iGaming Daily

00:00
If there's one subject people are talking about in the United States, that's definitely sweepstakes. That's why today on iGamingDaily, I have the pleasure to be joined by Jeff Laniato, Director of Sales at Optimal. Welcome to iGamingDaily. I'm Fernando Nott, Senior Business Journalist for SBC News. This is from the floor of SBC Summit Americas 2025. Like I said, welcome, Jeff. How are you today? Hey, I'm doing great. How are you?

00:27
I'm great. great. Really happy to have you here. Really happy to have you join us to discuss this topic because it's like everyone's talking about sweepstakes in the United States. Like how much have you talked about sweepstakes so far? Seems like nonstop. You know, I've been an optimist for about five years now and the first three, three and a half years was real money gaming focus, right? So we're dealing with, you know, regulated sports books and DFS companies. And the last year, year and a half has been

00:57
All sweepstakes it feels like it's been our fastest growing vertical. It's the fastest growing part of OptiMove. As a company, we've started to pivot and think more about how do we cater to sweepstakes operators and yet dominating most of the conversations that we're having at this point. The motto of this event is connecting worlds through gaming. So why don't you just for our listeners that are not that familiar with sweepstakes, because I feel like it's a very American thing, right? Sweepstakes. So why don't you explain me.

01:26
what sweepstakes are like maybe like kind of five year olds. Yeah, sure. I mean, the concept of sweepstakes has been around for decades, right? And maybe the most notable example is McDonald's, they run the monopoly promotion, right? So we're going to McDonald's, they run this promotion periodically and you buy a cheeseburger and you can get certain pieces. And in effect, you have a chance to win a million dollars, right? This is sort of the exchange here, but McDonald's is not a gambling company. They don't have a gambling license. They don't need to...

01:56
become a regulated operator to run this sort of promotion, this giveaway of the million dollars. It's because they're protected under this idea of sweepstakes law. It's been around for a number of years and most of the Fortune 500 runs some sort of sweepstakes, even as simple as you buy a bottle of Coca-Cola, you look under the cap and maybe you win a free Coca-Cola, right? So in effect, it's not considered gambling, but there's a number of pieces and number of elements and requirements that

02:25
go into making something that sweepstakes. And over the last few years, it's had evolved into a lot of gaming operators adopting the sweepstakes model to be able to run sports books and casinos online without the limitations that regulation has put forth with iGaming in particular. So online casino is only allowed in a handful of states in the U.S. Sports book more regulated, but online casino is very limited in terms of where you can.

02:53
bet online in casino. Sweepstakes has completely opened up the market and we're seeing an influx of operators that are taking advantage of this sweepstakes law to operate casinos online. And how do they work specifically related to the iGaming industries? So in the McDonald's example, you're buying a cheese burner, right? And then in effect, you have a chance to win money. The reason that this is not considered gambling is because you're buying a cheaper, right? There's this extra layer of currency between you

03:23
and the chance to win some sort of prize. In the sweepstakes world, there's typically a dual currency system, right? So you buy coins and as a result of buying coins, you get sweeps coins. And the gold coins that you're buying initially are social currency. You can play them in a slot machine. can play them blackjack or bet on sports and they have no monetary value, right? You can play through them. It's social currency.

03:50
But as a result of buying these gold coins, typically you also get sweeps coins. And the sweeps coins can also be played in the same way. You can put them in a slot machine, bet on sports with them, and at a certain point they become redeemable for real money. And that's kind of how they adopt this sports book casino model. But the dual currency system, you know, the gold coins are basically the cheeseburg, right? So it's legal to buy a cheeseburger and buy a cheeseburger. As a result, you get these sweeps coins, which now in effect,

04:20
can be redeemed for monetary gauding. Okay, so let's get the cheeseburger out of the way because I'm getting hungry here. this is SwiftState's model. It's a very powerful player retention tool. So how do you see it in that sense? How can SwiftState help with player retention in the long term? Yeah, I think the way we think about things is it all comes back to data. And I often think...

