00:00:02
thank you thank you for joining us absolute pleasure can you just start by giving a brief overview of who you are what you do and for what company or what company you have yeah sure so I’m sh B been in the I gaming industry now for 27 years so that gives my age away a little bit and I’m the Chief Operating Officer for poke South Africa and what spark your initial interest into like starting in the gaming and how has that evolved over these years yeah that’s an interesting journey to begin with so I

00:00:32
wouldn’t say my interest was sparked so much as it I kind of fell into it and from there it grew as a as a very big passion of mine so I started in 1998 as a call center agent and really just to pay my student fees that’s it it was a it was a part-time gig to pay for my for my studies which was landscape architecture at that time but then you were you were playing with technology that nobody else around you was really using gaming which in an of itself was quite interesting and from there that

00:01:03
passion just grew and grew and grew and I dropped out of landscape AR architecture uh and then became permanent member of the team uh and very quickly kind of that time my passion for risk and fraud was starting simply because we were taking these transactions I mean I come from a time where we had to manually authorize them then see the world of e-commerce kind of start and then within three months of being able to take online transactions these things things came out of the fact machine that were called chargebacks and

00:01:33
I happened to be the guy in the office that needed to go figure out what this was and out of that spawned I think like 10 or 15 years spent in in e-commerce and risk management that’s really where I got my start building e-commerce and risk systems specifically for the eye gaming industry obviously even in South Africa you need to uh pay the student student loan exactly exactly yeah we don’t get away from it yeah oh okay well so so don’t move to sou AFA am well it’s cheaper if you can still

00:02:03
get your funds from the Netherlands you you should be okay I’m not sure if that’s possible but uh it’s too late to find out yeah it’s too late to find out now yeah but during your time at at digital the gaming op Corporation as well you launched the bway brand in seven highly related US states with within 12 uh 24 months what challenges did you face in navigating these regulations and well frankly like how did you do it I’ll yeah I’ll try and put this in a in a kind of elevator pitch format because

00:02:35
there were many challenges I will not be able to kind of list them all but funnny enough the regulations were not the hardest part of this what I appreciated so let me start there what I appreciated about the US regulations all the states we entered is it was quite clear their requirements and what they needed you to do was quite clearly set out and you either passed or failed it was as simple as that so that part was was understandable and relative easy to digest so you get your product managers

00:03:02
product owners to to understand all the deliverables from from the regulations and you just align your product to be appropriate to that state and and there are minor differences but the reality is they are all very similar all kind of benchmarked against New Jersey which was the first regulated online gaming space in the US so that that was okay that was actually not the hardest part of it the challenges came through first and foremost This Is 2020 So Co so the first challenge was we were going to have this

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beautiful office in Las Vegas I had picked out the space and literally Vegas closed down the moment I had put signature to paper on the lease um so I had to fly back to South Africa because I didn’t yet have the appropriate visas to work from there and in that year effectively everything was done out of Capon South Africa to the extent that uh even post my leaving dgc there is still a very large operational and Technology segment running out of cap so the first challenge was Co then after that we had selected kind of our

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supplier software supplier and I won’t mention names we had we had picked our software supplier they were also going to offer us managed services and the first state we were going to let go live in was Colorado I believe just kind of an easy entry uh we had a really good relationship with the guys on the ground because you have to have your your online gaming license with uh with a landbased uh organization buing few exceptions in the US so we had a really good relationship with them we’re going

00:04:31
to launch in October and I think come August of that year our software provider said that they would no longer be offering either back office services or manage services and they’re no longer going to do BT B2B support so we had to find a new supplier so we kind of lost a Year’s work so I guess saying it was all done in 24 month maybe not truthful but the reality is from that we we don’t find ourselves a new software provider a new manage services provider we needed to do that quickly because once you have

00:05:04
signed kind of an agreement with a landbased provider they have a time frame associate the clock takes they don’t necessarily care whether whether you’ve run into any challenges and if you aren’t live within a specific time frame you lose your you lose your slot and whatever money you’ve spent not just in development but in your in your kind of Licensing agreement so that put some serious pressure on us we managed to secure a software provider that also had man services and a footprint in New

