GAN’s Jeff Berman: squarely focused on the US sports betting market

Fresh from announcing the acquisition of sports betting tech firm CoolBet, internet gaming software supplier GAN has offered an update on its current and future activities in the US sports wagering sector via an exclusive interview with SBC’s Gambling TV portal. 

Touching on some of the firm’s latest developments was Chief Commercial Officer Jeff Berman who focused, inter alia, on the appetite for legal sports wagering stateside, the firm’s decision to relist on Nasdaq and market response to its virtual sports offering.

On the rationale behind the switch to Nasdaq, Berman told Gambling TV: “We’ve been squarely focused on the US market for a number of years and the majority of our leadership team is based here in the United States. More importantly we felt we were being undervalued by the EU investor community. 

“And so the thesis was that by moving to Nasdaq and working with the US-facing investor community, that would unlock considerable shareholder value. And we guessed right just judging by the success of our IPO. As part of the transaction it allowed us to raise more than $60m in terms of a war chest that has allowed us to invest in our people, invest in our product and also to explore interesting commercial opportunities.”

Berman also expanded on the recent CoolBet deal, saying: “We spent a very considerable time assessing 15 to 20 potential sports platforms to integrate into our core platform offering. We really fell in love with the CoolBet people. There’s a good cultural fit, but equally important their solution and their platform we found to be second to none. And so folding that into our product offering, which we can offer as an option to our clients as a B2B sports platform, was something very important to us.”

Turning to GAN’s simulated sports offer, Berman noted: “The uptake on Jack Entertainment – which is our first instance of simulated sports – the underlying KPIs have been fantastic. The uptake has been really strong and I can tell you that in all of our commercial dialogues that we’re having with tribal casinos, corporate casinos, media entities who are thinking about when and if their state regulates further down the line, this is becoming a more important part of their ask.

“These groups recognize the need to not only help accelerate the educational curve in terms of what it means to be sports betting at the end user level, it’s also a fantastic early retention tool which is one of the central premises of our social gaming business that we’ve doing now for over 11 years and we have 18 great clients.”

The CCO was also keen to emphasize the importance of having a singular business focus, adding: “We are not distracted by casino systems – we are not distracted by retail slots. And that focus has allowed us to spend 100% of our time creating the best platform, creating the best product, bringing on board the best third party solutions – whether they’re marketing or technology tools, whether they’re individual pieces of content – all of which just creates a better platform and higher monetization for our clients.” 

In closing, Berman offered a brief outlook on the year ahead for GAN. “We have the rollout of our sportsbook as a B2B solution here in the US,” he said. “On top of that content is going to be a very big part of our strategy and bringing more of the best third party content, as is continuing to optimize on our products and delivering the best that we can for existing and future clients.