One of the most untapped markets on the globe is tucked away in South America. Recognizing that, Join Games has placed special focus on helping that market develop and thrive. Luigi Spina, commercial director for the region for Join Games, joined CalvinAyre.com’s Becky Liggero to talk about what makes the region special.
Spina explained that Join Games feels like they have an untapped gold mine on their hands. “Basically, I think that Latin America is the next market, it’s growing very fast,” he said. “We are focused at the moment on Colombia, it’s a very attractive market. We have 84% of the market that are already integrated with us. And in a couple of weeks, we are very happy that our poker platform will be the first regulated and the first network available in Colombia.”
Colombia is just the start. Eventually, they hope to be the platform provider of choice for the continent. He said, “We are trying to do the same work even in other countries that are soon be regulated like Peru and Argentina. But we want to be the biggest aggregator platform and provider in Latin America.”
The service Join Games provides is best explained as removing as many headaches as possible for the operator. And there are a lot of headaches they face. “The problem is because, as you know, each jurisdiction needs certification, needs integration, and this is very expensive,” Spina told Liggero. “And they don’t like to spend so much money. And then another thing is that the level of the tech is not so high, so to make an integration that technically can take one week, we can spend even one month there. So imagine an operator that wants 20 providers, he can take maybe two years to have all the product available to his player.”
Not everyone can just walk in to Latin America and expect to succeed though. Understanding the local mindset is key. “I used to live in Costa Rica for two years and a half,” Spina explains. “I understand the attitude and how they’d like to work. I don’t want to say the secret, but the secret is that they want to be friends.”
The next steps for Join Games are shrouded in secrecy to some extent. “Our idea is to expand very fast the business in Latin America, poker, aggregation, and then I think in seven months, 10 months from here there will be a very big surprise,” Spina teases. “But the surprise will be for everywhere in the world, so we’ll be Europe, we’ll be Latin America, so all of our clients will enjoy this new product, and idea, it’s something innovative.”