00:05:31
Jersey so so it was understood the landscape uh we pivoted very quickly to New Jersey got that product live and then everything there after snowball so so we had some pressure and and I was very proud of the team that we had built up at that time I when it started with two think when I left it it was about 200 because the very next date I think was Pennsylvania and we were the first operated to launch both casino and Sportsbook at the same time not because we particularly thought that wasn’t an

00:05:57
option to be honest it’s just how we’ve always done things so once we put the site live the regulator kind of dropped the bombshell to say are you the first operator to do this I like oh well didn’t realize there was another way to do it and then you just you had a nice we had formulated a nice way of work we had the processes in place after kind of our new New Jersey and and Pennsylvania was a big learning point as well because we had Casino there Not Just Sports bidding and slightly different Casino

00:06:22
set up than New Jersey where there’s also both cush and sports building uh I wouldn’t say more stringent but it was a little bit more of a challenge to get that across the line with with the Pennsylvania regulated regulat but those two challenging markets made sure that we had a really good way of work and thereafter we rinse swashed repeat you had the process you had the process flow you uh you simply adapted your product and your execution based on the the the state’s requirements and yeah that’s

00:06:48
that’s how we did it it’s not just me it was a very strong team behind me and yeah you have to have you have to have good people you have to surround yourself with good people and you have to trust them to do the job I was there to point them in the right direction and take accountability for their fames all their successes are there uh and it shall always be that way um but yeah it was an exceptionally exciting times like the Super Bowl if you’re in I gaming and and I gaming kind of BP or directly as a

00:07:15
um kind of operators or what D dgc yeah that’s getting live in the US is your Super Bowl like I wasn’t going to give it up for the world and that was a hell of a lot of fun you were only guiding them in the right direction was which is usually the most important part of all so listen you’re there to problem solve and and you’re there to help kind of direct and yeah really just take accountability for the team I think that’s the most important thing sometimes people get moted to leadership positions and they

00:07:44
think they’re in charge no you’re accountable that’s what you are your teams are in charge of their of what needs to be delivered they if I’m the guy that knows the most in the room I’m exceptionally nervous because that shouldn’t be the case and I was lucky enough in in GC that that I had surrounded myself with good good people uh who I could hold to account uh and who I could trust to deliver one requirements uh and bring me the problems that’s the main thing I I don’t

00:08:12
like good news good news is expected results are expected uh what I want to he is what’s not working so I despise the yes and it doesn’t help anybody to just try and try and give the good news bad news is what’s needed because that’s how we make make the business better that’s how we grow that’s how we learn from our which major that you got it done in 24 months which essentially could could have been in 12 months probably without ideally it should have been in 12 months

00:08:38
yes you’re absolutely right but but we we took it we took it and I still celebrate it as a as a massive success yeah of course I mean I’ve never seen someone’s LinkedIn profile say that so but but um you started out in um customer service and RFB eventually also switched a bit to marketing over the years yeah so what made you pursue that path and also is there still player loyalty in in a saturated Market okay so so I’ll answer those in two separate separate functions let’s start with the

00:09:11
first part of your question around what made the switch from from risk fraud when I would primarily say risking fraud my stint in call center operations was like six months where I was under theground being a call center agent so so a big part of my career there was was risk and flaud uh and the reason I switched was I wanted to be more involved in operations I wanted to my aspiration was to run one of these businesses one day and I I realized that if that’s what I wanted to do I needed to expand my portfolio it’s uh you you

00:09:41
have to reinvent yourself you have to change uh you can’t just like for me the feeling was how long was I going to ride the I’ve Bolter risk system that you know like how long can I ride that success and the reality of that is not long and you could get to the top of your your your game as a kind of call it e-commerce specialist and I don’t knock anybody that does that I mean that kind of vertical has also expanded massively and and it’s quite challenging to manage all of that but I knew I wanted to run

