Our conversation with Daniel touched on QTech’s performance over the past months as well as where the company is headed next. We spoke about the live dealer segment, current trends in the industry, and a lot more. Read the full conversation below.
To your mind, what accounts for the rise of the live dealer segment in recent years, and what steps have you taken to accommodate this?
While the move away from land-based towards to digital domain was already well underway, the pandemic naturally acted as a prime mover, accelerating the trend towards digitized entertainment. Back when the coronavirus closed casinos or made people far more reluctant to venture out because of the risks, the live-dealer products really thrived across Asia, delivering comparable gaming experiences from the comfort of players’ homes or on the move.
We were quick to enhance our existing live-dealer portfolio, allowing our partners more scope and flexibility with which to diversify their revenue streams. Amongst those key integrations were long-standing partnerships with established powerhouses (cue Ezugi and Evolution) and recent rising stars (just like BETER Live or Super Spade Games), all bolstering QTech Games’ status as a comprehensive one-stop-shop for global operators focused on emerging markets.
Their cutting-edge live studios deliver unrivaled and immersive experiences for players, who can now enjoy these engaging, real-time table games (from classics like blackjack, roulette, baccarat, and three-card poker to regional favorites such as India’s Andar Bahar) via a super-agile QTech Games platform.
Of course, there’s a huge revenue opportunity for operators due to the fact that live casino remains such an exciting online gaming sector in its own right. Effortless integration equips our clients with best-in-breed live games for their end users. Market-leading customization options, dedicated tables and native-speaking dealers also make it far easier to customize the experience to any specific market needs. Strong growth in the live-casino vertical continues, and we’re delighted to see how these games are performing across a range of developing markets from Asia, to CIS-facing regions and on to LatAm. Players are still eager to channel the visceral thrill of participating in a real-world casino, not to mention the chance for some long-delayed social interaction with the dealers themselves.
Possible systemic changes to consumer behavior were always the burning issue with this pandemic. Where were the short-term spikes (for example, poker or virtual sports), and which trends would prove catalytic in fast-tracking the way the industry was already transforming (e.g. the aforementioned transition towards digitized entertainment). Live-dealer certainly falls into the latter category.
For our readers, can you unpack some of the key current trends in what can often seem like a rather cluttered aggregation space? Any innovations or initiatives that set QTech Games apart for its clients and their players?
Premium games of high quality represent the prevailing pattern. We’ve moved away from the poor visual content which previously dominated the landscape to stunning graphics, and immersive soundscapes, coupled with the latest maths models for improved gameplay and variety on the volatility spectrum. Clearly, it’s increasingly important to match a product set to any given region, considering the specific wants and changing whims of cultural trends and player preferences.
Due to our wide global reach and leading tech (e.g. our games lobby and its ground-breaking, cross-provider AI-powered recommendation engine, QTech Play, which runs off similar machine-learning techniques to Netflix and Amazon) we can filter a wide range of jurisdictional data and partition game packages market-by-market, so the right content always finds the right audience. QTech Play has been successfully operational for years and has accordingly improved its code and insights based on the sheer volume of data and inputs we’ve been able to feed it over that sustained period. As a result, its localized data insights are way ahead of anything else in our sector.
While Western games studios have been reluctant to enter Asia and other emerging markets directly, this has positively affected the aggregation space. And where studios have tried to implement their own, for example, Asian strategy, they’ve invariably underestimated the time it takes to build relationships in this part of the world. Of course, there is also often a language or cultural barrier that can make it harder to gain true traction, turning the signing of deals into unnecessarily protracted processes. QTech Games’ localized experience and multi-lingual network, though, seamlessly take the sting out of such struggles.
In other news, QTech Engage is a progressive initiative and toolbox, consisting of additional promotional features that are readily available for operators to use to improve players’ engagement and game-time in a responsible fashion. You can ask players to join tournaments for extra winnings, whether that means provider network tournaments, QTech Games tournaments, or your own network or site tournament – and then customize those tournaments to suit your individual business needs. Elsewhere, thanks to our progressive network jackpot, our eligible partners can join in a collaborative jackpot that can reach jaw-dropping payouts, with our proprietary opt-in system. Our Reward tool also makes it easy to promote players with a fixed, flexible, or system-generated number of free rounds, based on the awarded bonus amount. While you can add further excitement and instant payouts with our Prize Drop tool, where players have the chance to win and collect a prize on top of their gameplay winning.
With demand from the operators to have a wider assortment of games showing no sign of abating, it’s a very tedious task for them to secure agreements with so many providers and then manage the provider interactions themselves. Not to mention the hassle of having multiple back offices to access some of the provider data. For newer operators unencumbered by legacy platforms, a one-integration solution to access all games with the ability to have one back office for all providers will be the future for emerging markets. And that future is now an attainable reality, thanks to QTech Games.
What else does QTech Games have planned for the remainder of 2022, the start of 2023?
As the year is coming to an end, we still have a lot of things to accomplish. We have already added some recent improvements to our platform, such as:
- More cryptocurrency in order that players have more flexibility when it comes to payment options.
- Even more flexibility to our trademark tournament tool so that our clients can create better targeted, fine-grained campaigns, with prices for best game rounds, highest scores, etc.
- New providers continue to be added to the platform mix every month to ensure that we always have the best assortment of game providers for the different markets and regions.
We are also working on UI/UX improvements for our QTech Play game lobby and our back office. We will have launched our redesigned website by the turn of the year and will continue to ensure that we have the best providers and marketing in our main markets to deliver an agile mix that meets shifting regulatory and localization requirements, thereby creating a perfect synergistic environment in which all parties thrive with improved gaming experiences.
Undoubtedly, 2023 will also be a busy year on the conference circuit, especially as new summits have started appearing around the world to complement some of the existing tent-pole tradeshows. While we can’t be in attendance at them all, QTech Games will naturally participate in those conferences that support our strategically important areas, including key growth markets. For instance, in January, we will be in Nairobi for SiGMA Africa, while we have some exciting innovations and deals set to be showcased at the industry’s ICE London showpiece.
As ever, the focus for us will be emerging markets across Asia, LatAm, and Africa. So, we will be attending most of the big events that are scheduled for next year on those continents to interact in person with both existing and new customers to make sure that they are aware and taking advantage of all the benefits of using QTech Games. Clarity of purpose and use are watchwords for us at QTech Games. After all, we define the clearest route to acquiring content from all the major game providers with one simple integration via access to a platform that is full of features with which to manage your business successfully.
Next year we will expand our vertical spread and also incorporate further localized game options. We are constantly adding features to our platform to ensure that our clients can benefit from new innovations to grow their businesses. Needless to say, the volume, standard, and diversity of content available through any given distributor must remain front of mind, but additional multi-jurisdictional marketing tools and services are becoming progressively paramount for our international operator partners. This is why established, proven distributors like QTech Games will remain the most secure and flexible one-stop path to market.