in a number of markets, especially the Americas.
We are continuing to deliver innovative solutions for our licensees and invest heavily in our technology. We’ve got plenty more to come later in the year, too.
The main theme of this issue is personalisation. What role does this play for Playtech?
Personalisation is a key aspect of Playtech’s strategy, and we usually focus on three different types of personalisation areas, including safer gambling personalisation and market/player personalisation.
At Playtech, we understand the importance of promoting responsible gambling and BetBuddy is our responsible gambling (RG) analytics platform, built around data mining and predictive analytics. It combines the latest research into gambling behaviour patterns with the power of artificial intelligence, delivering a sophisticated solution to proactively identify and engage with players who might be at risk.
We also recognise the importance of adopting a personalised and localised strategy to ensure the content we provide our licensees, and their customers is the best gaming content for that market. Our local teams, equipped with strong market knowledge, collaborate with our development teams to create games that resonate with the local player base. This could mean incorporating popular themes, characters, or cultural elements into our games.
How important are live casino games to Playtech?
Live casino is one of the main verticals in our product portfolio, and one of our most exciting growth areas. Playtech’s Live technology brings the real-life casino experience to the online environment; and we’re continuing to build momentum following the release of several live casino games over the last few months, such as Sticky Bandits Roulette Live, Mega FireBlaze Lucky Ball Live, Cash Collect Live Roullette and Jumanji: The Bonus Level. All of which have been hugely successful and well received by our licensees across markets.
We’ve taken advantage of the rapid market expansion in live and we now have three live casino facilities open in the US, having recently opened one in Pennsylvania. But we’re not stopping there. As demand for live studios continues to accelerate, we’re investing in both physical infrastructure, and the development of new and exciting live casino content for our licensees across the globe.
Playtech has secured several of partnerships so far this year across Europe. But which of these have been most important to the company?
We’ve been really pleased with the number of new partnerships we’ve already announced this year and equally important for us and our licensees is how we’ve extended some of our current partnerships. For example, across Europe we have signed new deals with 10bet in Sweden, Boylesports in the UK and Ireland, and securing the
winning tender in a rigorous Public Procurement Process for Live casino games for Veikkaus in Finland. I’m sure there is more in the pipeline for later in the year, as well.
Finally, could you give us an overview of the growing globalisation of the gambling sector from your perspective?
This has grown quite significantly this year. Growth in the market is primarily driven by regulation in markets at the beginning of their journey, such as Brazil, Canada, South Africa and the US. We were particularly pleased to see Brazil take initial steps towards legalising online gambling this year. LatAm has strong structural drivers towards regulation, so we’re pleased to see this market develop, and we look forward to building on this as markets across the region continue to regulate.
In the US, the regulatory landscape is evolving well. A year on from signing our landmark agreement with Hard Rock Digital, we’re continuing to establish and grow our presence by delivering our innovative content to even more states.
Everyone has seen the market expand considerably in the last couple of years, and we’re growing our offering in response.
It’s also been important for us to capitalise on the growth in emerging markets in South Africa. We recently signed an exciting deal with Hollywoodbets, which we’ve seen go from strength to strength so far this year. We expect to see the sector’s globalisation and trend towards regulation continue over the next few years. Further steps towards regulation in the US and Brazil will be welcome, and we expect other countries such as France to consider legalisation in the next few years.
