These are some highlights from the expert keynotes and
panel discussions on SiGMA roadshow – Germany
Along with great speakers, SiGMA Roadshow welcomed 2k registration a total of 1.9k conference views with total booth entries nearly surpassing the 8k mark.
The majority of attendees reigned from the EMEA region. The agenda for this roadshow focused mostly on Germany’s new gaming regulation, which will come into play soon. Panelists also touched on the topics of tech and how localization of products can help attract German players to the online casino market.
New German gambling law key for future.
In his opening keynote, Dr. Joerg Hofmann Senior Partner at MELCHERS law firm gave a breakdown of what the future holds, including the upcoming regulation changes in Germany. 2020 has proven to be an important year for Germany’s gambling market as the country prepared to implement online gaming regulations as from 2021.
Germany’s 16 federal states agreed to a brand new federal gambling law which will see the authorization and licensing of online casino and poker services from July 1st, 2021.
He noted the creation of a centralized casino and gambling authority, and laid out the challenges currently being faced by the local industry. In response to this issue Hofmann said that: “The industry is offering to start a dialogue, to comply with regulation and to assist in building up an environment that works for all stakeholders in the industry. For the first time ever there is licensing available for all main verticals in gambling in Germany.”
Building up on his regulation keynote, in the next panel, Dr Joerg Hofmann is joined by Mathias Dahms, President of the German Sports Betting Association (DSWV) to discuss the changes in regulation. Dr. Hoffman shines a spotlight on the potential risk of stringent rules on regulation, stating that there will always be a black market and certain restrictions may result in operators not reaching their desired customer segment.
“We have to look at the consequences of a very restrictive regulation – if you are too restrictive, by reducing content too much or imposing tax rates which are not competitive, the operators will not reach their customers. There will always be a black market, we cannot ignore it.”
A Sustainable Market
Another hot topic titled ‘Germany as a safe and sustainable Market’ was tabled by leading academics Mauro De Fabritiis, Founder of MDF Partners, Willem van Oort, Founder of Gaming in EU and Rasmus Kjærgaard, CEO of Mindway AI.
What stood out from this panel discussion is Mauro de Fabritiis’ speech where he highlighted the fact that Germany is in a phase where the German regulation model is based on common trends at the European level linked to specific topics like specific measures to protect customers such as limitations in advertising, that makes the entrance of operators in the market more difficult.
Artur Dervish Derwiszynski, Head of Business, DACH + CEE – Jumio took the viewer’s screens and discussed strategies which would help gaming operators know their players better. In this informative keynote, Derwiszynski touches upon four important points, namely: Digital Player On boarding, High Risk Transactions, Seamless On-Prem Verification w/iPads and Remediation of Existing Players. When it comes to knowing your player’s real identity Mr. Artur states that the best way to do this is by Acquisition, Comparison and Authentication.
This can all be done by is done by capturing government-issued ID and performing a liveness check then comparing the selfie with the photo printed on the ID by checking for similarities and lastly to give it authenticity by asking for a new selfie and comparing it to the original one.
How Tech Trends are impacting iGaming Business Models’ was definitely another standout panel where Mario Chamorro, Manager at MDF Partners & Mariud Galdikas, CEO & Chairman at ConnectPay, addressed how tech will affect the gaming industry now and in the future.
Chamorro states that responsible gaming is one of the biggest trends right now for the iGaming industry and technology is going to be key for this.
Galdikas goes on to say “there’s the tech trends, the internet trends, the quality trends, and the trends on how people develop, look at, and raise the level of games – which utilizes more CPU power and requires better mobile phones – there’s an ongoing rat-race that is developing – in the end, Cloud hosting today is going to be the difference between good servers or great servers.” In this panel, we got a clearer idea of what the latest tech trends are and how responsible gaming will be affected by the latest tech trends.
This panel was later on followed by one focused merely on localization and the importance of attracting German players. Mauro de Fabritiis, Founder of MDF Partners, Jochen Mebus, Global Chief Revenue Officer at Textbroker International, Robert Lenzhofer, Co-Founder & CEO of Hölle Games and Tobias Edl, Head of New Business Relations at Whow Games sat down together to discuss how a successfully localized service or product appears to have been developed within the local culture itself.
Edl says that this is “a good opportunity to show the users, as a provider, some kind of safe harbor where they can gamble. If they do it in the right way, this can be a great opportunity (for the German market) to reach more users.”
Lenzhofer further stretches this comment and says that he thinks that in the upcoming future more game suppliers will find German names which fit the slots and gambling experience by finding German stories which fit. This is a unique feature that and hasn’t been touched upon by many other big players yet.
While more online casinos are beginning to accept cryptocurrency on their sites, there are very few countries, and therefore websites, that actually regulate crypto gambling. Max Krupyshev, CEO of CoinsPaid touches upon this topic and states that the synergy between the gambler and the cryptocurrency trader is huge.
“The person trading crypto is most likely interested in the gambling industry, that is why when you’re trying to promote your casino within the user groups or crypto news websites you will see a lot of banner spots are taken by different iGaming services.”
We would like to thank Jan Kowalczyk, Gaming Director of SiGMA Group for hosting this informative event. This Roadshow will be followed with Nigeria in July.
The second part of the tour kicks off in September with Romania, New Jersey in October, Taiwan in November, before rounding off the year with the Netherlands in December. View the full calendar of events and agenda for the SiGMA Roadshow here.
Want to be part of the SiGMA Roadshow? Get in touch and register here.