What can you evaluate about the current situation of the sector, one year after the beginning of the pandemic?

The covid pandemic had a great influence on every industry, worldwide. The gambling industry witnessed the land-based portion of the market being completely shut down. During the second half of 2020, some of the biggest companies began to reinforce their market positions by buying new materials or even buying competitor companies that were suffering from the pandemic effects. The trend of these first months of 2021 is sharp. Covid 19 is still enduring and the restrictions are still on. We think that there will be another substantial increase in the online gaming industry and a bigger effort of land based companies to bring their presence online.

What challenges have you had to face as a company?

We worked from home for six months before returning to the office. Thankfully the great skills of our team brought our production to great levels. The perks were mostly about communication, it wasn’t instant and easy as it is in person. During the course of the last six months WorldMatch sped up the releasing process and the certifications of products that were tied to land-based gambling. This created a shift of the players from land-based to online.

In what issue have you managed to have results beyond your expectations within the current situation? Have you had an unexpected opportunity?

We did not expect to keep our productivity level as high as it was before the pandemic. But we in fact did. We created customized products for the operators and that managed to make us to grow and improve as a company in an unfortunate moment.

How could you describe the profileof the average player nowadays? Which are the average tastes and demands?

It’s hard to describe the profile of an average player since that varies based on country and/or operators. There are high rollers who like to spend big amounts of money in order to win even bigger amounts but knowing that those bets might result in big losses too. The average player though is someone who’s looking for entertainment and spends a small amount of money in order to get some amusement.

Which are the latest trends regarding technology, games and habits, that arrived to stay?

Mobile gaming is a trend that’s absolutely here to stay. We can easily say that 90% of our games are played from mobile. WorldMatch has always been a pioneer in online gambling, therefore we’ve always used very advanced techs. We started from flash technologies and native technologies for ios and android. We are currently working on HTML5, designed specifically for the mobile phone. Candy Bar, one of our latest releases was designed for mobile gaming and was just announced in the shortlist for GGA 2021.

Which are the most important markets for the company at present?

Latam is a very important market for us. We were the first ones to certify 100 games for the representative office of Colombia. We are already collaborating with regulated operators in St Louis, Argentina. We are currently certifying games for Buenos Aires, we’re already partnered with a very important operator in Perú and shortly we’ll be operating in Mexico. We’re also counting on Brazil to regulate gambling soon and open up for certifications.  

Do you think that legislation towards games of chance has to do with the current situation? Which are the countries that have best adapted their laws during 2020 and the current year?

Due to covid legislation part of the land-based market shifted to online, where costumers are safer from a responsible gaming point of view and they will hardly go back to land based gambling. There’s more attention to player protection online because everything is tracked down. Some countries sped up the process to activate and regulate online gaming in order to support the gambling industry. Unfortunately though we can’t state that many countries helped the operators during this hard time.