iGaming Daily

Speaker 2 (00:12.376)
Hello and welcome back to Dear CEO, a limited series brought to you by iGamingDaily in association with IGP. I'm Charlie Horner from SBC and I'm joined as always by Jovanna Popovic-Cinacchi, CEO of IGP. Jovanna, how are you doing today?

Hi Charlie, good to see you. Fantastic day today in Malta. Sun is shining, weather is almost like summer. I have a fantastic view here. Sorry I can't show you but you know the beach is out there. yeah, all good. Purple as IGP as always.

Fantastic. No, I'm very jealous of your beach views and sunny weather as I gaze out of the window to see a grey overcast day here in Greater Manchester. But no, let's dive straight into this because it's all sunshine and rainbows in terms of our gaming and our conversation today. So just to reintroduce this series to our listeners.

Dear CEO, it's your opportunity to ask Jovan any questions related to the iGaming industry. We pick certain topics for each episode and you can have your say to ask a real expert real questions about the iGaming industry. let's dive straight into things. Jovan, it's been a little while since we last spoke and did one of these. I think it was in Barcelona. So I just wanted to start off really by asking, you know, how things are.

you know, how things for IGP and what your key focus is at the moment.

Speaker 1 (01:54.958)
It's true. time we saw each other in... Well, no, actually, we saw each other in Rio just briefly. We did. But we didn't have the opportunity, not enough time to do another series, to do another episode of the podcast, hands-on line. I hope next time maybe you come to Malta and we do it in person here. But since Barca, I mean, it was super busy.

for IGP, but good busy, not smart busy. We were in between Barcelona and SBC Rio, which was fantastic. A lot of interest there for especially our new solution, the retail one. And then it's on a day-to-day basis, growing, facing challenges, solving challenges.

And that's it, regular, let's say regular business with obviously going forward and putting the new crypto solution, the new retail solution out there to the market. And I must say, I'm quite happy with how things are going.

Fantastic, yeah, it's certainly been a busy and exciting period for IGP at the start of the year with obviously the retail launch that you touched on and the crypto solution launch that was in the back end of last year as well. So yeah, it's all busy in the life of a CEO and talking of which, let's dive into some of our listener questions. So the first one is about AI, one of the hottest topics in the industry.

And the question is as follows, where do you see AI enhancements benefiting the functionality of platforms and providing key services, solutions and modules for partners?

Speaker 1 (03:54.356)
It's a great question and I think Charlie, we could probably have one whole episode dedicated to AI. Let's talk about that by the way later. I'd probably start with answering the question with why rather than where. From the top of my mind, there are,

two probably most important reasons why one would go and implement AI modules into their solutions. Real-time reaction or adaptability, if you will, and scalability. mean, with any AI enhanced module that an operator or a provider decides to implement, they can grow much faster.

And for sure more efficient because there's no need to grow the teams. There's no need to scale in human resources or tech resources. And ultimately that brings the operational costs down with still allowing the growth. About real time adaptability, if you can just imagine the...

analysis of the player behavior and you know, that is more or less instant with using AI. And then on top of it always comes the actions that you need to perform based on the outcome of that analysis. That is pretty much, that can pretty much be instant compared to the time that a person or the team needs. But

Speaking of maybe giving a few examples of which AI enhancements a company can decide to implement, I mean, basically any area. Yes, but again, let's have a separate episode on that. What first comes to my mind is the, and what we see out there, there are quite some solution. It's the game recommendation engine or betting.

Speaker 1 (06:18.102)
recommendation engine and it can be used in many different, for many different purposes. From the very simple ones as in this game or this set of games recommended to the player pushed on top of the game grid. So for personalization purposes and going to the much more complex ones where you don't look only at the game.

preference of a player, but you can consider the tournaments the player has taken place in, combining with which active tournaments are there, the prices available, the promotions that the player is more or less into taking or kind of takes the benefit of. For a certain game, for a category of game, you can go endlessly here.

What you can put on top of it is also the player communication that can be driven by AI. that, you know, the game recommendation engine then can be used by an operator to solve many, problems that, not problems, but challenges and help the CRM teams for sure. Second very important one where...

where a lot of time and a lot of effort is put by both operators and the providers is the fraud detection. for sure fraud detection areas and modules can benefit from the AI implementation. Again, just imagine analyzing by the software all the patterns in deposit and withdrawal, you know,

to combat money laundering, faster KYC processes, where today, apart from the software that many pumps have integrated, there is still that human element of reviewing the documents or double checking. All of this can be enhanced by the AI.

