In an industry rife with complexities, ZG Gaming Solutions emerges as a beacon of efficiency and expertise, offering a comprehensive suite of services tailored to address the unique challenges faced by various stakeholders. As the regulatory framework surrounding gaming continues to evolve, the need for agile and knowledgeable support has never been more pronounced.
Ahead of SBC Summit North America, ZG Gaming Solutions sat down with SBC to shed light on their innovative approach to licensing management and regulatory compliance. With a keen focus on understanding the intricacies of each jurisdiction, the company provides a seamless pathway for clients navigating the licensing process.
SBC: How does your product address specific pain points or challenges faced by the industry?
ZGG: We are a โfull-serviceโ gaming licensing management provider, supporting sportsbook & i-gaming operators as well as a wide range of suppliers and vendors.ย Our scalable, streamlined, and customizable approach to licensing management helps cover each clientโs particular needs in a cost-effective way. Our setup allows us to flexibly solve a range of problems for different types of companies, such as:
- For operators and larger suppliers: we provide reliability, speed, and scale.ย Our team can handle any and all aspects of the licensing process, which bolsters internal compliance teamsโ capabilities.ย This lets them scale up when needed and frees up their bandwidth to focus on other ongoing compliance obligations.
- For vendors and suppliers not exclusively focused on the gaming industry: we can essentially serve as their outsourced licensing team.ย This saves them the burden, inefficiency, and cost of having to develop and maintain this specialized function internally, and reduces the risk of novice mistakes delaying their ability to get licensed.
- Ongoing intelligence: Because we work across many jurisdictions with multiple companies, our clients benefit from up-to-date knowledge and intelligence about requirements in each state.ย This is particularly valuable when new states come online, as we are typically on the front lines analyzing developing processes, engaging with regulators, and finding the best path forward to ensure a timely launch.
SBC: Can you provide insights into ZG Gaming Solutions’ approach to regulatory compliance and adherence to industry standards?
ZGG: Our approach to regulatory compliance is to deeply understand the processes, requirements, and systems involved in licensing for each jurisdiction, and talk to regulators as needed.ย This helps us optimize and streamline our processes, minimizing duplication and wasted effort while ensuring consistent and accurate disclosures.
We are an affiliate of the law firm ZwillGen PLLC, and have inherited a culture of analysis and attention to detail.ย Our internal guidelines and processes are shaped with the guidance of our Managing Director and strategic advisors at ZwillGen who have expertise in gaming regulatory law, and our analyst team is continually trained on those processes as the industry continues to grow and evolve.
SBC: What specific features or services does ZG Gaming Solutions offer to streamline the state-by-state licensing process for gaming companies and investors?
ZGG: We emphasize four areas that make us different: expertise, convenience, scalability, and confidentiality. As our expertise is addressed in the previous responses, we will focus here on the other areas:
- Scalability: We give clients access to an expert licensing team that is flexibly available on demand. For many companies, this spares them the cost and difficulty of building this function internally from scratch. For clients with more established gaming compliance teams, we can extend their reach and free up resourcesโsuch as taking on specialized projects, managing filings for new state launches on tight deadlines, supporting licensing for busy executives, and so on.
- Convenience: Licensing can impose significant burdens on internal teams and executives, who have other jobs to do.ย We make the process much more manageable, providing a streamlined information-gathering process, hands-on guidance, and taking on all the coordination and logistical burdens ourselves.ย We routinely support C-level executives, public company board members, and other busy leaders to minimize their workload in managing licensing requirements.
- Confidentiality: We provide an effective firewall between a company and its individual employees, especially executives and senior personnel. We give these individuals peace of mind about their information and documents, and know the best ways to work with them to minimize their workload. The traditional methods of accomplishing this would have been an outside law firm (much more expensive) or letting the executive prepare their own materials (extremely time consuming for them and their staff).
SBC: What new developments or innovations is your company currently working on?
ZGG: We pride ourselves on only ever asking a particular question once, and reliably tracking updates to that information over time to keep up with licensing demands while minimizing the burden on clients.ย Our knowledge management systems are quite mature, but continue undergoing iterative development to reflect new requirements, improve efficiency, and make information-sharing with applicants even easier.
In particular, we are continually focused on further streamlining various steps of the licensing process that can introduce friction or delay, from onboarding for new companies needing to obtain multiple licenses, to logistical requirements such as fingerprinting, notarization, and the like.
SBC: During SBC Summit North America, are there any specific partnerships or collaborations your company is keen on exploring? Could you elaborate on the types of companies or professionals you’re aiming to engage with?
ZGG: Weโve seen a lot of client growth with companies that are already established in Europe or other non-US jurisdictions, but need help expanding into the U.S. market. Given the significantly different scope of work involved in securing gaming-related licenses across the US, we are finding a lot of success in easing and expediting that process for clients, in a much more cost-effective way than comparable full-service alternatives.
Similarly, established companies outside the gaming industry are recognizing the commercial opportunities of providing services to the regulated industry, but hitting a wall of unfamiliar licensing challenges that are a blocker to that business.ย Weโve similarly been able to provide a great solution in those scenarios by giving them a one-stop shop for coordinating the process on their behalf.
SBC: How does sponsoring this event align with your company’s goals and objectives?
ZGG: Our sponsorship is all about visibility and increasing connectivity across the industry. We want every company who needs to obtain or maintain a gaming license to know about our full-service model, and the ability to reduce their burdens and solve pain points. Additionally, we love talking about licensing with individuals across the industry to understand their interaction with it, particular sources of friction we can help solve, and what they want out of a licensing partner.
SBC: What is the best way for potential customers to get in touch or learn more about your offerings at the event?
ZGG: We have a meeting room near the Speakerโs Lounge in the Expo Hall โ stop in and let us know what you need! Alternatively, email [email protected] to get more info or set up an appointmentโeither during the conference or afterwards.