A LOOK BACK
PandaScore Oliver Niner, Head of Sales
O
perations went back to being a bit more ‘business as usual’, but we also had to adapt to the growth that we had experienced during the pandemic following the esports boom. That growth has continued over the past 12 months, so we’ve had to push on and make the most of it as we’ve normalised. For me personally, one of the biggest changes has been the return of trade shows and events, finally being able to meet new and existing customers face to face once again. This has helped put PandaScore and esports betting on the radar of tier-one operators, which is good for us and good for esports.
Taking the strong foundation put in place during the pandemic years and then scaling as we continued to ride a strong upwards growth trajectory. We have more customers than ever before and continue to onboard operators at scale and pace, so to do that while still delivering a top-quality product and marketing-leading customer service to our existing partners is no mean feat. To keep driving growth, I’ve been utilising the huge opportunity of being in front of people at trade shows and events to secure high-level partnerships. The biggest change is that tier-one operators are now embracing and adopting esports. This has helped PandaScore secure breakthrough deals. This in turn has enabled us to cement our
reputation as the leading provider of data and odds to the industry, but also that esports and esports betting is very much here to stay. This can be evidenced by the 48% year on year growth in turnover. Our main goal was to achieve relationships with customers of a certain size, which we did with our William Hill partnership and others. William Hill are a massive brand and a true industry power player. We can’t wait to get them live and help them to unlock the huge potential that esports and esports betting present. We also wanted to
evangelise and promote esports to a wider audience, which we did via our white paper. We also committed to launching innovative, esports-specifi c products and our bet builder and micro betting are set to change the game for operators and players now and over the next 12 months.
Slots Temple Fraser Linkleter, CMO
e’ve always been proud of how adaptable we are as a business, and so we fared well both during and after the pandemic. We were already used to working remotely, with our team spread across the UK and in different regions, so the operational side of the business wasn’t impacted. We continued to grow as a team this year and this flexibility has meant we can hire the best talent, irrespective of location.
W
This was a huge year for us as we launched our cash prize tournaments. This came with many challenges as we began operating under our UKGC licence. We had big product updates which needed to be thoroughly tested, Safer Gambling & AML processes to be implemented, new content written and player comms to be built. This all has resource and time pressures but, as the sole focus of the entire business, we were able to successfully launch cash prize tournaments in the summer - to huge success. The UK economy is hitting everyone hard with cost of living increasing, and that has impacted the entire industry. Because we offer both free demo games as well as free cash-prize tournaments, we’ve been able to maintain a healthy player base which will help us build revenue over the longer term, despite short term challenges. In terms of games, we’ve seen a tremendous period of innovation with titles from the likes of Push Gaming, 4ThePlayer and Relax that have really been pushing the boundaries, experimenting with new ideas and mechanics. But this doesn’t necessarily represent a major shift in people’s tastes because all the classic-style slots remain as popular as ever. Players’ tastes haven’t changed as much as you might think. In the affiliate industry, I think end-users continue to
want more interaction and personalization from their affiliate sites, and that’s a good thing because it means affiliates have to find more dynamic ways to market to them, which is ultimately more effective.
Our primary goal was to launch cash- prize tournaments and start operating under our licence, which we’ve fully achieved. The tournaments have been a great success and we’ll continue to build on that in the coming year by adding
more tournament formats and paid-for competitions that will allow us to offer bigger prizes. Beyond our cash-prize tournaments, the biggest highlight was expanding in Canada and being able to adapt to the new regulations in Ontario. We also launched in the US. The US platform covers all gambling laws on a state-by-state basis so American players know exactly what casino games they can play.
GIO DECEMBER 2022 17
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