Speaker 1 (08:42.926)
I saved the best for the last, like a cherry on top. think maybe the most interesting one, which we don't see as much out there, why? Because it's the most complex one, is the system where you would use the AI in every single step of the player journey. And I'll explain why. So from...

player journey regular from the very first click on the ad or on the banner on the affiliate site to then player landing on a certain page, homepage or whichever registration, first deposit, gameplay, so on so on. today, one of the biggest challenges for any operator from small to tier ones is

to allocate a budget to the specific new acquisition channel. Completely new. So you know nothing. And then, you know, with understanding the ROI behind it, down to the player in close to instant fashion. connecting that budget allocation to then conversion, retention, ultimately even reactivation.

So imagine a system predictive model where it will give out the recommendation to an operator what the level of investment should be in this or that acquisition channel, in this or that retention effort and reactivation effort and all of that down to a player in a fast manner. I think that would be a game changer.

No, absolutely. It's an absolutely fascinating world, the whole AI concept and just hearing you explain it and how it can be utilized in our industry is fascinating, the opportunities that it offers for streamlining and scaling up our solutions. I've just used AI models just experimentally, just to see what the capabilities are. And it's frightened me just with my...

Speaker 2 (11:05.336)
quite trivial commands, so to see the opportunities that it has for sports betting in an online casino is fascinating.

is, but you rightly said so. AI as any other software is as good as you use it. At the moment, I think that our industry is definitely underutilizing for many different reasons. Maybe even scared of using it, or scared of it can do, scared of replacing. There are many debates out there, not just in our industry, replacing

people and certain jobs becoming redundant. I don't think that that will ever happen. But definitely, AI has a tremendous, tremendous potential. It can solve challenges faster. It can cut costs. ultimately, why are we here? We do all of this to bring the better player experience. So AI can definitely enhance gaming and player.

experience and all of that without needing much more resources.

Absolutely. It's a tremendous opportunity, as you say. we could talk all day about AI and I'm sure we will do a dedicated episode to AI. listeners, get your AI specific questions at the ready because we'll be coming at you very soon with an AI episode. do. Yeah, absolutely. Let's move on to question two, Yvonne. This is a...

Speaker 2 (12:45.218)
bit more of technical question, perhaps. But how can smaller operators with more limited resources monitor product and system KPIs? So, a little shift, but what do you think about this one?

To answer it better, I'd probably need my CTO or CTO next to me, but I'll give it a go. First of all, I don't think that the enormous budgets are required to monitor products, system, KPIs or any KPIs in general, but the resources are really, really limited. A small operator should focus then.

on the most important ones, you know, for their business, the stage of their, for the phase of their business at that particular time. then, and then expand, then expand in time, you know, adding more. Data has always been one of the keys of a successful business, especially in our industry. And in my opinion, it is better to invest a buck or two

into putting in place a proper monitoring system of the whole solution performance. Why? Because it allows one to understand where exactly the business is, not on a daily basis, not on an hourly basis, but on every minute, at each minute of the operation. We all know that our industry and brands are, it's a very fast.

a fast pace environment. So if you don't have that data at hand, you're always kind of catching up. You know, we need to be proactive to be proactive in addressing certain, certain areas of the business. need to have the data. Another solution for sure would be a smart choice of, of the partner, smart choice of the provider because

Speaker 1 (14:56.526)
Most of the platforms nowadays, most of the software nowadays that kind of are combined into the tech ecosystem, they already offer a set of dashboards. And in most of the companies, these are included in the price. So there is no additional investment needed from the small operator. Certain companies also offer

not just the kind of visibility of the data within the dashboards or custom reports, but also the notification system that sits on top that can, you know, send alert in SMS, WhatsApp, Telegram, email, any communication channel when there are KPI movements and not just the product and system KPI, any KPI that you set. So this then, you know, allows

both a small operator to get visibility of this, as well as the provider and then together they can react in a timely manner. If the small operator whose question I guess comes from is in terms of people as limited resources, because that could also be. Yes, it's not always the investment into...

as in funds, it could be also people and teams. Then we go back to our previous question. I would definitely recommend exploring more the AI modules, the AI smaller sets of softwares, or even open source tools.

They come for free and then, know, using or combining the usage of these two small operator can reach their goal without the need to have in place large teams and big investments into growing those.