04:48
I would say I have a gaming bias, a gaming lens, but I often think of other industries, And let's say you're a marketer at Banana Republic at a Gap or pick a retailer at another industry and I'm a customer and I buy a blue shirt, right? And you know that I'm Jeff and I like blue shirts and I'm a really good customer. Maybe again, in three weeks, I buy a blue pair of pants, right? If I'm a VIP customer at the Gap. But you have such limited data about who I am, right? Is there such a limited interaction, is limited engagement?

05:17
The world of online gaming, there is such a high volume of data. Operators are monitoring and gesting, you know, every click, every log in, every slot machine pull, did I win, did I lose my average purchase, my average deposit, my average win, every leg of every parlay in the world of sports betting, right? There's so many opportunities to take in data and punishing data is really the key to potential, right? So being really personalized with the way that we're marketing to players is

05:47
a key opportunity for differentiation. these marketers at gaming companies have a really unique opportunity to take advantage of the volume of data that they have and use that data to retain players in a more effective way. And is it more challenging when it comes to sweepstakes versus real money game?

06:08
It's more challenging in the sense that it's more competitive, right? So the real money space, especially over the last few years, it become very consolidated in the U.S. It's effectively become a duopoly. But in many states, you know, there are states like Colorado and New Jersey that a few years ago had 20, 25 licensed operators. And if you look at the list now, it's a half or a third of that. So there's much fewer, there's a lot fewer players in the real money space. In the scrapes world, there are dozens and dozens of operators out there, probably even hundreds.

06:38
And we're on the floor of SBC and we think we have a good, we're keeping tabs on the industry and we'll run into another operator that we've never even heard of that has tens of thousands of customers. It's unlike the real money space, it's a relatively opaque industry. So it's hard to identify who the big players are and how everybody's doing and what the numbers are. There's a lot of transparency in the real money space. So there are so many players out there in the sweeps world and it's very competitive.

07:08
And at the end of the day, you know, a slot machine or the Gima Blackjack, or, if I went to bed on the Knicks tonight, it's a commodity, right? I can do that at a hundred sites. But being able to attract players through better CRM, better retention, better personalization, this is what we view as a key opportunity to differentiate. one of the, an industry where there are very few opportunities for that differentiation. So you kind of mentioned it already,

07:35
What can operators do to boost that retention in the long term, in the long run? Yeah, I think there's a number of different aspects. think players, as the industry evolves, have higher expectations. They have higher expectations for how content is personalized for them. So one of the areas that we're really focused on is making sure that players feel like we experience on their site is catered for them. If I open up the site of a sweepstakes casino,

08:05
Ideally, I should have games that are catered to me and personalized for me. On the sports side, I should have bets that are tailored to what I like. And in an increasingly competitive environment, this is a key area for retaining players, right? It's becoming a big area that you can capitalize on. So personalized content, personalized offers and bonuses is also a huge, it's become, know, think bonuses are an area that everybody knows that they need to be getting promos.

08:34
but it can become really challenging at scale to understand what bonus you would be giving which players, how much she would be bonus in. And it's another piece that kind of relies on data and kind of modeling and a lot of what we focus on that every player is different. Every player has different tendencies and you know, how do we make sure that we're sending them the right bonus that's going to retain them, but not overbonusing them and kind of sacrificing the profitability of the company. Speaking of tendencies of players.

09:03
Are there any particular tendencies among the players in the sweepstakes that you have found particularly interesting or that have stand out in the past? One of the nuances with sweepstakes is that it has historically been mostly web-based. now more recently, it's becoming more mobile-focused and some of the sweepstakes casinos are getting into the App Store. But previously, it was very web-focused.

09:32
And when you're only on the web, it limits the opportunities to communicate with players. In the real money side, most of the interactions, most of the wagering, most of the activity is done in the mobile firm. And so push messaging, in-app messaging is, in a lot of cases, for our clients on the real money side, the primary channel. That's the main way that they're communicating. Email has almost become secondary. In the sweeps world, because there's no mobile app, email tends to be the more...

10:00
prevalence, more effective channel. And so we see kind of an increasing importance on a number of ways that you can reach players, right? So things like SMS, web push, social, all the ways in which you can target players. have so much data about the more ways in which you can communicate with players, the more kind of channels that you can reach them through, there's an exponential impact on the retention and the lifetime value that you can drive. you know, we're starting to see more of a shift now to mobile.

