Localisation and Future Expansion Q&A

With Swintt games now being live in 12 regulated markets and the company also eyeing entry into several new jurisdictions in 2025, we talked to Chief Operating Officer, Etienne Azzopardi about how having three distinct product lines has helped them consistently adapt to local preferences.

Swintt titles are currently live in 12 regulated markets, and you have several more on the horizon for 2025. Given player preferences often differ greatly from market-to-market, how do you ensure that your game line-up continues to provide something for everyone?

Swintt was established almost six years ago with the intention of creating an exciting content portfolio capable of targeting different player tastes across a wide range of markets –in that time, we’ve really worked hard to ensure we’ve stayed true to that goal. In practice, our line-up consists of three main categories – SwinttPremium, SwinttSelect and Elysium Studios, and having this diverse range of options allows us to be flexible in the way we approach audiences. In “traditional” markets like Germany or the Netherlands, we prioritise Premium releases, while Elysium Studios is particularly popular in Sweden and the UK.

When you’re present in as many markets as Swintt is, there are obviously a lot of regional considerations that must be taken into account. How do you make sure your games stay on top of things like regulation and compliance over such a wide range of jurisdictions?

I believe our operations and compliance teams do an outstanding job for Swintt and are fully deserving of a shout out from me here! Considering we’re already live across 12 markets and have several more coming up in the not-so-distant future, it’s really quite remarkable that we’re able to constantly stay on top of things and ensure that we fulfil all of our regulatory obligations. As you know, iGaming legislation has a nasty habit of changing without much warning, so the fact they’re continually monitoring the situation across so many jurisdictions is a real weight off of everyone’s minds and it allows Swintt to be proactive in the adjustments we make to ensure we’re never caught out by any new developments.

Aside from acquiring the relevant local certification, how does Swintt approach entering a new market for the first time? What research or data sources do you use to understand specific player preferences and do shows also play a part in raising your regional profile?

Again, this mostly comes down to the compliance and operations teams monitoring regulated markets to see if there are any that are noticeably growing in terms of things like player value. I’d say Brazil is currently a very good example of this process in action, because obviously that’s a rapidly expanding regulated market that we’ve got our eye on and we’re keeping close tabs on how the situation is developing. Once we’ve identified a market that we believe has potential, we then explore market entry barriers and general complexity, and whether the overall effort would represent a worthwhile investment for Swintt. Of course, we also consider how our portfolio of games fits with the rest of the competition, but these matters usually happen behind-the-scenes.

You’ve obviously had to adapt your product line-up in order to remain relevant to players in different markets. Can you explain the commercial benefits of having three distinct product ranges in SwinttPremium, SwinttSelect and Elysium Studios – Driven by Swintt?

This gives us the flexibility to enter even more regulated markets because we’re not restricted to only offering one particular style of game. Having the SwinttPremium, SwinttSelect and Elysium Studios line-ups in our portfolio enables us to tailor our approach in each country and target different tastes more efficiently. As I touched on before, this is an incredibly important string to our bow, because when we enter a market where traditional, fruit-themed slots are favoured, we can simply emphasise promoting our SwinttPremium games. Likewise in growing markets where a premium is placed on having good graphics and features, we can focus on Select or Elysium Studios games instead.

What would you say the main differences are between a more “traditional” established market like Germany or the Netherlands and a newer one like Ontario are? Do specific themes or features perform better in certain markets and, if so, why do you think that is?

In most of the more “traditional” markets, players tend to naturally gravitate to what they already know. As audiences in Germany and the Netherlands tend to enjoy playing land-based slot machines, this means straightforward game mechanics and well-known themes such as fruits, Ancient Egypt and our Book-style games tend to perform very well. The flipside of this is that in newer markets like Ontario, players are generally more open to innovation and trying new things. They’re often attracted to games that introduce different themes and features, so you can afford to be a bit more experimental in the content that you’re putting out. Obviously the most popular themes differ from market-to-market, but it’s definitely something we research before launching a game.

As we teased in the first question, Swintt already has plans to enter a few more regulated markets over the coming months. What countries do you currently have your eye on and which Swintt products do you expect to prove particularly popular in these jurisdictions?

We’ve completed all the necessary regulatory steps required to enter Greece and are currently working hard on going live with our first operator there, so that’s one new market that we expect to enter very soon. At the start of 2025 Swintt secured its ISO certification, which will also allow us to enter even more regulated markets in the future. Currently we’re eyeing the Italian and Swiss markets for later in the year and these will be interesting for us because we believe both have a real mix of traditional and modern players. As such, we’re expecting that our Elysium Studios games will work well in both markets, but we’re also going to be pushing our SwinttPremium content as we think this will help us engage a bigger cross-section of players and boost our chances of success.