Digitain Group R&D Director Peter Nolan speaks to Gambling Insider about the company’s future in the US, the LatAm market and Luís Figo playing football on an Armenian roof.

Where is Digitain right now in the market and where does it want to be?

It’s in a good state. We’ve just come out of a good conference. We’re looking to expand our global footprint in regulated markets; that’s our target. We’re building sales teams in Latin America and Asia to help support that, and the general sales team has doubled in the region in the last 18 months. We’ve got some good products; in particular, we launched the new platform called Centrivo in the summer and it has had a big impact – so we’re in good shape platform wise. It’s got some really good verticals, support and a lot of tools for the operators: like CRM and an integrated payment gateway, content management system, etc. We bumped up the tools and the whole stability and flexibility of it, where people can quickly change the website and mobile sites to suit their brand. That has been successful so far.

What about the core products?

We upgraded our sportsbook, which is our hero product. Digitain started out in this industry with shops in Armenia and a sports betting B2C. Sports betting was our original business, so we have a large team of traders and risk management people, with algorithms – we’ve upgraded that recently so it’s ready for the World Cup. Also, we launched our online casino studio in the last few months and have signed up over 50 partners on the live casino. That’s a completely new studio built in our Digitain headquarters, which is a state-of-the-art building housing over 2,000 people now. We’re also building another studio so we can offer some more bespoke services to clients.

In terms of sports betting, how interested are you in the US market right now?

It’s on our radar at some point in the future. There are certainly plenty of opportunities there as the various new regulated markets open up. Right now, we have plenty to do, plenty on and are focused on Central European, LatAm and Asian markets. Looking at it, there’s a fight going on in the US, people spending a lot of money in terms of operations, while most people are cutting down on that to save money. However, we’re confident we will achieve growth there over time.

So LatAm is a bigger focus for you in the near future, then?

Yeah, but we want to go into the regulated markets, too. I worked in Brazil for a couple of years, so I know it quite well. We have a couple of good people that work there for us, who are talking to the regulators a lot in Brazil and Argentina. We want to get our products certified for these areas; that’s our aim. However, right now, we’re focused on getting more visibility.

In terms of visibility, it must be great for the brand to have Luís Figo as an ambassador, which Gambling Insider exclusively revealed back in July.

Yes, that’s a big statement for us and our B2B suppliers, as well. Obviously, you get a lot of B2C people with advocates and footballers. So, for our B2B supplier to get him was a big statement. It’s a bit like our show at ICE London: every year it’s a bit bigger, a bit better and represents the confidence we have in the business.

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