Continent 8 Technologies is taking its technical expertise to the next level after onboarding two experience IT leaders, Simon Booth and Teddy Elias.

Both have been appointed as Technical Operations Managers with Simon looking after the EMEA and Asia Pacific regions while Teddy will cover the Americas.

Working directly with the Technical Operations Director, and managing a regional team of multidisciplined engineers, they are responsible for managing the Continent 8 network functions (backbone, edge, peering and corporate) as well as the company’s private and public cloud infrastructure.

Simon has experience across a range of complex IT roles over a distinguished 26-year career. He started in the finance sector and moved to iGaming eight years ago, with various roles at poker giant PokerStars. This includes Senior Architecture Specialist, Senior Manager of IT Projects and Head of Network Operations.

Teddy has a similar 23-years’ experience in IT, initially working for a range of companies in the shipping and banking sectors, including roles as Technical Consultant and IT Manager.

He joins Continent 8 from comScore and Inovvo where he was responsible for building infrastructure for telco operators including big data, advanced analytics AI and machine learning solutions.

Edward O’Connor, Technical Operations Director at Continent 8 Technologies, said: “It’s fantastic  to welcome Simon and Teddy onboard and I’m confident that both will have a transformative effect on our team. They bring great leadership experience and technical expertise.

“Simon and Teddy will play a critical role in the daily operation of our company and the support of our growing customer base. I look forward to working closely with them as we continue to expand our global infrastructure and deliver market-leading manged connectivity, cloud and security services to the industry.”

Simon Booth, Technical Operations Manager at Continent 8 Technologies, said: “Continent 8 is a fast-growing business, delivering market-leading products and services to many of the biggest brands in iGaming. It is great to join this exciting and agile company and I look forward to sharing my knowledge and experience with the team.”

Teddy Elias, Technical Operations Manager at Continent 8 Technologies, added: “I am thrilled to join a company that is so technically advanced and that can offer its partners the best solutions in the market. The US iGaming market is growing rapidly, so it’s a particularly exciting time to be on board and play a role in the businesses success.”

Continent 8 has grown significantly in the past 12 months, with a network now spanning over 70 connected locations across Europe, Asia and the Americas. As a result, the Continent 8 team has also expanded. The company now employs around 150 talented individuals across the globe.

View the current job openings here

Pragmatic Play, a leading content provider to the gaming industry, heads in a new direction with the launch of its farm-inspired video slot, Chicken Drop™.

The chickens have come home to roost in the provider’s new title, packed to the brim with progressive elements, bonus features and cartoon-style visuals overlayed by a banjo-ridden country soundtrack.

In the base game the Strawberry is the highest paying symbol, where landing a winning cluster of 37 or more will trigger a win up to 1000x the bet. Central to the action is the tumble feature that replaces winning clusters with new symbols, which can lead to repeat wins from single spins.

The Free Spins feature is triggered when four or more scatter symbols land, awarding players with up to 20 Free Games and the ability to retrigger the feature indefinitely.

When tumbles are completed, an egg, that can get to the size of 6×6, will drop onto the reels, increase multiplier up to 11x and interact with other symbols. In certain jurisdictions, it is also possible to head straight to the Free Spins mode with the Buy Feature option.

Chicken Drop™ is the latest title to developed by Pragmatic Play’s, following in the steps of recent hits Book of Vikings™, Empty the Bank™ and 5 Lions Megaways™, which reside amongst 200+ HTML5 titles in the provider’s award-winning slot collection

Yossi Barzely, Chief Business Development Officer at Pragmatic Play, said: “Moving away from the Viking-inspired action of our previous release, we wanted to treat our players to a fun-filled farm retreat.

“Chicken Drop™ provides players with a huge variety of progressive features and huge win potential, all contained within a wholesome environment that our players are bound to love.”

Pragmatic Play currently produces up to five new slot titles a month, while also delivering Live Casino and Bingo games as part of its multi-product portfolio, available through one single API.

For more information, please click here.

PandaScore, the leading esports data and odds provider, has put pen to paper on a breakthrough deal with tier one esports betting brand, LOOT.BET, that will see its data and odds feed made available to the operator for the very first time.

PandaScore delivers real-time data and odds across all major esports titles including League of Legends, DOTA 2, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Call of Duty, Rocket League, Overwatch, PUBG, FIFA, Valorant, King of Glory and many more.

The company aims to provide operators such as LOOT.BET with a one stop shop for esports betting. Its products and services include a dedicated in-house trading team combined with AI, more than 116 pre-match markets and 125+ in-play markets plus market management automation.

The partnership will enable LOOT.BET to significantly increase the scale and scope of the odds and markets it offers to players, while ensuring the highest level of in-play market uptime. The move comes following the signing of a letter of intent to acquire the LOOT.BET brand by emerging esports and iGaming company Intema, for as much as $17.75m.

The partnership is significant for PandaScore, enabling the company to add another tier one betting brand to its growing roster of partners and customers which already includes the likes of Scientific Games, Entain Australia, Betcris and CSGOEmpire.

Flavien Guillocheau, CEO at PandaScore, said: “LOOT.BET has emerged as one of the leading esports betting operators in markets around the world, so we are delighted to have entered into an agreement to provide it with our state-of-the-art data and odds feed.

“This will enable LOOT.BET to offer more odds and markets to its players than ever before, which in turn will allow it to scale and drive significant growth following its acquisition by Intema. This includes the most in-depth in-play markets available across key esports titles.”

Peter Zhalov, CEO at LOOT.BET, said: “In PandaScore we have a data and odds provider that is at the cutting-edge of the industry, providing a powerful data and odds feed that will allow us to deliver a superior experience to our players as we continue to expand at pace.

“Its in-play capabilities are standout; this is a challenging market to offer in the esports arena, but PandaScore has found a way to make it work while also delivering high levels of uptime. This is a great partnership for us and one that will undoubtedly be a huge success.”