00:10:10
one of these businesses one day and in order for me to do that I needed to get more exposure in marketing and general General Ops management and then why did I fall in love with marketing well if you think about it there’s a lot of similarities between risk management and marketing on the one side you’re trying to understand what’s what behavior is different what stand because the reality is risk is just what different exceptional purchases weird transactional Behavior gameplay Behavior what’s different and

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if you flip that on marketing is okay well what do I need to create to entice somebody to bet or or what do I need to put in place to ensure that we don’t over like like how do we act responsibly and how do we marry those two things and that’s just Behavior it all comes down to behavior so I brought a lot of my experience from risk and fraud for example to kind of responsible gaming responsible marketing and those kind of things where you could use and obviously here we needed some serious quants and some serious

00:11:08
technology to kind of catch up with our ambition but then you could offer things like take a break for actively when you could start seeing that somebody’s Behavior falling out of a norm or they seem to be chasing losses and the reality of that is that’s how we go into your question of is there still Customer Loyalty my short answer to that is yes there is still Customer Loyalty but there are a lot more decisive on what experience they want to have so they’re less tolerant of of a poor experience go

00:11:37
of the days where you can just buy loyalty by throwing money at the problem short-term solution that may work but you got to have a slick product you got to have a slick op offering to the extent that the product needs to do almost all the the speaking for you if you were going to do something today for an bad experience the customer had yesterday that’s too late it needs to happen in the moment and the flip side of that obviously is also true if for customers had a big one we should celebrate that big one in the moment not

00:12:04
the following day so I think that’s where loyalty is Switched so I would call it they want a good customer experience and thereafter you will get loyalty and I could if I step outside of the of the gaming world for one second Apple and Samsung and those Fanboys will tell you that there’s still loyalty but yeah it is it is down to the moment that product is no longer sufficient loyalty wins right uh and then much like that same mobile technology or mobile call it Big tech companies if I move to Samsung

00:12:34
and I have a good experience there well then Samsung’s gotten right the same thing happens to to us again the only difference is where I need to actually go to a physically physical store or website and pull out an application and wait for my phone to come our game’s different it’s one click away so yes it’s competitive customers are loyal but they will only tolerate so much if the experience is not is not good enough then then they’ll move and I don’t consider that being customers being less

00:13:01
loyal they’re just more demanding and we should step up to that to that challenge and also the the decreasing attention span like the thing you mentioned with you want don’t want to celebrate the win after a day but you you immediately want to celebrate that got to be got to immediate and that and that as people age into gaming into the gaming World they’ll bring that with them I can use my daughter as a prime example if she whatsapps me and I don’t respond within a minute or two well I get another or

00:13:30
potentially a telephone call to go why aren’t you responding to me right so so this is becoming this is becoming our Market this is what people expect so so we have to we have to grow we have to grow with it we have to adapt with that not sure if Apple and Samsung are the best comparison because I think there was an article released that people love their iPhone more than uh than some some some friends well I might fall into that category uh but I’ve been waiting since October for my new iPhone and I’m at the

00:13:59
point I’m going how much longer do I wait how much longer do you wait the short answer is not long if my phone’s not here by by by next next week I may be considering Alternatives so there’s a prime example I’ve been with iPhone and Apple for the better part of 15 years that might change but the question is do you switch to Samsung immediately yeah but what were the the the three most the biggest takeaways or like the three biggest Lessons Learned From RI you took from from uh or you applied in

00:14:32
marketing as well um that’s a good question so so I would say the the biggest three three lessons is the one we touched on already everything is psychology everything is behavior um and if you can understand the deviations in that you will be able to identify kind of whether this is a good or or bad person and a very bad example in the risk front but is this a good or bad promotion right that follows into the next thing which risk is all data driven data is UN emotive right so you have to base your decision purely on fact and

00:15:05
data because if you were swayed for example by a VIP host you say no I know this person you know you you may make the incorrect judgment that’s another variable it’s another bit of data but data ultimately is what what drives the decision and I definitely brought that into my marketing as well because we all have we all have our own kind of baggage for lack of a better term we like what we like and sometimes it’s very difficult to step outside of that when you are presented with something that

