Greentube Thomas Graf - Problem Solver
Twenty-five years after I first met Thomas Graf in Gumpoldskirchen, Greentube's CEO sits down with me to retrace a career spent anticipating technological change, challenging established models and finding solutions to problems the industry often had yet to recognise.
From NOVOMATIC's difficult entry into the UK and the earliest experiments with online gaming to the acquisition and transformation of Greentube, disruption in Germany, diversification, social gaming and the convergence of land-based and online, Thomas Graf explains why innovation has always begun with the same question: what problem are we trying to solve?
Tere is a pleasing symmetry to sitting down with Tomas Graf in Vienna in 2026. Greentube is celebrating its 25th anniversary, while it’s also approximately 25 years since we first met at NOVOMATIC's headquarters in Gumpoldskirchen, at a point when neither of us could have predicted how dramatically gaming would change during the quarter-century that followed. Te industry we discussed then was overwhelmingly land-based.
Smartphones did not exist. Online casino was embryonic. Social casino had yet to become a category. Omnichannel wasn't an industry buzzword because the channels that would eventually need connecting had barely been created. Tomas Graf has spent much of the intervening period solving the problems created by those changes. During a long conversation at Greentube's Vienna headquarters,
what emerges isn't a career built around one grand prediction of where gaming was heading. Instead, what’s apparent is an ability to recognise when circumstances have changed, understand why an existing model no longer works and keep experimenting until another one does. Tis instinct runs through his recollections of NOVOMATIC's early years in the UK, the first attempts to bring land-based games online, the acquisition of Greentube, the explosive digital arrival of Book of Ra, the collapse of a crucial German market and the subsequent diversification of the business.
Today, it informs his thinking about social gaming, regulation, AI,
server-based technology and a future in which the distinction between land-based and online gaming becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. Twenty-five years on, the technologies have changed enormously, but Tomas Graf's fundamental question has remained remarkably consistent: what is the problem, and how do we solve it?
Tomas, when we first met 25 years ago, neither of us could have known how dramatically this industry would change. Looking back, has your career unfolded anything like you expected? At the beginning, it wasn't foreseeable. Tere was more of a linear direction to what was happening at the time, but then unforeseen technological changes occurred and started pushing the industry in completely new directions. Sometimes those changes were surprising and they could happen very quickly. My reaction was always that we had to jump on the opportunity. Innovation has really always been the driver for me - doing something
new rather than simply continuing with something because it is already established. What I discovered about gaming is that it is a very dynamic industry. It can initially be sceptical about new possibilities, but it is also very open to innovation and trying new things. Tat unpredictability is what makes it interesting, and so much of it is driven by technology -
149
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212 |
Page 213 |
Page 214 |
Page 215 |
Page 216 |
Page 217 |
Page 218 |
Page 219 |
Page 220 |
Page 221 |
Page 222
