GMB - How long has Openbox Gaming been on the market? How many people involved?
Richard Hogg - Openbox Gaming was founded in 2021 by a group of seasoned and highly experienced industry professionals. Initially we partnered with the largest games development company in Asia in order to redistribute their content across the rest of the world. With this in mind, we set up operations in Isle of Man, Malta and the UK, some of the most respected and experienced hubs of online betting and gaming.
Openbox Gaming has acquired the necessary licensing in both Isle of Man and Malta to enable it to carry out its activities in developing and suppling content (casino games and sports betting products) to operators. We have a great relationship with GLi ensuring everything we do meets licensing requirements no matter where we are operating.
Do you plan to work outside Brazil? What are the strategies for 2024?
We consider ourselves to be a global company and have developed and planned our growth in accordance with our strategy. We have clients across the globe, including Asia, LatAm and Africa already and currently our plans include looking more at Europe and North America. In order to execute this successfully we work closely with partners and clients alike understand the markets we are looking to enter to ensure we can add value in what are always crowded markets. Thus, currently we are looking at a suite of localized content for such markets.
Does Openbox have customers in Brazil and/or do they plan to enter this market strongly or not?
Openbox has been providing its services to over 500 websites in Brazil since it entered the market some years ago. We are very confident in our ability to understand the market place and the needs of the operators we work with. We know the products which serve the market the best and ensure we are well placed to deliver the content without lags or delays which is something our clients have had issues with in the past. Indeed we have worked hand in hand with operators in identifying issues with systems and delivery to optimise the game delivery to the best possible levels.
What are the platform's strong products? What type of games do you provide?
Openbox has a number of products and services across the group. They include our own proprietary games suite, aggregation platform, PAM, as well as payments and licensing options for clients. It isn’t by chance our partners became the leading games supplier in the markets they originated from. The games development studios took the time to fully understand the markets and were able to develop games which were truly unique to those markets.
They were traditional games played for years but never replicated for the online market. These games are variants of poker, fishing, slots and crash games. Given this knowledge and experience we believe we can work in multiple markets adopting a similar strategy whilst also providing stable content from other recognized suppliers.
How does the company see the new determinations of sports betting law in Brazil?
New regulation in Brazil is something which has long been expected, and the concept is nothing new to us. Many countries have had to apply legalization to remote betting and gaming in order to monetize revenues as well as protect the players. The USA is one of the most notable countries to apply such regulation, albeit not at a federal level which makes the decisions on whether to enter the market more complicated.
Operators and suppliers alike are going to have to really understand the financial commitments of this new regulation. Over recent years we have seen the costs of advertising and sponsorships in the region increase 10-fold, which means player acquisition costs are at a premium. Due to the size of the population many operators from outside the area see this is as potential land grab which will not be the case. We have seen many operators exit the USA markets after failing to make any sort of profits.
What is the difference of Openbox Gaming today on the market compared to other platforms?
As a group we like to believe we can add real value by offering true localization for any market we enter. We sit down with our clients and really try to understand what they are wanting to achieve and by what means. Not all business models and products suit all these days. Everyone is looking to stand out from the crowd, but it takes all stakeholders to achieve this. Having a team with extensive industry backgrounds on both the B2B and B2C sides in a real advantage for us and our clients. To say we have “been around the block” is an understatement.
Does the prohibition of offering advance bonuses on the platform make it difficult for customers to engage on the platform?
Bonuses have been around since the conception of online sports and casino operations online. It is one-way operators offering what is in essence the same product and services to customers are able to make themselves more visible. However, with this comes substantial risks. Players are very smart, and they understand opportunities to monetize such bonuses schemes.
Brazil is no exception to this and have a renowned bonus hunter community which costs operators substantial losses. Regularizing bonuses and ensuing everyone is operating on a level playing field will see operators having to be more thoughtful on how they go about marketing and promoting their offering.
Source: Exclusive GMB
