Kindred platform receives approval in New Jersey as group sharpens US focus

approval sign
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Kindred Group has received its final approvals from the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement to take its proprietary gaming platform live in the Garden State. 

Set to be rolled out in mid-May, the platform, according to the group, will allow Kindred to provide players with “much-improved flexibility and performance” through the use of data and analytics. 

As a result of the approval, Kindred’s flagship US brand Unibet will cross over to the platform within the next few weeks in New Jersey, meaning that content can be tailored to a greater extent. 

Henrik Tjärnström, CEO of Kindred Group, explained: “I am very pleased that we are now able to launch our own Kindred platform in New Jersey, and I am immensely proud of everybody at Kindred who has made this possible. 

“Introducing the Kindred platform to our customers in New Jersey will provide the entertainment and experience enjoyed by our customers in Europe. We are now finally able to show off our true Unibet product. I also want to thank the NJDGE for a professional collaboration during the approval process.”

New Jersey will be the first state to benefit from Kindred’s proprietary platform, but it will not be the last, as the group intends to roll it out across its other North American jurisdictions, which include Pennsylvania and Ontario.

The news will come as a relief to Kindred management, who have previously identified the requirement to vastly reduce its cost base in the US after a self-described ’disappointing’ 2022 in the country. 

Migrating to a proprietary platform will reduce the group’s cost of sales, which in Q4 ‘22 swelled to $8.7m. 

CEO Tjärnström, addressing investors as part of Kindred’s 2022 financial update, explained that the group’s North American losses had hit a trough and that it will continue to cut costs and aim to become a top 10 operator in its live jurisdictions. 

He told investors in January: “One of the key aspects of rolling out our own platform across North America is to get an improved customer experience and add more content and more relevance and more speed in our own performance. So we’re expecting to invest in our own platform rollout, hence why we’re reducing investments prior to rolling out the platform.”

After exiting Iowa last year and passing up the opportunity to enter another unnamed state, Kindred noted it would only focus on multi-product states, those with sports betting and online casino. 

After rolling out its platform in North America, the group revealed it would continue to monitor its North American performance, and hasn’t ruled out exiting more jurisdictions. 

In January, Tjärnström said: “We have always been clear that we are looking at things on an ongoing basis. As we said before, we have refocused our investments from across all states in our footprint to more focus on the multiproduct states.”