GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 24 - April 2013

We’ve learned from the customers that they have to be prepared to wait with a lot of the competition. We don’t want that, obviously. Q:When you talk to the operators you’re supplying, what are the key factors they’re looking at in terms of the back office, or the game office? What are the key factors they’re looking at in terms of the casino product, the poker prod- uct? How is your software suite meeting those key factors and key goals? JAQUES: For me, I think that the an- swer to that is that we don’t think any one customer is the same as another. That’s where our product has gone. It’s not a one- size-fits-all solution. We have customers around the world. We have different types of customers. We have government-based customers, we have European operators. My world is selling to the U.S., where it’s a completely different animal. The answer forme is really that there isno sin- gle answer. What some customers may want is for us to do everything for them. They want to give us some branding, some colors, and lo- gos, and then they want us to run it for them. Where on the other extreme, somebody might say, “Listen, we’re a European cus- tomer. We have our own platform, and we want to plug your poker into that for the dot-com world, but it’s gotten really ex- pensive for us.” Let’s say when we go into Germany, Schleswig-Holstein, we need a platform. We’re going to take your plat- form in Germany. Then, the same custom- er has two different answers themselves. It’s everything from A to Z. I think that’s why across the board for us, product-wise, we’re willing to cater from A to Z. You can take our poker alone. You have a platform, you can’t change it, it’s too expensive. Okay. We have a very integratable poker product, where you don’t need to use our platform. But you need a platform? We have that, too. You want our casino games? Great. You want to take some of our casino games? That’s okay, too. Are there other third-party casino games that you want to plug in via our casino games and via our platform? Fantastic. We’ll help with that. We’ll do everything from individual prod- ucts to we can do everything for you, and anything in between. KJELL: I think one important concept is that we are not looking to follow what’s out there in the market right now. We are look- ing to lead. And I think we are doing that with this product. The dynamic view that we have of a customer and the products is something that is unique to Amaya. We don’t force any customers to use our spe- cific tools, for instance. We have a recom- mended tool that is pre-integrated. If you want something else, we’ll use it. I think that’s where the industry needs to head, because I think that everybody needs to be unique. Q: Four or five years ago, if you used a software operator, you were locked into the software operator. Now, the market appears to have shifted to a much more open, flexible demand. I wonder how it appears to you, and what you think the factors are that have driven us there. JAQUES: The biggest single factor is European regulated markets. If you go back five years ago, pre-Italy – or, say, six years ago, so that it was just on the horizon – then most of our target customers in the European space were the sort of Betssons or Unibets of the world. These companies who had their own homegrown platforms and who wanted to plug in the best-of- breed products to it. What’s happened is with regulated mar- kets, they learned – either after Italy or through their peers when Italy happened – that it’s very expensive to scale this homegrown product they’ve had and have developed over a span of 10 years. With spaghetti code, it’s very difficult to make any changes and very expensive, whether it’s $2 million, or $5 million, or $10 mil- lion to enter into a new market. And it was a cost that operators of that type could no longer stomach. Then, they become very much a target for a game office solution, when previously, that was something they did on their own. Or maybe they did use somebody’s game office, but they experienced by going into Italy that whoever it was didn’t have the ability to adapt their product to meet the regulatory requirements. Then they’re on the market for a new game office. I think this progression to Italy, to France, to Denmark, to Spain, to Schleswig- Holstein, and Greece, and whatever comes next, has changed the landscape and forced everybody to think about needing to be more flexible. Some are going to be able to make it. Some are going to be able to talk about it. But we’re certainly doing it. Q: This product suite is very much a response to the changed nature of the industry. JAQUES: Yeah. Then on the U.S. side of things, it’s a brand-new market, and it’s a whole new world over there. It’s interest- ing, because the target customers for us are these tried and tested casino operators who have been in the casino and gambling in- dustry for 10 years, or 50 years. They’re scared by online. Maybe scared is a harsh word, but this isn’t something that’s familiar to them. They need help from us. I’m talking to everybody, tribal organiza- tions, non-tribal organizations and every- thing in between. No two are really looking at things the same way. It’s the ideal scenario for me as a sales guy. In the real world, the sales guy doesn’t al- ways have the ideal scenario, so he has to sell around what he has. But in my case, the ideal scenariowould be forme to have a very flexible product, where it’s not one-size-fits- all, because that’s what I sell against. I don’t want to go in and say, this is the ab- solute solution for you. You have to take it. And shove it down their throat. I want to go in and say, listen, this is Amaya. This is our suite. What’s your business like? What do you need from us? How do we best solve that for you? I’ll take this piece and this piece. We sell them the solution that makes sense for them. Q: There’s a general expectation among U.S. casino operators that they want to be able to pick and choose things that they can plug into their system and plug into the ecosystem that they’ve built and they’re comfortable with. It seems this product suite fits that nicely. JAQUES: It’s hard to generalize, be- cause some are going to come to us and say, “We don’t have a clue. We recognize that. We want a partner who has a clue. We want you to do everything for us.” That’s what Playboy’s done with us. They’ve said, “Here’s our brand. Go make us some mon- ey off of it.” That’s the one extreme. On the other end, it could end up being a European scenario, where somebody says, “We like that, we like that, we like that, but we’re going to go a different way. We just want your poker, and we need your liquid- ity for poker, so just give us your poker.” Again, it’s going to be maybe a more ex- treme version of A to Z in the U.S. Q: On the product side, what other things can we be looking forward to? When you think about developing in poker, and developing maybe in the other product lines, what are the ideas 31 Can mobile and social save online poker ?