Exclusive ICE 2024 Q&A w/ Andreas Koeberl, CEO BetGames

ICE London is almost upon us again for the final time in its traditional home, can you give us a synopsis of what will you be bringing to delegates?

Indeed, it is shaping up to be a special ICE for the final London edition of the big show. We are focusing on our ongoing mission to convert recreational punters into casino or games players and that drive is shaping our expanding product range, both in the new projects we’re developing and evolving what has been working extremely well for us for years.

That’s how we differentiate ourselves as a supplier and our offer to new potential partners. Hence, our focus for ICE 2024 will be on showcasing how we do that and how we help operators nurture players organically. We’ve got a host of upcoming projects that we can’t wait to unveil along with our expertise in creating bespoke products and projects for some of the industry’s biggest brands.

You’ve had a bright start to 2024 with your Crash game Skyward. How has it continued to perform after its strong start?

We are very happy so far. Skyward is just one part of the wider product offering that I’ve already alluded to. We’re all about offering easily accessible, rapid play, unique gaming experiences that offer players the opportunity to win big from small stakes whenever they want and wherever they are.

It’s a very different industry in 2024 to even just a few years ago and we’re hyper-aware of moving with trends and preferences to make sure we’re relevant with the content we put out into the market – That’s where Skyward came from and you’ll see that ethos in everything else we’re planning to launch throughout the year.

It looks like you’re doubling down on Skyward’s success with a shift into traditional Live Casino and your upcoming roulette game to swell the BetGames content provision. What has prompted that move and how will you apply the trademark BetGames polish to an established genre?

It all comes down to what I said initially – we help operators nurture recreational punters into casino players. To do that, the content mix needs to change as well and reflect the trends in our core markets. If you want to nurture players, you need to support what we call “nurturing pathways”, which is a clearly defined set of curated games and features you put in front of certain player profiles.

With our portfolio constantly growing and evolving, you’ll see those pathways throughout all our products and the future projects we choose will do so too. We’ll be making sure that our version of roulette will enjoy the same crisp, intuitive UI and benefit from our trademark high standards in production and presentation across our proprietary product and any tailored version we may create for partners.

Last year BetGames was awarded additional UKGC licences how has this helped global growth so far? What opportunities has it presented?

That was necessary to enable us to launch our gameshows and TWAIN. We gained two additional license extensions to do that. In 2024, we have plans to push more aggressively into the market as we will continue to improve the product/market fit drastically. It significantly broadens our scope to provide greater diversity in our offering to UK operators. The UK, despite being well established and highly competitive, still represents a fantastic opportunity for those who can get their product just right and we’re confident we’ll be doing just that as we launch new content going forward.

The long-awaited Brazillian market is finally opening up – you’ve already made moves to take advantage with strategic partnerships – how is your approach to the huge market going to materialise?

Brazil is a great opportunity for us. Like so many others, it is, and will continue to be a crowded market – simply look at the three-digit number of operators who want to apply for this expensive license. It is a demanding region to succeed in as it requires quite some effort in localising content, but we are growing confidently and expect to see our numbers at least triple in 2024 over there. This growth will be driven by a set of localised content we are about to launch in the coming months that we’re very excited about and strengthens our standing as a go-to provider for bespoke products.