communicate with players in a judgment-free manner so that players can stop, reflect about their own play engagement, and make better choices for themselves.
For example, the self-assessment asks, "how much do you think you've deposited?" Ten players make a guess, it tells you how much and players often underestimate that. It also tells you how much players like you have deposited in a similar time and that comparison is powerful for people. People don't want to be outliers.
Te tool might send a message that says, "hey, we noticed you've won a lot of money today, maybe you want to withdraw some of that and take the family out to dinner", to encourage cooling off. Taking some time away and reflecting is one of the biggest challenges with online gaming, so we're really excited about this technology and are investing in it.
It's been live in the UK and Europe for over a decade and we're working with a bunch of folks in North America, too. I've been sharing the technology with regulators around North America and Latin America, and we think it has the power to lead us into a sustainable and player protection-oriented future for the industry.
What new platforms and technology functions are being introduced to address a variety of compliance topics such as fraud, AML, and state regulatory requirements?
Te RegTech space is really growing. We're seeing significant development in this space with a lot of new tools, services, and technologies. One of our biggest issues and priorities when I joined OpenBet a couple of years ago was licensing across jurisdictions. How can technology make that process easier for us?
We found a software service that has been great. Once we got it up and running, it's been incredibly helpful. It's streamlined the process and brought it into a more modern space where you're not filling out multi-jurisdictional forms by hand multiple times a week. It's just an easier way to do it.
We also have an AI-powered comparison tool where you can search a certain issue and it pulls up all the laws and regulations on that issue across multiple states. Tat's been such a time saver for us. It's a powerful tool to survey what's going on compared to when I started out in private practice and had to do surveys for my clients by hand. It's a lot of billable hours when you're a young attorney, which is great, but I'm trying to save that time now.
How do the requests OpenBet fields from North American operator customers typically differ from other global markets?
I'd say it's 80 per cent the same. We're all working from a similar baseline need for information, the same sort of detail and visibility into the business. However, every regulatory regime has its own public policy priorities. For the regulators, while they set regulation, they are also guided by the laws set by their legislators. We work with them to really meet them in that last 20 per cent. What often ask what we do to
P78 WIRE / PULSE / INSIGHT / REPORTS
get the information regulators need without it being a huge burden on the business because we have a lot of people who are very busy, and we need to keep things moving.
For example, every jurisdiction has their own licensing applications. When you've been in this business for a bit, you're familiar with it, but most states work off the multi-jurisdictional personal history disclosure and then they have a supplement on top of that. Tey have different positions about interviewing key officers virtually or in-person and those interviews all go differently. Ten there are different positions about appearing for final approval at the commission or board meeting and so on.
It's interesting to me and as a company with over six dozen licences worldwide, it's hard to track of sometimes, but it is also a great avenue for us to build relationships with the regulators that makes it easier for us to work with them in the long term.
OpenBet's technology is now live in over a dozen US states. Which of these would you judge as having best practice from a compliance perspective? Conversely, which has proven the most difficult to date?
I am most appreciative of a regulator that has an eye towards the increasingly fast-moving nature of this business. Gaming is not a new business in the US. It's been around for generations but it came up with land-based casinos which are a very different product than what we're all working with in 2024. But that does mean, in a lot of instances, you're working with laws or regulations that were written 20, 40, even 60- plus years ago before the internet even existed.
Regulators with an eye towards how they can modernise their regulations, how they can make regulations flexible enough to meet the industry where it's currently at and where it's going with new technologies, services, and products are the ones leading the industry forward and helping businesses grow and give consumers innovative products they want to use. Ultimately, what we're trying to do is move players into a legal regulated sports betting market and keep them off the black market, but we can only do that if we're competitive.
As another example, most regulators have certain views on how they want to do their investigations of the business and officers, and we work with them on that. I remain optimistic that in 2024, especially post-pandemic, we'll continue to see more regulators adopt modern technologies and conduct virtual interviews which cuts down on costs for us and makes the whole process smoother for them. Tat's been encouraging to see.
Which North American sports betting markets show the most potential for further growth, and which are showing signs of plateauing?
I'm excited to watch the development of North Carolina. It launched a month ago, right before March Madness. It's a big sports state and when you launch next to a big event, it's so good for bringing players onto these new platforms and getting them engaged. Massachusetts is another major sports state, but with a smaller gaming
"Regulators with an eye towards how they can modernise their regulations, how they can make
regulations flexible enough to meet the industry where it's currently at and where it's going with new technologies, services, and products are the ones leading the industry forward and helping businesses grow and give consumers innovative
products they want to use.
Ultimately, what we're trying to do is move players into a legal regulated sports betting
market and keep them off the black market, but we can only do that if we're competitive."
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