Second Day of SIGMA Americas Explores Betting Beyond Football, Affiliates and Technology

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Second Day of SIGMA Americas Explores Betting Beyond Football, Affiliates and Technology

SiGMA Americas followed this Wednesday. 23. The event held entirely in online format will end on Thursday, 24. Thus, the objective of the conference is to discuss and present the potential of the Latin American markets for iGaming and technological services that can be used to increase profits and improve the user experience.

Highlights of the second day of SiGMA Americas

Panel: “Effects of sports betting brands on Brazilian football”

The first debate of SiGMA Americas focused on the Brazilian betting market and featured Angelo Alberoni (Betmotion), Hugo Baungartner (RCT Gaming), Arthur Silva (Coingaming.io) and Matheus Antunes (Volta Pra Marca Negócios).

Arthur Silva started detailing the experience he had in the partnership with Flamengo. “It was a completely different approach. With Flamengo it was not just a brand printed on the shirt, in fact, they supported the campaign in the way we would like. It has been a wonderful partnership from the first moment.”

SIGMA Americas Explores Betting Beyond Football, Affiliates and Technology

Angelo Alberoni said that the clubs also need to strive not only to close, but to meet the demand of new partners.

“A sponsorship in Brazil occurs mainly with sports betting brands and they are recent businesses. Flamengo is a unique highlight in national football. But when it comes to Brazilian football, we are talking about 100 small clubs. Therefore, you must select to find a good deal. Not everyone is prepared to receive this new market ”.

Alberoni continued: “You must understand the club and the club must understand how to address this need. This year, I did two deals with second division clubs in Santa Catarina and it was very different from Flamengo. That’s because they need to understand that we are a new generation, a new source of income. When you look at the sponsorship side of the company, you must find some synergy to be able to meet the fans’ desire ”.

In addition, Hugo Baungartner stressed that the legalization of bets will be a divider for the national market. “There are brands that are very involved with football, but it all depends on how much money and time they have to invest. But, I think it is possible and many are waiting for that to happen as soon as we have a regulation”.

Panel: “Betting Beyond Football”

Football is followed religiously across Latin America. Are there lucrative betting opportunities in other sports? The issue was analyzed by Leo de Biase (Bad Boy Leeroy), Alvaro Cotta (National Basketball League), Chris Nikolopoulos (Betby) and Domenico Mazzola (Altenar).

“With this terrible pandemic, the eSports market was boosted. For a long time, traditional sports almost completely stopped and the public and companies were looking for new forms of entertainment. And, we were well advanced in this sector with great shows and a lot of content. ”, Said Leo de Biase about the moment of expansion of electronic games around the world.

He added: “So, we are thriving to participate in this journey that traditional sport has been doing for so long. Now, we are the novelty. So, we are trying to find our space here and the audience is growing. The future is very good for the sector “.

Alvaro Cotta, on the other hand, told how the National Basketball League is working to reach an increasing audience in the so-called “country of football”. “Brazil is the country of football, but there are many other sports with large fan communities. Speaking of basketball, a recent survey found that we have 38 million fans in Brazil, ”revealed Cotta.

According to him, “in this total, we have 30 million NBA fans and 28 million NBB, national basketball league. I think the challenge is to engage and offer a better experience to the fans. So, the betting business can add and increase the experience and entertainment for all fans during live games and with all the other possibilities that betting brands can offer ”.

Panel: “Hiring and forming a leading team at LatAm”

Conversation about creating a high level team in Latin American markets brought together: Florencia Brancato (Pinnacle), Thomas Carvalhaes, Cris Matus (Ganabet MX) and Oliver de Bono (Condor Gaming).

“A very important issue is that operators should be interested not only in training, but really in printing their culture and the whole culture of iGaming, which is a totally different sector. If you look at it from the perspective of goodwill, I think there is a lot of talent. When we say LatAm or Latin America, we are talking about a large continent with very different countries and we must be aware of these differences as well ”, evaluated Thomas Carvalhaes.

In addition, Carvalhaes cited some particularities that companies need to take into account when planning entry and activity in the Brazilian scenario.

“I think we need to be very simple in our approach, but if an operator takes Brazil seriously, it must take into account location and regionalization in all aspects. Otherwise, it will not be able to get the results it wants,” he said.

Asked about the greatest difficulty to develop personnel and not just find, Florencia Brancato said that “it is a combination of everything you need to do to hire people who have some skills. And you also need to invest some time in training. The key is to keep them, because you train someone and, suddenly, that person doesn’t want to stay in the company. If you’re a good manager you need to keep your team motivated ”.

Brancato also highlighted the need to adapt to the particularities of each country. “You can be a master in Brazil, but not as good in Mexico or in another language. I’m from Uruguay and I know Spanish and everyone understands Spanish. But, we are on the border with Brazil and many Uruguayans speak Portuguese well. For this reason, our entire team speaks three languages: Portuguese, Spanish and English and this helps us to manage the entire region ”.

Panel: “Marketing, affiliates and junket traffic: regional pitfalls to avoid”

The affiliate market was another topic addressed at SiGMA Americas in a conversation between Alessandro Valente (Super Affiliates), Alvaro Quiros (Oddspedia) and Oliver de Bono (Condor Gaming.

After all, there has been a large flow of operators interested in Europe and Latin America in recent years. Thus, Alessandro Valente detailed the positioning adopted by the affiliation market from the shift from traditional games based on physical space to online options in the Latin American scenario.

“We don’t have a saturated market like in Europe and other parts of the world. We have a very immature market that is developing. However, we have some big players operating on social networks, something very important in the region and even more in Brazil. Social networks , websites, mobile applications appearing, but not so much in probabilities because it hasn’t developed much, ”he said.

Valente also pointed out that “we are seeing an increase in traffic and, at the same time, it is being difficult with this context of the pandemic that hit the sports betting market in a huge way. Although it has contributed to the increase in traffic in casinos. In general, websites are the main source of traffic and social media, channels with groups like WhatsApp or Telegram ”.

Panel: “Technology: what types of technologies are needed to establish your operations at LatAm?”

The panel that closed the second day of SiGMA Americas dealt with the appropriate technology solutions so that companies can carry out the operational process, as well as offering a satisfactory experience to their customers.

Oliver de Bono (Condor Gaming) moderated the debate, alongside Peter Nolte (Salsa Technology), Dmitry Starostenkov (Evenbet Gaming), Alejandro Revich (End 2 End).

“Latin America is a very diversified market. We have Brazil as the only Portuguese-speaking country and all the other Spanish-speaking countries. And all of these countries are very diverse and different from each other, and they can be opposed in many ways,” he said. Peter Nolte.

According to him, location is the secret to success in the region. “Our company was founded with the concept that location is the key. And, this has never been more important than in Latin America. In this way, we have developed a structure for a well-located gaming platform and also a lot of local content,” he concluded. .