Daniel Long: “We use AI in the labyrinthine quest for achieving the perfect content mix”

Casino Guru, speaks to Daniel Long, QTech Games CCO, about the distributor’s continued rise in the emerging-markets space and the recent trends and tides to watch out for across Q3 and Q4 2023. We touch on a variety of topics, including the competitiveness of the live casino market, and QTech’s own ambition to expand its footprint in Asia, using the first-mover advantage, allowing the company to build a sound foundation which dictates its business logic in the region. Long explains how QTech is constantly on the lookout to providing partners with the best possible mix of content, and how it achieves this.

Q: QTech Games has been amassing a formidable portfolio of products - going well beyond iGaming and featuring esports solutions. Have you been adding different verticals to your offer because of demand or in a bid to be a trend-setter?

A bit of both, to be honest.We are the leading distributor for Asia and emerging markets, and we’ve got to where we are by being an adaptable aggregator platform that always listens to our clients’ specific needs. We will add new verticals and providers, based on our operators’ feedback. However, we are also trend-setters to the extent that we will constantly scout for new and interesting providers whom we think will succeed and sustain their relevance through innovation across whichever markets our operators are targeting.

Q: The live dealer/casino gaming vertical has been on fire of late. How do you explain its rise, and will its growth continue unchecked?

Live-dealer appeal mostly to emerging markets and new online casino players. In the wake of the pandemic and the closure of physical land-based casinos, many people are still trying online casinos for the very first time. And live-dealer as a gaming column on its own offers an easy product and a perfect bridge for players to successfully migrate from land-based gaming to online gaming.

At QTech Games, we moved swiftly to keep our existing live-dealer portfolio at the cutting edge, 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, Vivo or HoGaming), all buttressing QTech Games’ status as a definitive one-stop-shop for global operators focused on emerging markets. These varied live studios deliver high-quality experiences for players, who can also enjoy immersive, 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 highly flexible QTech Games platform.

Naturally, there’s a big revenue play for operators because live casino remains such an exciting online gaming sector. Market-leading customization options, dedicated tables and native speaking dealers additionally make it far easier to customize the experience to any specific market needs. Wherever you set your scene on the map, players remain keen to channel the visceral thrill of participating in a real-world casino, not to mention the chance for more social engagement with the dealers themselves.

That said, as a player matures and evolves in their online gaming journey, they will gradually progress to RNG slots and other table games. This is a telling trend we have observed.So, to answer your question with concision: yes, live dealer will continue to grow as new markets emerge and new players go online, but its continued growth will not be unchecked.

Q: Your company focuses on emerging markets - why is this so and what are the specific benefits of moving into such jurisdictions?

Well, without wishing to more mature territories where operators are left to complete for market-share against established players and industry behemoths, emerging markets is where the action is, and it’s certainly more exciting from a sales or operator challenger-brands point of view! Consequently, we’ve also found that we can help exercise the first-mover advantage more effectively, as well as becoming trends-setters in those markets.

We started off by bringing European providers into Asia. As a result, throughout our journey, we’ve built up crucial knowledge of how to add value in these markets via our unique pricing model, offering all providers in packages with the same license fee. This strategy has helped us build a solid foundation, which we keep on strengthening. This model also makes it easy for operators in that they don’t have to favor any provider due to price. We also offer the operators the chance to offset any provider’s negative GGR with other providers’ positive GGR, thereby lowering the overall cost in the aggregate.

Q: Speaking of emerging markets, have there been challenges in establishing your footprint due to, let's say, a lack of regulatory clarity?

In jurisdictions without regulatory clarity, we depend on our corporate internal compass of best practices and experience to help us navigate those uncharted waters. A combination of expertise among our own team, at both high and local levels, has been the key to turning challenges into opportunities (often two sides of the same coin!). Sometimes that’s been premised on previously hard-won experience, but ultimately, it’s always facilitated the gathering acceleration of our ongoing expansion.

Q: What is QTech Games' strongest asset today and how is it helping you develop and grow as an iGaming entity?

When you already have your the proprietary tech that will keep you in the vanguard of this sector, our people are our greatest asset. We will continue to build on the knowledge-base and hive-mind we have fostered over many years and continue to add the right people to help us grow. Our already strong market knowledge allows us to open the gateway for newcomers entering Asia, alongside other untapped markets, or allow already established forces to grow faster.

Progressive UI/UX enhancements for our QTech Play game lobby and back-office will come as standard. And we 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 ecosystem in which all parties thrive with elevated gaming experiences.

In short, such is the collective quality and passion of our personnel and platform (from our machine-learning software to our targeted departments across grey markets) that the distributional scope is there to facilitate QTech Games’ transition into one of the largest providers of digital entertainment around.

Q: What is next for QTech Games in H2 2023 and beyond?

We are continuing our efforts to grow outside of Asia, where we are focusing on Africa and LatAm. To flex our muscle across these massive continents and establish confidence and presence, we have been honed in on providers that are already particularly strong in those markets, while also being able to incorporate our own significant, even elastic knowledge of emerging markets.

We are also strengthening our platform with new engagement features and improved reporting functionality, alongside advancing our AI-driven searches to further enhance the labyrinthine quest for the perfect content mix among an ever-growing number of providers and games, as we alluded to earlier.

As for the remainder of the year, we still have more to do. We’ve just launched our new-look website, which has had some great feedback from clients, and plan to add more cryptocurrencies to the platform in order that players have even more options when it comes to payment. Even more flexibility for our flagship tournament tool is another focus, in order that that our clients can create better targeted, fine-grained campaigns, with prices for best game rounds, highest scores et cetera.

Looking over the horizon to 2024, we will expand our vertical spread and also incorporate further localized game options. We are also always adding features to our platform to ensure that our clients can benefit from new innovations to grow their business. Naturally, the volume, standard, and diversity of content on offer via any given distributor must remain front-of-mind, but further multi-jurisdictional marketing tools and services are becoming ever more important for our international operator partners.

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