Bridging the Sportsbook Gap

Nicolas, you describe LIGAS Gaming as creating a new category of football gaming. What is missing from the market today that convinced you there was room for something different?

What’s missing in the market today is a dedicated bridge to solve the cross-sell and conversion challenge between sportsbook traffic and higher-margin casino traffic. Acquiring traditional casino players is expensive, whereas sportsbook bettors are generally easier to acquire but typically yield lower margins and more risk for operators. LIGAS fills this gap by creating lightweight, low-volatility instant crash and slot games built with official football IP, allowing operators to seamlessly convert sports bettors into higher-revenue casino players through simple, familiar mechanics.

The games have been designed specifically around the behaviours of sports bettors rather than traditional casino players. What have you learned about those behaviours, and how has that influenced the mechanics and design of the games?

Sports bettors tend to make real-time, event-driven decisions and are familiar with simple, transparent betting mechanics. They also expect fast, mobile-first experiences that load rapidly on mobile networks. We designed the games around these behaviours, focusing on instant outcomes like penalty shootouts and real-time multiplier cash-outs where players retain control, alongside capped maximum win multipliers that are designed to provide a more controlled gaming experience.

Your five launch titles – LALIGA Skills, Kick, Penalty, Legends and Frenzy – approach football in different ways. Can you talk us through how they play and what separates them from conventional sports-themed RNG games?

Our launch titles approach football through distinct, fast paced mechanics. LALIGA Penalty is an instant-win game where players pick target spots, while LALIGA Kick and LALIGA Skills are real-time crash games where players cash out climbing multipliers before the ball drops. LALIGA Legends is a prediction-based football experience, and LALIGA Frenzy offers a low-volatility slot experience capped at a 1,000x max win. Unlike conventional RNG games with generic graphics, every title integrates official LALIGA team crests and authentic match atmosphere across lightweight mobile engines.

How important is it that these games sit directly within the sportsbook rather than being positioned in the casino lobby? Is this another form of engagement that sits between traditional sports bets?
Positioning these games directly within the sportsbook ecosystem is essential because many sports bettors do not naturally navigate to traditional casino lobbies.

By embedding our games alongside match centers or offering them as quick engagement during halftime or bet settlement windows, we capture users during natural downtime. This creates an authentic crossover category, a middle layer of engagement that gives sports fans additional ways to engage in a familiar environment while boosting overall customer lifetime value for operators.

Operators have spent years trying to cross-sell sportsbook customers into casino, with varying degrees of success. Why do you believe football-led gaming can succeed where more conventional cross-sell strategies have struggled?

Traditional cross-sell can struggle when a sports bettor is pushed into a complex, high-volatility slot that creates immediate friction and disconnect. We believe football-led gaming can address this by leveraging the trust, emotional affinity, and instant recognition of official football IP combined with simple, digestible gameplay.

Players aren’t directed towards unfamiliar casino games; they are making sports-themed wagers on penalty kicks or crash multipliers, making the transition from sports betting to casino gaming feel more natural.

The LALIGA agreement gives LIGAS exclusive worldwide rights to develop officially licensed real-money football games. Beyond branding and recognition, what does access to the LALIGA IP allow you to do creatively that wouldn’t otherwise be possible?

Beyond brand recognition, official LALIGA IP allows us to turn abstract random-number generation into authentic football narratives. We can combine official club crests, authentic team match-ups, and iconic stadium visual environments directly into crash and instant-win mechanics. Instead of watching an anonymous graphic or generic multiplier line rise, players experience football-driven action backed by the prestige and rivalry of one of the world’s elite sports leagues.

Exclusivity also places considerable importance on the success of the partnership. What convinced LALIGA that real-money gaming was an appropriate extension of its brand, and what responsibilities come with representing that IP?

LALIGA is rightly protective of its global brand, and the partnership required a clear commitment to responsible execution and high standards around the use of its IP. We built trust by focusing on regulated markets, responsible product design and controlled, low-volatility gaming experiences. Representing LALIGA’s IP comes with a responsibility to respect the integrity of the brand, its clubs and its audiences, while demonstrating that sports-themed gaming can deliver sustainable B2B value.

Latin America and Africa are highlighted as particularly important mobile-first markets. What makes the proposition especially suited to those regions, and how much will the games themselves be adapted for different markets?

Latin America and Africa are significant mobile sports betting markets, with football also holding deep cultural passion across both regions. Both regions demand ultra-lightweight game builds (often under 1MB) that load rapidly despite mobile network bandwidth constraints. LALIGA holds immense popularity in these regions, giving the content strong recognition with audiences. While our underlying math and mobile optimization remain consistent globally, we adapt distribution through regional compliance baselines, aggregator partnerships, and localized operator campaigns.

LIGAS launches with more than 40 games, ranging from football and virtual sports to crash, instant-win and casino content. How do you avoid becoming another broad-content studio, and where do you want the LIGAS identity to sit within that portfolio?

We are focused on maintaining a sharp, defined identity as the destination studio for high-impact licensed IP and sportsbook conversion content. While our broader portfolio of 40+ games provides volume and technical flexibility to ensure complete operator integration capability, our licensed titles serve as our strategic flagship. Rather than focusing on volume alone, every title serves a purpose in our ecosystem.

You are also working with entertainment IP such as DJ Khaled. Is the longer-term strategy to build LIGAS around recognisable brands and personalities, or will proprietary content remain equally important?

Recognisable IP like LALIGA or DJ Khaled provides instant credibility, opens doors, and captures player attention in crowded markets. However, proprietary content, such as our top-performing titles Ultra Jet and Ultra Hero, remains equally vital for high-volume global distribution and agility across all jurisdictions. Our games are already being played by millions of players across different platforms globally, demonstrating the reach our proprietary portfolio has already achieved. Our strategy is a hybrid: premium IP drives initial acquisition, while robust proprietary titles support broad distribution and long-term retention.

Looking beyond this initial launch, what would demonstrate that the sportsbook-first model is working?

Success will be measured by clear B2B performance indicators: a quantifiable increase in sportsbook-to-casino conversion rates for our operator partners, rapid distribution across top-tier operators in key target markets, and strong player retention driven by integrated promotional tools like free bet gifts, rain, and tournaments. When operators see higher revenue per sports user without reducing sportsbook turnover, the model proves its value.