iGaming Talks: Interview with Soft2Bet’s Martin Collins

This week, we are excited to introduce Martin Collins, Chief Business Development Officer at Soft2Bet, to iGaming Talks.

Martin will explore Soft2Bet’s significant role as a premier supplier in the iGaming industry, highlighting their primary objectives, recent achievements, and the prospects for 2024. Join us to uncover the strategies that Soft2Bet employs to capitalize on its B2C experience, delve deeper into their engaging gamification content, and learn about their innovative new solution, Motivational Engineering Gaming Application (MEGA).

The Gamblest: Soft2Bet has established itself as a prominent player in the iGaming industry. Could you provide some key highlights from the past year that have contributed to Soft2Bet’s growth and success?

Martin: We have enjoyed many high points in the past 12 months and among  the highlights I would include obtaining a number of licences across key jurisdictions. In Europe we are now licensed in Italy, Greece and Romania, these are on top of existing regulated activities in Denmark and Sweden. In North America, we have secured a licence in Ontario, Canada, and are actively pursuing the same in New Jersey, a crucial jurisdiction for the US market.

When it comes to commercial growth, we experienced another very strong year in 2023. Betinia, our leading brand in Denmark and Sweden, has gone from strength to strength, recording +65% increase in GGR and +70% rise in ARPU, with players’ screen time growing exponentially during the period. 

We also opened a new office space in Malta, signed numerous new B2B partnerships and keep on developing the gaming, affiliate and payment components that complement our core platform products and services. 

The Gamblest: As a company with a successful background in the industry, what do players want and what is the psychology behind consumers’ desire for personalised solutions?

Martin: One of Soft2Bet’s key knowledge areas comes from the B2C activities which is the true origin of our organisation. The expertise and insights we have acquired from that work enable us to understand what players want as part of their gaming offering and the business pressures operators face as they grow their business. 

Consumers’ desire for personalised solutions comes from enjoying the use of customised user interfaces. When players see that their dashboards are a true reflection of their preferences and habits they connect with the brands and return to engage on a more frequent basis. That is what we have found through our work and why we focus on these features.

The Gamblest: In your opinion Martin, how can you boost personalization to fuel ongoing innovation effectively? And, how does applying this strategy in the iGaming industry help break free from the common one-size-fits-all approach in many B2B product offerings?

Martin: Personalisation is often mentioned as a must-have in the industry, but the reality is that very few iGaming companies provide real personalisation features as part of their product portfolios. This is one of the reasons why Soft2Bet has focused on personalisation and tailored UIs through Motivational Engineering  Gaming Application (MEGA), our gamification solution. 

We have placed innovation as a central component of our corporate growth strategy and our MEGA solution is a reflection of this approach; it enables us and our B2B partners to truly differentiate our products by incorporating high quality gamification features in both casino and sports betting product segments. 

The Gamblest: What strategies does Soft2Bet employ to leverage its B2C background in understanding the needs of its B2B partners, and how does this insight influence the company’s approach to meeting those priorities effectively?

Martin: Our background as a B2C group has given us unique insights into the pressures and challenges of being a consumer-facing iGaming brand. We have harvested that experience and all the data that comes with it to produce B2B turnkey solutions that are powerful and perform strongly under all circumstances. This can be in relation to daily operations or enabling speed to market for partners who are focused on launching with quick rollouts.     

The Gamblest: Why is it important for sports betting and casino platforms to focus on creating engaging gamification content tailored to their players?

Martin: There are a number of reasons for this. Content-led gamification drives player engagement and screen time, this is vital to iGaming operators, because, as our founder and CEO Uri Poliavich has mentioned many times before, as an industry we are not competing against each other for players’ attention, but against the like of TikTok, Instagram and X/Twitter for a share of consumers’  screen time. 

The other important part of this question is that MEGA provides players with social and casual gaming features that are not reliant on real money gaming components such as bonuses and promotions. This means the engagement it drives is gamified and content-led, rather than promotion-led. It also limits the use of bonuses and respects country-specific regulations around the number of bonuses operators can offer their players, as is the case in Sweden. 

TheGamblest: How does incorporating gamification content relevant to sports betting and casino verticals benefit operators in terms of commercial success, regulatory compliance, and maintaining a positive reputation?

Martin: Incorporating gamification content that is relevant to both sports betting and casino verticals creates a diversified product offering and means operators are optimising the returns they generate in these two key verticals.

Importantly, it also enables commercial success that is compliant with local regulations and shows that regulatory compliance is good for business. It also benefits the industry from a reputational perspective. 

Gamified content that drives engagement through content-led loyalty programs shows off the best of the industry when it comes to communicating with players.  

TheGamblest: We would be delighted to learn more about your new gamification solution, Motivational Engineering Gaming Application (MEGA), what specific features and benefits does it offer to enhance the player experience in both the sports betting and casino verticals?

Martin: Gamification is not new, but the way Soft2Bet has integrated its features into its iGaming brands has been truly innovative and with MEGA we are seeing players engage in a major way with our products. This has been a key achievement and is made possible thanks to efficient onboarding and customer journeys that are supported by highly-advanced gamification features that take users’ overall experience to new heights, and help the brand differentiate itself from its competitors. 

Betinia is Soft2Bet’s B2C brand in Sweden and Denmark and in these two highly competitive markets, MEGA provides engaging and personalised ecosystems that see players take on a whole range of missions and challenges where they collect points that unlock loyalty levels  that can earn free sports bets or casino plays. 

These features have enabled Betinia to grow its monthly revenues significantly, but just as importantly they have generated high engagement levels in a tightly regulated market thanks to truly innovative features and products.

No other operator provides this type of highly gamified user experience and MEGA is designed to respond to players’ needs and preferences, with user-friendliness a key factor in how the products are developed and rolled out. 

Players’ accounts are fully optimised and they can enjoy casino games, sports betting, or both; as cross-selling is another strong benefit of our gamification features, which are integrated with layers of technology, data and personalisation, delivering high performance iGaming products to our B2B partners.