Pulse
All Systems Go
By Lewis - 17 January 2025
Keeping us warm throughout winter is the hottest topic in gaming: ICE Barcelona 2025. Ahead of this year’s inaugural Spain-based showcase, G3 talks to DRGT’s Marco Herrera, Andreas Duller, Duncan Pollock, and Laurence Herbots about their thoughts on the change and the opportunities it brings.
A new venue, a new city, a new country – and new customers?
Marco Indeed! Barcelona is luckily not new to me having spent five years working there previously, but for sure a new city for most, and dare I say a warmer one, even though we’re in the throes of Winter – ha ha.
Seriously though, we couldn’t be happier with how 2024 has turned out for us as a Group, both here in Europe, and (as an aside) in Mexico too. Duncan has some great opportunities on the horizon for our Johannesburg-based business and we look forward to realising several of them during the next 12 months. So yes, all in all exciting times. I am thankful I was able to join the team when I did. (Herrera joined DRGT in September 2024.)
Andreas, you were recently licensed in Bulgaria and have now done a deal with Efbet, correct?
Andreas Yes, we secured our supplier license in Bulgaria in November, and will soon start rolling out our management system solution to their 58 gambling halls, sports bars, and casinos which comprise around 2,500 machines; we’re also developing a wide-area progressive jackpot for Efbet
And speaking of licenses: Laurence, you were recently licensed in France too?
Laurence You’ve been doing your homework. Our roots are in Europe, and we’re present there in a number of countries, enjoying significant market share in a number of them, in fact we are the market leader by some margin in our ‘home’ country of Belgium as well as Switzerland, and enjoy a strong presence in the likes of Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Macedonia, and Ukraine. As a result, we have several existing partners who also operate in France, the pursuit of this opportunity made perfect sense.
Marco Add to that the fact that our sister Company: Infiniti, has just been awarded the license to operate Grasse Casino in Alpes-Maritimes which they are on track to open in January, and we’re perfectly poised to aggressively pursue market-share in France.
Duncan, Marco mentioned some African opportunities – can you speak to those?
Duncan Based in Johannesburg, our ‘strong hold’ remains South Africa, but we do have a decent spread of partners in specifically, Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, and Seychelles. That said, where we are currently seeing growth opportunities is in the widening of the gaming sector in Botswana, the general economic growth in Ghana, the expansion of the Bingo market in South Africa, along with the recently publicised plans to explore historical horse racing (HHR) as a new segment in the South African market too.
Marco In my experience HHR has grown dramatically in certain jurisdictions of the United States, and we are of the view that similar opportunities exist on the Southern tip of Africa as well.
To realise these opportunities though, you really need to remain ‘ahead of the pack’ – what can visitors to Fira Barcelona expect to see at booth 3D35?
Marco Our ‘Player First’ design mantra continues to drive our product development and augmentation, as such our three key product showings at ICE will focus on exactly that, in addition of course, to our class-leading jackpots (as alluded to by Andreas), our cashless technology, and our marketing and bonusing solutions.
What are those three products’ Andreas?
Andreas Our new drFloorManager software was launched at G2E in October and has since been augmented following feedback from numerous operators, none less than the Merit Group following our systems installation at the Merit Royal Casino in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus in June. The solution affords operators the ability to see in real time, with a simple mouse hover over their casino floor map, how various slots and tables are performing, and who’s playing at them. Historical data is also available through this user-friendly web application, and as such it is a great tool to identify and reward players, as well as easily view and assess actual game performance.
But you can’t manage what you can’t measure right?
Duncan Exactly! It is that ‘measuring’ of game play performance that then led to the development of drAnalytics, a further web-based application that at its core is aimed at providing operators the easiest and most intuitive way to both understand their players, and the products they offer them. With customisable dashboards, simple comparison functionality, autocomplete formulae and live previews to name but a few, this tool truly drives business intelligence.
And the 3rd key product Laurence?
Laurence I guess the 3rd product kind of ‘closes the loop’ in that the latest iteration of our PlayerApp now affords operators the ideal tool to leverage the outcomes of their drAnalytics reports to engage ‘one-on-one’ with their players, as well as provide a contemporary solution to drive cashless ‘tap and play’ gaming, player rewards, promotions, and bonusing.
Laurence and Duncan referred to partners as opposed to customers; can you expand on that?
Marco We consciously use that word, and it’s something I am a firm believer in, as it has served me well throughout my gaming career, and none more so that in the systems space. Now whilst I appreciate that it may sound rather contrived, it is true; we both (service providers and operators) need to ‘pull our weight’ and really contribute to make any casino operation a success. To that end I value relationships tremendously and believe that through them we’ll mutually take on significant learnings, then share them amongst one another, and in so doing ensure our joint success.
