iGaming Daily

Andrew McCarron (00:00.569)
Hello and welcome to the latest episode of iGaming Daily. We're here in Barcelona at ICE, the first one at ICE. It's a weird for us at SBC. We've come here from SBC Summit Barcelona before we moved to Lisbon and it's first one at ICE since leaving. it's a mammoth place, but enough about ICE because we're joined by, we're joined once again actually, by Optimus Multi Coleman. Welcome again to the podcast. Thank you for having me. I think I made this joke literally two minutes ago, I'll say it live.

We should call this Motty Daily because we've had you on quite a bit now. We're big fans, we'd love to have you on. think I got my podcast debut with you and now I'm rolling it out. We might as well create our own limited series. Let's do it. Motty and James, let's do it. Before we do jump into it, OptiMove, we're supported by you on our gaming daily, but let's actually celebrate something that you've, a milestone that you've achieved recently. This is, it was last week, your 10th anniversary of OptiMove. Yeah. Big celebrations.

Oh, I got a bouquet of flowers. I'm not sure that's a big celebration, but it was a nice moment. was a nice moment to reflect. We had our sales kick off for the year and it was like a nice moment to sit and really take stock of everything that we've done over the last 10 years. It's been quite a journey. Joining the company was about 40 people at the time. A real proper startup and if you'd have seen the offices that we were in, you'd have understood. to go from there to where are today, 500 people strong and kind of all the growth we've seen. It's been very...

been a special ride so it's been a nice moment to reflect on that a little bit. You don't look like a bouquet kind of flowers guy. Do you know what? The first girl I ever dated, her mum was a florist. And so I kind of learned the ropes a little bit. So yeah, no, do actually like flowers. My wife gets a nice bouquet every weekend. So it's a good thing that a marketing firm knows how to give you the right gift, suppose. Right, we're here. We're going to talk about stuff that you're going to be launching at ICE. Sure.

Give us an idea of what you're announcing this week at Ice. I can give you the full picture. It's been in the works for while actually and it's a product called OptiLive. Which sounds like you probably know what it is but maybe you don't. It's very cool actually. Most ways that the real-time communication exists in the world of CRM is all based on player activity. So a player does something, a customer does something, a customer has a loss.

Andrew McCarron (02:23.31)
or a customer plays a game and then as a result of the customer activity, you send them a campaign. they lost three times in a row, you send them a campaign. That'd be a classic real time campaign. What we're doing is bringing in global events, real data that's not connected to the customer itself. So betting data would be the perfect example. Tottenham score, that shifts the odds immediately in real time. Can you do something about that? So the idea here is now to bring in

kind of real real-time data but from a non-customer perspective then use it as a way of communicating with the customers in real time. so let's look at OptiLive. Everything's OptiSomething. In fact yeah that's a glass shattering moment there every time we on as well. That's the joke in the company everything's OptiSomething. So OptiLive go in depth there how does this boost live betting?

Look, think everybody knows the underlying value of in-play betting. think we've all seen what that's done to the industry over the last however many years it's been now. We've got the data on it obviously and we really study that. In most territories, in-play betting value is probably worth twice the amount as a pre-match. The reality is that actually your best customers are the ones that do both.

pre-match in in-play, but there's been an explosion of in-play and that's come from the technology that was available for it and the latency from the betting sites. In-play betting is where the market's at. This is something that needed to happen and we're the first ones, I believe, to be able to do it. And it's just a really interesting angle. It kind of brings together the world of historical data, understanding customer profile.

It brings together real-time data from the customer's perspective, what they're doing right now. And then it also brings together these kind of global events, the real-time actual betting information and real world events that taking place. So combining those three different data sources together becomes a very powerful triumvate. Perfect. So like I love journey stories. I love something from start to finish, how that journey progresses. So with OptiLive, how was this idea conceived?

Andrew McCarron (04:47.926)
and just walk me through that process of how it became what it is today and how it actually helps operators fill a gap in that market, which wasn't there before. Yeah, I mean, it's been, it's existed for a long time and the ideas existed for a long time. as most good ideas in our company, can sort of point to our CEO, founder, Pini, who only 10 minutes ago, I saw him demoing our product.

despite having a 500 person company, he's still sitting there demoing. So he's in the weeds and he's always been in the weeds and he's always been in ideas, He loves his basketball, Penny. He does love his basketball. And I think he came to me years and years ago, four or five years ago, talking about, you know, want to know what happens when Steph Curry is about to take the winning shot before a match. Like, wouldn't it be great? Wouldn't it be amazing if we could send out a message to our customers saying, you know, the chance of him hitting this shot or not is.

We've got all the data, come on, we've got all the data, we can put it together and it's taken a hell of a long time to kind of reach that point. And it's a lot harder than it would seem. But the idea came to fruition, it started to exist five years ago. I think really with the acquisition, when we bought Graphite, which is now OptiX, another part of the Opti family. So when we bought Graphite, which does kind of the front end personalization, we have this concept inside of there called Smart Campaigns, which is one of the products, one of the sub products inside of OptiX.

