As SBC Digital Summit CIS gets underway next week, we’ve been catching up with our event sponsors to find out more about their plans for the digital event.
Speaking ahead of the summit, Simon Westbury – Head of Sales at Digitain – offers his advice for betting and gaming businesses to help navigate through the impact of COVID-19 and talks about its ‘flexible, scalable and affordable’ igaming platform and its own Skill and Bet-On games.
What are you looking forward to at SBC Digital Summit CIS?
We have three main objectives from our participation in the SBC Digital Summit CIS; to grow our brand awareness in this important region, to demonstrate our market-leading products to the audience and to show how flexible we can be and, finally, to make some new acquaintances and to do some deals!
What would be your biggest bit of advice for betting and gaming businesses trying to mitigate the impact of COVID-19?
Operators need to offer a wide and varied product portfolio to their customers in order to mitigate the potential damage of future lockdowns. Ability to change direction quickly are key capabilities in these challenging times.
At Digitain our flexible technology and our great development teams really came to the fore earlier this year when COVID-19 hit – we changed the focus of our product roadmap and quickly integrated a number of great new additions to our portfolio, including more virtual sports, esports and even our own new development – table football.
One thing we heard at a recent conference which resonated, from the CEO of Snai: “online is not the enemy of retail”. Land-based gaming businesses currently not online should consider this channel as a way of leveraging their brand and customer database, as well as mitigating the risk of further COVID-19 disruption. Digitain are in a good position to help such companies make the leap to online, safely and economically.
What are you promoting at SBC Digital Summit CIS?
Our flexible, scalable and affordable igaming platform, plus our great range of verticals; our award-winning sportsbook, our great gaming products, as well as our own Skill and Bet-On fast games.
As well as this we want to promote our ability to offer partners a localised product whatever the market. We believe that a one-size-fits-all approach no longer works, and we work hard to develop effective solutions no matter the challenge.
We have seen a lot of interest in our Sportsbook API – where we can seamlessly integrate a fully-functional Sportsbook into an existing platform. This is attractive to those operators wanting to upgrade their sportsbook, especially as a way to economically recruit new customers to their brand.
What industry innovation will capture the most attention in 2020?
Looking back on 2020 so far, it could be said that the focus was more on continual improvement than pure innovation. Remote working, although not new, had a baptism of fire and will be the new normal going forward. Growth of esports and virtual gaming, although not new, had a major boost and can only move forward.
In terms of innovation, we’re very proud of our new Table Football product, developed and launched in record time, with live games, streamed every 15 minutes, featuring pro-players, live stats and odds generated by a newly developed algorithm. We worked hard and fast to offer our partner network a new product to mitigate the loss of live sports.
Which operator has impressed you the most in 2020?
Given the geographic focus of this conference, it is worth calling out the Fortuna Group – we attended a recent conference panel where Per spoke very well about the COVID-19 situation and gave very interesting insights into how they adapted their business and came through the crisis.
We have recently agreed a deal to provide sports betting services to Pin-Up, a very important operator in the CIS region and beyond. We have been very impressed by their operation, the management’s vision and the strength of their product portfolio and we look forward to a great partnership.
What partnership has stood out in the past 12 months?
There’s obviously been a number of big US media/operator deals in 2020 which have stood out. The valuations of the companies involved are mind-blowing given current financial performances – so it will be interesting to see how the joint ventures and mergers will perform as the US market develops.
The list of successful media / operator deals that have delivered significant success over the last 10 years is a short one – will the trend change in the US?
Which parts of the conference agenda have caught your eye?
The country by country overviews are always interesting. To actually hear these overviews and have the ability to ask questions is always a positive and they help everyone understand the market a little better.
We are also looking forward to the Platform for Success panel, where operators and suppliers will outline how they will work together to achieve their common goals.