GAMING IN AFRICA
genuine excitement: a mission encouraging a football bettor to try a casino game or jackpot draw reframes cross-sell as discovery rather than solicitation. Done well it is doubly beneficial, increasing ARPU for the operator while making the experience more entertaining for the player.
GIO: With many players becoming less active between major sporting events, what types of promotions, rewards and gamification mechanics are proving most effective in keeping players engaged ahead of the new Premier League season? VR: The principle is continuity: we carry the momentum straight out of the World Cup without losing the thread, keeping the players engaged while opening new opportunities. The Premier League is valuable here precisely because it is continuous, a natural bridge from tournament football back to everyday betting. The campaigns that perform best establish a recurring reason to return: season-long missions that reward consistency, leaderboards that foster community, and progression mechanics that make each return feel like a continuation, not a restart. We also place considerable emphasis on a BetBuilder natively optimised for our platform; letting players construct their own selections sustains engagement across an entire season, not only on marquee fixtures. Our SportsPool and jackpot mechanics complement this with a low-stake, high- anticipation format that draws players back week after week. A free bet secures a single session; a season-long mission, a jackpot draw or a BetBuilder challenge establishes a routine.
GIO: Beyond traditional bonuses and free bets, how are operators using technology and CRM automation to create more meaningful and long-term relationships with players? VR: Bonuses are transactional; durable relationships are built on relevance, and relevance only scales through automation. The purpose of CRM automation is not to increase message volume but to deliver the right message at the right moment: behaviour-triggered journeys that run automatically, a dormancy flow when activity lapses, a second-vertical introduction while the player remains engaged. The relationship also extends beyond the screen: in many markets a real-world presence matters as much as the digital one, retail betting, on-the-ground activations and influence campaigns all reinforce the bond. Above all sits trust, the single most important asset where players choose who to rely on with their money, and every touchpoint, online and offline, must radiate it. We invest increasingly in personalisation,
but our principle is restraint: players usually know what they are looking for, and our role is to facilitate that rather than obscure it. The best personalisation is largely invisible, and a player who feels understood stays.
GIO: Major tournaments provide a unique opportunity to showcase an operator’s wider offering. How important are special campaigns, challenges and community-driven events in encouraging players to explore products beyond their initial World Cup betting activity? VR: This is where a World Cup delivers its genuine long-term value. The tournament concentrates attention to a degree no other event can match, the ideal context for introducing players to the wider offering, provided it is done while engagement is high rather than after the football has ended. This is where Smartico-driven missions are most powerful: a challenge that rewards trying a new vertical reframes cross-sell as a game, and discovery becomes something the player chooses rather than something imposed. We are also expanding this through a broader ecosystem of gamification and jackpot partners, giving operators a deeper toolbox to drive exploration across all our native verticals, sport, casino, hippique and virtual. The objective is not to sell a second product, but to give the player exactly what they want, through a platform efficient enough to serve the whole market reliably, and in doing so a second reason to stay.
GIO: Mobile adoption continues to accelerate across Africa. How is this shaping product development at Honoré Gaming, and what expectations do modern African players have when it comes to sportsbook and gaming experiences? VR: In our markets mobile is not a channel but the entire platform, and that shapes how we build. The modern African player expects the fluidity of a world-class mobile application: rapid loading, frictionless local payments, and a live experience that stays stable at the decisive moment. Expectations have converged with global standards even where the infrastructure has not, and reconciling the two is the central design challenge we address. We therefore treat mobile-first as the only acceptable standard, optimising simultaneously for the device, the network and the payment behaviour of each market. Above all, the player expects the fundamentals executed flawlessly, because that is what earns their trust: a stable platform that never fails mid-bet, immediate and dependable payments, and a complete live, sport and casino offering in one environment. These fundamentals must also
scale: holding that experience as traffic grows is what separates a product that performs in testing from one that performs on tournament day.
GIO: Connectivity and data costs remain important considerations in many African markets. How do lightweight, accessible and mobile-first products help operators improve both player engagement and retention? VR: Connectivity and data cost are retention factors, not merely access factors, and this is a point operators frequently underestimate. In data-conscious, 3G-prevalent markets, every unnecessary megabyte is a reason to close the application, and every second of latency during a live moment risks losing the player entirely. A lightweight product that loads quickly over a constrained connection and is economical with data is not a concession to emerging markets; it is a competitive advantage.
Under load, the constraint is rarely raw server capacity but the degradation of the experience at the live-betting peak, the moments after a goal when demand spikes across the whole user base at once. We optimise everything for performance, engineering specifically for that peak rather than for average conditions, which is fundamentally a question of scalability, all resting on a stable platform and reliable payments, since a fast product delivers value only if those hold.
GIO: Looking ahead, do you believe the operators that will be most successful after the World Cup will be those with the biggest marketing budgets, or those with the strongest retention technology and player engagement strategies? Why? VR: Retention technology, without question, and the World Cup demonstrates exactly why. A large marketing budget guarantees an acquisition spike during the tournament, but because the World Cup delivers that spike to every operator, it is not a differentiator. What sets the strongest operators apart is how many of those players are still depositing three months after the final. Marketing rents an audience for a few weeks; retention technology turns a meaningful share of it into a sustainable business.
The operators that succeed beyond 2026 will be those who used the run-up to align the entire funnel, activation flows, cross-sell mechanics, the gamification ecosystem and CRM automation, on a foundation that is stable, scalable and dependable. Acquisition during a World Cup largely takes care of itself; retaining players is the only outcome that was ever genuinely within an operator’s control.
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