OpDX was the first time that we were really able to start matching personalization. So people think CRM and personalization are the same thing, but they're not really. Personalization is a kind of a cousin. And it was when we bought Graphite and turned into OpDX and started to utilize all of the customer data that they were providing and executing campaigns in real time, that actually became the point at which it started to become something feasible from a technological perspective as well because

A lot of the personalisation elements that exist inside of OptiX is all based around preferences, betting preferences, right? So, I mean, you could tick a box that says my favourite team's Tottenham, and then you'd have that piece, you'd have that information as a raw piece of data, but the reality is that most people don't have that information on a granular level. So actually, you need to study the betting behaviour to really get an understanding of the way that individuals want to bet singles, multis,

Andrew McCarron (07:04.119)
individual teams, what sport, when they do it, all of that kind of stuff, in play, pre-match. OptiX as a tool learns the betting behavior as well. you know, everything that we do has always been about personalization and that's what this is. It was about having all the various different tools, historical customer behavior, betting preferences, and then mixing it in with the real live data feeds from the betting, from the sportsbooks themselves to be able to actually combine all three.

We need to get Pinney back on the show. I'm sure he'd love to. And actually explain how many of his ideas came from the basketball court. Yeah. Like was OptiMove just conceived from the basketball court? Probably. We'll go back to live betting and you've mentioned earlier in the podcast, we've seen a massive surge in this, certainly in past few years. Why do think we've seen such a big surge and kind of where do you think it can go moving forward? Yeah, I think it's, I mean,

like any good thing, it's consumer driven. Yeah, I think the consumer wants it. I think that the customer wants it. I don't know. I've got my own view from a kind of where where the world's at. You know, even myself, I love I love my football. But when I'm watching football, I'll be on Twitter at the same time and I'm on live score at the same time. And you're kind of you're you're consuming information in real time all the time, even when you're focusing on something. So

I think in-play betting reflects the consumer trends that are taking place in the world today. And then of course, technology alongside that to allow it to actually come to fruition. So I think, you know, the technology from the sports books to be able to do it exists. So in-play betting can actually happen. The latency has to be right. You can't be 20 seconds behind the market. can't have someone sitting there watching tennis. But it's obviously sports like tennis where there are so many individual moments that are taking place that really drove the explosion of it.

But then of course from the operator perspective, you know, I said it earlier, the numbers are just better, right? So they want to drive customers towards in-play betting to try and mix and match their preferences. All of the foundations are there for it to be profitable and enjoyable and the technology exists to do it as well. Yeah. Just going to rewind back because you mentioned latency and that is a really big key factor when it comes to live betting is

Andrew McCarron (09:24.331)
How do you navigate around that latency kind of situation? you know, firstly, the latency has to come from the sports book from the providers themselves. Like I said, you know, if you've got somebody sitting there watching the tennis and they could message their friend in real time to say someone's just done something if the sports book's not updated and if the market's suspended all the time while they're waiting for the sports book to catch up, it's irrelevant. So the first thing is that the sports books are in a position where in play is essentially real time. From our perspective in terms of

communication, it's the same problem. If we can't catch the moment before it's already gone, then you're done. So for us, real-time communication has always been sub-second. And now you're combining both a sub-second communication with a sub-second sportsbook updating. It's imperative. Without it, the moment's gone. Perfect. And with live betting, there's been projections that this market could reach, what was it, £19 billion by 2035.

Just from Optimus perspective, does that align with the activity that you're seeing currently? Can you see that projection coming true or do you actually think that signaling is a bit too low, like you can go higher? I don't know exactly where the numbers are going to go, but we see all the trends, we see all the data itself, and the explosion is real and it will continue going in that direction as well. The only thing that I would remind the operators on is the...

We've always seen that when you're talking about consumer preferences, the best type of customers in terms of longevity are customers that mix and match their preferences. So whether that's web and mobile. So yeah, mobile exploded, but you don't want to move all your customers only to mobile. A web and mobile customer is more beneficial to you as a business. Casino is a more valuable product than sports, but you don't just want a casino player, you want a sport and casino player. It's the same again with betting. In-play is the valuable piece, but...

when you've got a customer that bets pre-match and in play, the sort of longevity you get from a customer because they're more exposed to the various different parts of your product, it's just significantly better. So don't lose sight of the foundations of what the business is, even though in play is more valuable. I'm to ask you a yes or no question. I tend never to ask these. Do you think it's kind of impossible to scale real-time messaging?

