Frank Cecchini: Increasing Online Sales in Face of Increasing Competition

As more and more countries formally regulate online gambling, the level of legal competition for the gamblers money intensifies. Ever since former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Gambling Act reform of 2005, many other countries have successfully transitioned from unlicenced states to implementing licensing conditions for operators and suppliers, with the goal of ensuring consumers are fully protected and that they receive the best possible user experience.

Several European countries have since followed suit, including Italy (2007), Denmark (2012) and Spain (2013). Regulation has continued to build momentum in the last two years, with the US (2018) allowing individual states to regulate online sports betting and casino games. Next Sweden (2019), Colombia and Brazil, the world’s fifth-largest economy. In 2021, we see Germany and The Netherlands added to the list.

There are literally hundreds of operators popping up armed with licenses and cloud-based technology platforms that cost very little to set up and manage. To keep costs down, the opportunities to customise are limited. This hampers an operator’s ability to differentiate themselves from the rest of the market. How do you build a brand when your site looks and works like everyone else’s? Better odds? More bonuses? Higher pay-outs? What then the effects on the bottom line and a jurisdiction’s responsible gaming legislation? Moving to a different platform provider, with more opportunity to customise, add features etc, is one possible solution.

Large operators have an additional problem, daily revenues can be very large, running into hundreds of thousands of euros/dollars. Player account management systems can contain details of hundreds of thousands of accounts, each with a wallet, KYC data and documents, limits, not to mention millions of lines of transaction history. How to migrate all of that without losing a single byte of data? It’s very risky with GDPR and other stringent requirements about handling personal data, some operators feel it’s just not worth the risk. Losing a day of operations or sensitive customer data will put reputations on the rocks not to mention damaging the bottom line as players vote with their feet and move on to other platforms; this is sometimes referred to as the ‘better the devil you know’ philosophy.

This leaves some operators feeling trapped by their initial decision on platform provider. Over the years, standards of service may have slipped, the supplier may have been acquired and have different priorities or simply other platforms may have developed better, more modern technologies that allow for new features and functionalities to support player retention and recruitment. At some point, something must be done.

The best technology providers do not allow service standards to slip; they work hard to keep technologies current, integrate popular content from new game studios, update responsible gaming tools as well as features that attract players and keeps them there having fun, without getting into trouble. What to do as an operator if you feel your current technology provider is slow or are distracted and not developing popular features and essential updates? Well, an obvious one is to look at your competition. What are they doing? Might they be in the same position as you?

A great example recently is the winmasters migration to the EveryMatrix platform, covering Romania, Greece, Cyprus and Malta leveraging EveryMatrix’s full product suite, including player account management, sportsbook, casino management, and affiliate platform. winmasters is a fast-growing company operating in European regulated markets. Fully licensed in Greece, Romania, Cyprus and Malta, it quickly became customers’ top choice for its high-quality Sports Betting and Casino products. With a primary focus on innovative gaming technology and customer experience.

Thomas Tzokas, CEO at winmasters, said in a recent press release: “We decided to work with EveryMatrix after scoping several leading providers and we are happy that in a few weeks our first environment will be live in Greece. w`inmasters is a fast-growing gaming company, and the support of a leading technology provider is pivotal for our success. EveryMatrix will provide a tailor-made platform solution especially for winmasters, high quality sportsbook and casino services and a dedicated development team to assist us in achieving the expansion objectives of our company to other EU regulated markets.”

bet-at-home also took a decision to move to EveryMatrix’s platform; bet-at-home.com AG group has 5 million registered customers around the world; the company and its subsidiaries make up one of the most successful online bookmakers and online gaming providers in Europe. Richard Greslehner, Head of Business Development, said in another recent press release: “At bet-at-home we are driven by a customer-centric mindset. With the ambition to build products that delight our customers, we are consistently striving for operational excellence. With EveryMatrix as a new partner, we are confident to achieve our goals and further strengthen our market position.”

Today’s complex multi-state and multi-million user systems sell across multiple verticals; operators must have a huge amount of trust and confidence in the platform provider they migrate to. It’s important to understand that your new provider has all the essential tools and people to support a smooth project that delivers a zero-downtime migration, on time with no loss of data and the only thing a player notices is the improved features and functionalities of the site.

During the winmasters migration, EveryMatrix was able to deliver not just a fault free migration, but more than 60 new features and functionality enhancements with a roadmap of additional deliveries stretching over the coming months. From features such as allowing an operator to create special bets for special one-off events, to an integration between a third-party CRM tool and our BonusEngine, allowing us to send campaign details to the CRM’s UI, to a unified player profile page, allowing the operator to see, in real time, everything there is known about a player and their interactions with every vertical, payment, KYC etc all in one place. EveryMatrix—Everything is possible.

Written by Frank Cecchini, Sr. Business Dev. Mgr. Gov’t Markets, EveryMatrix.

The original version of this interview was published by La Fleurs Magazine under the title EveryMatrix: Increasing Online Sales in Face of Increasing Competition.