00:15:31
you don’t like data we all have to look at things with data data is UN motive as I said and then the the third point I guess is just the value in in personal communication I think that comes from the early days of of just sending out this blanket email to say we need your kyc documentation to something that’s a little bit more informative as to why this is happening and why this is needed and if you could if you had let’s go back to a VIP example we had a direct relationship to somebody you could

00:16:01
actually ask that in person and explain the process there so I would say those are kind of the three things that are that I took from from risk management into marketing or SL operations that prove to be invaluable and given that we or like that we’re still the marketing topic why do you think players stick around maybe we already went over it a little bit but I don’t think we explained it in details I think it’s still a good question good product good experience so that’s why players will

00:16:27
stick around we are lucky in the poker bet environment where I work now which is uh we have a poker product which is unique but still uh that is only going to car carry you so so far products got to be good experience has got to be good uh otherwise customers will leave and Apple’s a prime example apparently clearly they’re almost losing a customer um product and experience yeah yeah yeah they’ve taken it really far even with the box and all yeah fun fact which I recently like this is side of

00:16:57
sort of a Sidetrack actually but found I found out a few days ago that Mercedes has a team which makes sure that the door slap like is has a certain sound I can believe that yeah because it’s all part of a it’s all part of an experience why why are you buying a Mercedes-Benz when when it’s just to take you from A to B you can buy a DOA something will happen it’s about the experience it’s about how does that product make you feel yeah and everything is a part of that correct yeah you’re not buying when

00:17:26
you start buying luxury watches you’re not buying it to tell you the right it’s the experience it’s how it’s built how it makes you feel does it align with your personality there’s a whole bunch of things that don’t it yeah you expect it to work though but you don’t correct you expect it to work you expect your customer service 100% when I when I I drive a Land Rover because when I get to Land Rover there’s expectations I expect a car that I can use while my car is in for a service I expect to

00:17:52
arrive with somebody waiting for me to get the keys and a cup of coffee and we’ll go through the process yeah that if that’s not there well well then why do I own what could arguably be called an overpriced SUV it’s the experience yep since with the like it’s already in here for a longer period of time but uh the introduction of social media and more in the influencer marketing space like what is your opinion on that have you applied it within the company and what like what’s the

00:18:22
data so what’s the data um so let me answer that in two folds yes I’ve used it so let’s that’s the easy one out of the way and then the slightly more complicated one is when you’re using influencer marketing the the tip is kind of in the name too often people are both from an organization pushing it to the influencer or just the influencer trying to take a shortcut it just becomes a hard sell they just become a sh and it becomes very obvious to their to their um audience that this is all that they

00:18:55
are so for influencer marketing to work and what our data is suggests as small as we may be is the more authentic the message is from the influencer the better the result is so it can’t just always be a hard cell so I’ll use two examples of our call it C current influences they are brand ambassadors one in the Esports space and the other in in the UFC kind of uh bullet Combat Sports as a general terminology space and their approaches are similar uh in the sense that from the Esports person

00:19:28
personality they will stream twitch stream uh their Gameplay at pokerbet talk them through it is like watching any streamer playing Call of Duty which is what her kind of call it expertise is but she’s taken the product and she’s made it feel very authentic and we give her the room to do that otherwise you bring this person on board with a specialist skill I mean I’ve watched her this is not easy and then you’re trying to tell them how to do the job that makes absolutely no sense tell them what

00:19:59
your brand vision is what it is that you’d like to achieve out of it and then say listen make it you I’m not going to tell you I need X number of posts across X number of days yes there are some benchmarks um of course you can’t just you can’t just give everybody especially in a new relationship complete rope but you shouldn’t change what is authentically already theirs uh and where that balance has been struck it’s it’s worked really well like the UFC fighter gives these top three picks uh