Andrew McCarron (11:44.079)
When connected to live sports. If you'd have asked me that question three years ago, I'd said yes. If you asked me that question now, I'd say no. Probably the biggest change between the two is AI. You and I have spoken about AI a fair bit as well. I think one of the big things that AI allows us to do is to remove or shorten the bottleneck in terms of content generation. Because you can have every single moment in play that's taking place. Every single...

corner, every single goal, everything, any moment. But if you can't get a message out to a customer in that moment, then it's impossible. And the likelihood of you having a target bank of 10,000 different messages that you could send based on any variation that occurs in game is also impossible. the scalability is affected by the operator's ability to actually get the message out. I think the AI massively bridges that gap.

and being able to build prompts that will pull data and not just, also offering you insights and interesting pieces of information. Like, have you thought about this? The next best, the next score might be that, by the way, the statistics on the customer, Harry Kane scored three times in his last three games, but just kind of bringing in all that information, it's irrelevant if you can't get that information out quickly. three years ago, no, today, yeah, I think we're on the path.

to being able to scale it properly. Yeah, see, I know we've talked about AI in the past and I've always said how scary it's kind of advanced in the last 18 to 12 months. I'm kind of excited to see what it can do in the future, considering what we can do now. You've just said yourself, two, three years ago, you would never thought this was even a possibility. imagine when it's going to be like in the next 10 years or like 20, 35 when this is projected to come true. With Octolive though, we've talked about it.

But you've not told us how to activate it or how operators can activate it. I mean, it sits as a product within our product offering suite. I mentioned OptiX earlier. it sits within our OptiX part of the family. that, you know, OptiX itself takes in data from OptiMove. So that's all of the old, the historical data on the customer, who the customer is. And then it brings in the real time data in terms of the events that taking place as well. So it combines the different works together, but it exists within the OptiX platform. Cool.

Andrew McCarron (14:07.223)
start the show, you mentioned your 10 year anniversary. Well, let's look to the next five to 10 years. What trends do you kind of see gaining momentum and being that kind of pinnacle for the next half decade, decade to come? Well, the first one will be that I'll still be in the same job. So as long as I don't get fired. still be on the iGaming Daily podcast. I hope I'll still be on the podcast. Yeah. Look, the industry, I think, I mean, if I talk about it from a kind of macro level, I think there's

got to be some consolidation on the supplier side, particularly around the platforms. You know, I've been in the industry 10 years and more actually, it'd be not 10 years, but I come to ICE every single year and I see 50 booths that are enormous and I've never heard of those companies before. And they were, I'm pretty sure they weren't at the event last year. And I just don't, I don't know how there are so many of these businesses, which is great for the industry at large. But I think that you'll start to see some real consolidation on the B2B side. I think in the last five years as markets have regulated so much.

We've seen it on the B2C side. On the B2B side, I think we're going to get a lot of that. And the other side is, think, it's sort of the thing that everybody's talking about, but not really allowed to talk about sweepstakes in the US. And my view on that is, I think that that's going to force the US to regulate online casino. And I think that should have happened already. But essentially, that's what the sweeps market is. And because it's existing inside a legal framework that's very well written.

I don't think that they're going to find a way of being able to deregulate it or make it illegal. think that what they're actually going to have to do is regulate online casino, just accept the fact that that's what's already taking place. I think that's the smartest move for everyone and I'm here to watch it because it would be great. We could talk sweeps and there'll be another episode. I know my co-host Jessica Welman, she did an episode with a sweeps lawyer.

can't remember who it was actually from but was fascinating insight to a very, for me anyway, quite a complex kind of structure that is Switched Xeno which came out of nowhere really. I think my, I'm not gonna give you my kind of what I thought it would be but interesting and we will talk about that probably meeting you in the future at some point. But before we kind of sign off, I hear you've had another announcement for SMB.

Andrew McCarron (16:26.371)
We do. It's actually really interesting program. It's not product launched, per se, in the way the kind of features are flashy and exciting, but we've launched a program called OptiMove Ignite Plus. And I think it's a really interesting way of looking at things. It's our focus on the emerging operators, smaller startups, businesses that are trying to get their teeth into the industry. And I think one of the ways that the industry's always viewed OptiMove is that it's a very sophisticated tool.

which is kind of scary for smaller operators. sometimes people feel that it's aimed up market. We certainly do a lot of business up there, but, you know, small operators absolutely require very good CRM platforms. And what we've done with OptiMove Ignite is to build a suite that allows them to enter into OptiMove from a product perspective that may be a slightly more scaled down version, but it's more than just a product. It's also about allowing access

to the various different elements that OptiMove brings. We've got so many different partners that we work with. We produce our own event, CRM event, every single year, which we're called OptiMove Connect. We host in London, so it would be things like tickets. So that event where they'd be exposed to the wider industry, to a lot of thought leaders, exposure to our strategic services team that maybe historically only our big enterprise businesses would have been connected to. So there's a lot of elements of value that operators get from using OptiMove.

that perhaps the smaller ones in the past never were able to access. Optimoog Ignite is designed very specifically for those businesses that are much smaller, but with a price point, with payment terms, and with access to the various different parts of Optimoog that they otherwise wouldn't have been exposed to, so that they can get best of breed software from day one without feeling overwhelmed and unable to connect to it. Well, looking forward to see how it goes in the future. Well, let's wrap this up. It's your anniversary.

It is. Let's go get pissed. Yeah, let's do that. Thank you for joining us. Pleasure. Thanks very much.