Tricky Treats

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For Ramiro Atucha, founder and CEO of Atucha Strategic Advisory, whether international operators can press home their scalable advantages will depend on how seriously they take localisation.

“When we talk about localisation, we’re not talking about the language or doing a game about Machu Picchu,” he tells iGB. “We’re talking about taking the effort to understand what the history of those players is, what they’re used to.

“I always found it funny when Colombia was starting, operators were saying ‘players here do not like slots’, as if they have a different DNA. Five years later, they would say, ‘well, they do like slots, but simple slots’. And five years later, they were playing all the usual [slots]. It’s not that they didn’t like slots.

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He explained the Brazil opportunity wasn’t explicitly built into Playtech’s medium-term guidance when it was set after its full-year results in March last year.

“At that point, we sort of knew of the opportunity, but it wasn’t specifically factored into the guidance necessarily,” he stated. “But I think when we set the guidance, we saw there are ambitious targets, and there were not necessarily specific contributors in terms of how you’re going to get there other than looking at the overall opportunities across the group.

“Where we’ll revisit the targets at the full-year results, I think that will probably be the logical time to more explicitly factor Brazil into any revised targets we might potentially issue at that point in time. But I think that should only enhance how the business is currently doing and frankly, enhance probably what the current market expectations are for the group in the years ahead.”

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Lebo Seoheng, advocacy and communications manager at the South African Responsible Gaming Foundation, has been appointed as the ARGN’s president.

Seoheng said the network’s launch comes as Africa’s online gambling market continues to expand, marking stronger player protection and responsible gambling measures increasingly important.

One of the founding members of the ARGN is GamblePause Initiative Africa, founded by Ladipo Abiose Akolade.