00:20:29
for any fights that are coming up so over a weekend or a week that works makes sense uh and then obviously he does it for poit it’s exclusively available to poit so those are the kind of influencer marketing strategies that we are applying it will morph change like everything else but certainly from my experience you can’t just here a sign up offer go play a poker bet you may as well just get yourself some digital marketing space and put it up there yeah that’s a good summary that needs to be

00:21:02
authentic it needs to be authentic yeah and that’s Al yeah I mean it makes sense as well like usually with relations you just want to let the other person do what they do best and do what they do best framewor Steve Jobs said it best we don’t hire good people to tell them what to do they need to tell us what needs to happen and how it needs to happen yeah that’s a very good one I forgot about that quote that’s a really good Insight actually so what’s currently the hard of you’re trying to overcome I mean like

00:21:31
you already overcame uh like having multiple licenses within uh 48 months so what’s the next challenge you’re trying to overcome well the next challenge is uh growing a new I gaming business in South Africa they are some very big International Brands here who are spending multiple millions of Rand in in in ad spend and sponsorship deals uh so how do you how do you compete with that is the challeng yes poker poker gives us a unique USP and and that certainly adds some value to our proposition not insignificant

00:22:08
amount I wouldn’t be with poker bet if I didn’t think uh the brand had legs it’s offering had legs but we certainly don’t have multi-millions we don’t have Euros in in Great British Palms to to fund our South African marketing spend so that’s the challenge is how do we how do we compete for a lack of a better term uh and stand out I suppose it better with the with some of the other brands that are that are in the market now and without giving away too much of our secret Source I

00:22:37
think I think we’ve we’ve found we found a strategy uh around how to stand out how to differentiate ourselves from the kind of what I call the bid two for your researching and you’ll know who that is in the South African Market uh and we are certainly seeing some early green shoot shoot in that approach so that’s that’s the big challenge now is how do we how do we VI for space on not an American cereal aisle where there’s many many Brands imagine that American cereal aisle but kind of Kelloggs and I can’t

00:23:09
even think of who another alternative there would be has dominated 95% of that space and everybody else needs to try and stand out at the bottom of the shot so that’s the challenge like I said I think I think we have found a good strategy we’ve seen some good green shoots but I really I mean the only reason I’m being kg is I don’t really want them to understand what it is can also watch this and they have a far bigger budget to our playing um but yeah that’s the that that’s the strategy

00:23:35
that’s the challenge I actually wrote them down but I won’t I won’t name them yeah yeah we can discuss that strategy of the call ofline yeah yeah absolutely absolutely your can I won’t ask you if there’s any exciting news or project because then like the most interesting thing will probably be that strategy well listen I think I think the exciting news for me still is that poker offers offers peer-to-peer poker in South Africa we are the first regulated and licensed entity to do so so out of the

00:24:06
gate poker bet started with a with a bang like that really is unique I mean again those big entities don’t have it uh we also have a real poker experience I mean it’s not that they can’t they can buy the same software they can they can do kind of implement the same thing like I said they certainly have the budget for it but what they don’t have behind the brand is professional poker players which poker bit has it was established by professional poker players so that brand is a resonates well it’s a sexy

00:24:38
brand it’s the first kind of marketing or or gaming business I’ve worked for where people are asking me for Merch so they want a pokerbet hat they want a pokerbet shirt in my previous world people had our brand because they they bought the football jersey not because they necessarily wanted to have that brand so that already says that poker bet is something special people find find the brand very appealing and very sexy so so that is still the exciting thing for me that is still what I believe we bring to the table that

00:25:10
others don’t so yeah that doesn’t give away too much but but yeah I still think that’s special about t right let’s end it with that then cool thank you thank you thank you for joining us and I’m looking forward to seeing that strategy unfold okay yeah keep an eye on that she’ll definitely you’ll definitely see see it unfolding there are some hints already if you look at my LinkedIn profile you’ll see some hints at at where we going but yeah keep an eye on us but it’s an absolute pleasure M it

00:25:41
was really nice to get the invite um and it was nice chatting to you