Speaker 2 (17:09.678)
Fantastic. So it's all about data-driven decisions, not being afraid to maybe allocate some of those resources into data processing, picking the right partners, which is something that we've dedicated a podcast to already is how to choose that right partner. And then bringing it back to what we've already spoken about today, which is AI. We talk about those opportunities and this is just one area where there is a massive opportunity to use AI.

Let's move into the third and final question, Jovanne. And it's slightly different. We're going to do a bit of a quick fire round. I'm going to give you a list of industry buzzwords. And I just want you to tell me whether you think it's the real deal or not. Whether it's a big deal for operators, for platforms, for the whole industry.

And then just give me your general thoughts about each of these terms.

on a quiz. Let's do it. Let's do it.

Feels like a game show, yeah. So the first one, personalisation.

Speaker 1 (18:24.198)
this is definitely future. We have this all around, you see it, it's advertised, but it needs to be down to the player and maybe down to the mood of the player, down to day, time in the day of a player. for sure, personalization a must. I see it almost like...

One casino, player.

Absolutely. potentially then that might have an impact on how you view the second one because localisation, you know, is localisation obsolete? Now we have personalisation taking over. What do you think about localisation as a term?

No, it definitely is a separate thing from personalization. Localization is a must. It's it's not negotiable from, you know, even looking from the regulatory perspective, you have to have it, you know, from the game, sorry, from the player experience perspective. Again, one size fits them all, as you know, these times have long gone.

Today, everyone wants to see, like on Netflix, yes, you want to see what is in your country, not just what is for you. So definitely, not negotiable. Future and the must.

Speaker 2 (19:56.566)
Excellent. Okay, number three, innovation. We talk a lot about innovation in the industry. What do you think about that as a term and where do you think innovation is at within this industry?

Innovation is always future. mean it's in the definition of the term. It needs to be. It's again, it's a must, you know, and it is always a future. It's a never-ending process. I mean the whole world is driven by innovation and if you put it down to the level of the industry, you know, we've seen over the course of last, what I remember, 20 years, you know, those

moments, those milestones in the development of the industry where there was a massive innovation and then there was a whole different course of maybe not whole different course, but you know, there was a, there was an enhancement and everything else then kind of moved after, after that milestone. So we, definitely cannot stop innovating. I think, yes, we spoke maybe not on the podcast, but, but in person there is

There is this need of a big new thing in the industry. We've seen a few, but nothing on the like of back in the days when free spins came out on NetEnt. So let's see. Let's see what's the next big thing, but this is definitely what drives the industry forward. So a hundred percent yes, future and constant future.

Innovation is in for 2025, there we go. Next up is gamification.

Speaker 1 (21:45.07)
Gimmification is present. mean, we see it. are many pumps have gamification. There are many other softwares out there that you can integrate as a separate module that will enhance the gamification. So it is present. But what we need maybe for the future is better, better gamification, AI-driven gamification.

And gamification ultimately aims to drive retention, which is our final term. So what do you think about retention?

Retention is, you absolutely need it. mean, retention is much cheaper than the acquisition. What we probably need, so again, retention has always been the part of the industry of every operation of every brand. What probably is the future of retention is sustainable retention.

Combining with the other terms, then retention can grow and become better.

Fantastic. Well, thanks a lot, Yvanna. That was a great quickfire question round. And if it was a game show, you would be leaving as a winner.

Speaker 1 (23:09.038)
Sorry to interrupt you. I must say, I love these questions. What I kind of don't really enjoy is the fact that these terms have become a buzzword. Why are they a buzzword? Because everyone uses them. There's this being, we're innovative, we have the highest retention rates, highly personalized solution. Everyone talks about it. Where we know that it is not the case in

in every single case. There are many solutions that live up to these claims. Don't get me wrong. They do, but there are then many more that do not. So we shouldn't take these terms as buzzwords. They should be a meaningful concept. And only if we take them as a meaningful concept, the companies will then invest into bringing them onto a different level, which is

which is what we need as an industry because it needs to be, like I said, with innovation, know, a never-ending process because no matter how well we do something there, we can always do better as an industry.

Of course, of course, yeah, and we look forward to the industry putting those words into action throughout the year and beyond. Jovanna, thanks very much for your time, as always. Really enjoyed this episode. And thanks to the listeners for tuning in, and we will see you next time on the next episode of Dear CEO.

Thank you.