In this interview with CalvinAyre.com’s Becky Liggero, Simon Westbury of VSoftCo gives his insight on the state of virtual sports in Europe.
Since the change in legislation, Italy has seen a boom in virtual sports betting.
One of the factors why virtual sports betting is so popular in Italy is due to the fact that sports, particularly football, has been a big part of Italian life. The Italian’s love-affair with football made virtual football the most popular game.
Capitalizing on the popularity of virtual football in Italy, specialist software development firm VSoftCo has decide to penetrate the growing VLT market.
VSoftCo, together with specialist virtuals provider Kiron Interactive, has recently launched a dedicated football leagues satellite channel in the Italian market through leading operator Sisal Matchpoint.
“The success of virtual sports in Italy has been fantastic. In particular, virtual football which is 70 percent of the virtual market,” Simon Westbury of VSoftCo told CalvinAyre.com. “From my point of view, it is quite an easy sell because – as you know Becky – I did some casino sales in the old days.
You go to an operator and tell them, ‘I’m launching this slot. It is going to be the best slot ever.’ How’d you know that it is going to be the best? I think it is the RTP on this slot.”
The channel, which launched recently, will run daily across SISAL MATCHPOINT’s retail estate of nearly 4,000 betting shops and corners, using an exciting football leagues format with multiple matches running at the same time, complete with high-quality graphics and immersive audio commentary.
With four-minute intervals between each in-game week and a new league running every two hours, football fans are sure to get more than their fair share of the action while being captivated by the fast paced football action and exciting betting opportunities on offer.
The new football leagues product has also been made available online on SISAL’s website.
“Each of our games is a minute and a half. And it is like we are in a fantastic stadium here at Standford Bridge, walking up the concourse there and going on watching the game. With match of the day, our competitors use pre-rendered technologies. So they have a library of clips, which is pre-rendered and players get to know these clips,” he said. “Where we are is we have over 2,000 different sequences that come together to be shown over 2.5 million outcomes. With the technology there, we are first to be able to bring kick off in the game, because we can just go down to Sheffield United training ground to show us the new kickoff and we get into the game quickly.”