10:30
But being able to have like web push and web pop and web inbox and all these different channels set up is another key piece for differentiation. What trends do you think are going to define the future for the United States? What do you think is going to happen with Sweepstakes in the future? Yeah, I'd say the biggest, feel like every conference every year has like a buzzword, right? And it feels like the buzzword recently has been gamification. That's something that's...

11:00
coming up a lot, it's come up on the real money side, but I think on the sweep side, it's starting to come up more and more. And I think that goes back to this idea of competition and differentiation and kind of standing out, right? Because again, at the end of the day, you know, I don't want to kind of undermine product and different pieces of the puzzle here, but slot machines are a commodity, betting on the Knicks is a commodity. So how do we look for these opportunities to stand out from an increasingly large pool of competitors?

11:28
Gamification is one of those ways. So gamification can kind of mean a lot of different things. It can mean free to play games that are branded and more engaging. Instead of just sending out an email or a message, we could have a trivia or a poll or some sort of mini game that's incorporated and keeps the players more engaged. Gamification also incorporates aspects of like leaderships and missions and making things more...

11:55
you know, fun for players. It's a huge trend that we're seeing towards getting players to engage more and build up that loyalty, right? That's what operators are trying to build out. You know, I think it was Warren Buffett, in Apple, historically big investor in Apple, and I'm an Apple guy with an iPhone, so I'm a little bit biased with this quote, but I think he said at one point, if I gave an iPhone user $10,000,

12:25
you can never buy an iPhone for the rest of your life. Most people wouldn't take it. But if I gave somebody $10,000, you can never buy a Ford again, they would just go buy a Toyota. And he gave that quote as like a demonstration of like the power of brand loyalty. But if you can really build a strong brand and really build strong loyalty, then people will, you know, forgo large amounts of money to stay loyal to that brand. And it's very hard to achieve. think very few brands have gotten to that level of Apple and the iPhone and that level of stickiness. But I think that's kind of the goal of

12:55
of an online operator, right? Building out that level of loyalty that's a key players and you do so through identification and personalization and kind of building that connection with each customer. And how does AI come into play with SwiftState? Does it play any role at all? It does it's like, I was also talking with Marty from our people about AI. He mentioned AI a lot of times and everyone is like, how can we use AI to boost personalization? So.

13:24
I wonder, I was wondering how does it play in the Swift States world? know, AI has also become a little bit of a buzzword. actually, I try not to say AI. You brought it up first, so I will go there. I think it's the trigger to a drinking game. Every time someone mentions AI at the panel here, maybe we take a shot. You know, I think the reason I try to avoid it is because I think for lot of companies and gaming, it's a little bit of a crutch, right?

13:52
It's a buzzword, can mean a lot of different things and you'll ask a tech company, how do you do this? And the answer is AI. It's hard to really conceptualize something. What does that mean? I think the word that I find most synonymous with AI is like decisioning. How do we make decisions at scale in an automated way using data? If you think about going back to like promos and how do we bonus players at the right levels and being able to understand tendencies and using data to make those decisions to say,

14:20
this player should get a deposit bonus and this player should get a free bet based on what we know about them and what they're most likely to be responsive to it. That's like AI driven decision making. We're using data, we're using machine learning to make these decisions at scale and account for every single customer and what we think is gonna drive the best impact. So AI is, it's pervasive. It's a big part of the platform at OptiMove. It's a big part of what we're building towards. Our roadmap is...

14:50
You know, riddled with AI terminology and roadmap is, know, it's AI is the biggest focus, but I try to make an effort to be more pointed with when we say AI, what does it actually mean? What is, problem are we solved? What is the technology actually do? So yeah, it's, it's certainly a big part of the industry, but you know, I try to make an effort to be a little bit more precise with it. Right. Absolutely.

15:18
We're definitely excited for what's next for Optimo, for the sweepstakes industry. So Jeff, thank you very much for being on iGaming daily. And well, thank you very much Optimo for participating and supporting the podcast and to all the listeners out there, we'll meet you in the next one. Goodbye.