Experience. A commodity valued above all else within the workplace, but one that becomes increasingly difficult to attract. However, for IGT this is exactly the quality that allows its industry roots to continue to deepen.
Speaking at last month’s SBC Summit Americas, Senior VP of Sports Betting Joe Bertolone explained exactly why this permits the group to navigate such a complex web of regulation to maintain a lofty position.
In addition to looking at the difficulty of keeping up with state-by-state demands, Bertolone touches on the challenge of staying ahead of the game, how lessons from land-based can transition to the online marketplace and much more.
SBCA: What differentiates your turnkey sports betting solution in the context of the North American market, and how does it keep up with specific regulatory and consumer demands?
Joe Bertolone: It’s a difficult challenge. There’s 50 different jurisdictions and you have to play in every single one of them, and every customer then has specific needs as to what the jurisdiction requires.
We also do business in the tribal jurisdiction, so they have their own sense of how things work. It’s very difficult to do business across the United States.
The first thing you have to do is to understand jurisdiction requirements. The advantage that IGT has is that we’re already licensed in all jurisdictions.
That’s a huge competitive advantage. It also helps us navigate through all the different requirements that every region has.
The second thing you have to do is to continually make sure you’re updated as to what changes could potentially be introduced.
At the beginning of launch there are certain sets of rules that you have to play by, but those change as markets mature.
You have to have the infrastructure which IGT does in order to keep up with jurisdictional changes, and as new jurisdictions come online, unfortunately there hasn’t been any, but as they do you have to be able to be ready for day one launch.
You also have to have people in place that understand what it takes to operate and stay in compliance. Your team and the infrastructure have to be ready to launch on day one when it comes time.
SBCA: When occupying a place with such a fiercely competitive environment, how do you ensure that IGT’s solution remains at the edge of tech development and the forefront of the industry?
JB: From a competitive standpoint, where we have an advantage is that we understand sports. The entire team that we’ve built at IGT over the last several years is a combination of people that have worked in the U.S. sports betting industry over the last four years.
The team that we have in place has operated and done business in the U.S. both from an operation standpoint, trading standpoint and even from a regulatory standpoint.
The second thing is what we just talked about. From a compliance and operational standpoint in multiple jurisdictions, IGT is there.
The third thing is that we have deep relationships with almost every single casino partner out there. Everybody knows who IGT is and what we do, so we take advantage of those existing relationships that we really trust.
The fourth advantage we have is being financially strict. This is a big deal with understanding who you’re doing business with, because these contracts are, in many cases, long term.
You need to understand that the partners that you’re doing business with are partners that are going to be there when you enter into a long-term relationship. You have to know who you’re doing business with.
When you wrap all those things up, we have a unique offering for people that are either starting out in U.S. sports or people that are looking to change their provider. We bring a ton to the table.
SBCA: How does experience gained from such a rich history in land-based gaming influence your current sports betting solution, and is there much collaboration between teams?
JB: Our land-based relationships come from the partnerships we’ve had in reliability and financial stability. But here’s the most important point – the people that we have on our team have all operated. We’re not just supplier side people.
We understand the supply, we understand the systems business, we understand the products, but all of the people on our team have operated in a land-based casino and they’ve operated sports in a land-based casino.
What we’ve learned is how to navigate that amenity that sits in the casino as a sportsbook or a racebook, and we know what’s important to our casino partners when it comes to operating.
It’s not just supplying the system, but it’s also being able to understand that the casino operator comes to us with a particular request or they come to us with an operational issue. We’ve all been there and can remember what it was like sitting behind the counter and we bring that experience to our partners as we’ve been in their shoes.
SBCA: How does having a U.S.-based trading team enhance your offering when it comes to reliability and stability, and particularly during key events like primetime games?
JB: It’s critically important. Not only the fact that it’s a U.S.-based team, because many others do, but it’s the experience of the team.
It’s not simply a U.S.-based team, but one that sits in Las Vegas, Nevada, and have all operated in some of the major trading rooms in the state. They’ve all been doing it for a long time.
The things that we’re able to deliver because of that experience to all of our customers across the country is understanding how trading can really make the difference in profitability. That’s the focus that we have.
It’s not just managing a data feed in our environment, it’s also understanding our customer. It’s also understanding where we can help our customers be more profitable whether that concerns sportsbooks in a retail or mobile environment.
It’s the specific U.S. sports trading experience that we’ve had through operating in Las Vegas, and then it’s really focusing on helping our customers be profitable down to a bet by bet level, making sure that there’s no fraud and that customers are being taken care of and making sure that overall it’s a profitable and great customer journey for our customers customer.
You have got to know and understand U.S. sports and how to trade them to deliver a competitive advantage.
SBCA: What emerging markets or jurisdictions do you see the most opportunity in as you expand your sports betting footprint?
JB: That’s a tough one. With no new legislation we’re all faced with the same problem, and it’s even tougher because, as everyone knows in the marketplace, the TAM has shrunk considerably.
Most of the major operators have brought technology in-house, so there’s not a lot of areas that are available to you on the platform business.
Where we are expanding our business is via our full service turnkey business. We spend the majority of our time improving the product and building our staff to grow the business.
Where our full service business is, we go into a casino partner that doesn’t have sports betting or are transitioning from another provider, and we bring our expertise into tribal markets and North America in total.
We see expansion in Canada that’s going on right now in Alberta.There should be a retail component, and there are several RFPs out across Canada for retail business.
We also see expansion coming into Latin America. Not only Brazil, everyone’s very focused on Brazil, but there’s also other areas where there are expansion opportunities.
SBCA: To conclude we’ll look ahead and ponder what key milestones you like to hit?
JB: For us it’s making sure that we take advantage of the next opening of a state. We have to take advantage of that. There’s talk about Texas and California, but no one knows. When they do though, our milestone is to be there for the opening.
You all see a long change going on. There’s the Kalshi issues with the CFTC and sweeps, and what that forces you to do as a supplier is sit back and look at your product. It forces you to make sure that you’re offering something that your customers can use to grow.
From a milestone perspective, it’s making sure that we’re continuously updating our product and updating the new features that are out there, and making sure that we’re on par with what everyone else offers.
We’re very focused on the customer level. We want to make sure that we’re doing business, in a profitable way for our customers, for the player, for our customer’s customer, and we need to make sure that we’re focused on delivering a solution where we can grow into profitability with those customers.
We want to understand how we can increase profitability with products, understand better trading, and really focus on profitability because it’s a low margin in business. It’s not a lot of money.
