Playtech plc (PTEC) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary
March 23, 2023
Earnings Call Speaker Segments
Mor Weizer
executiveI'd like to extend a warm welcome to all those in attendance today, both in person and virtually for our exciting B2B Investor Day, where we will outline for multitude of growth opportunities this division has and how we plan to execute on this. As Rafi has to dash off to make a flight in a few hours, we are going to first have a session with Rafi Ashkenazi, the executive MD and Executive Chair of Hard Rock Digital, who will discuss the landmark agreement signed between Playtech and HRD, and then we will open it up to Q&A. Without further ado, I hand over to Rafi. But before that, I will say, I will say and it will be quick. I don't think that Rafi needs any introduction, having been around for many, many years, like me, actually, we joined Playtech 3 weeks apart and Rafi was our COO, but most importantly, Rafi then became the COO and then CEO of PokerStars to take the role of Executive MD, Managing Director with HRD and Executive Chairman. Most importantly, right, you're about to hear from, who I believe is one of the best CEOs this industry ever produced, who gathered an amazing team of professionals around him. And I will use this opportunity before you start because I know that you need to dash off to the airport soon after. I want to thank you personally. I want to thank the management team of HRD personally and HRI for the trust they put into Playtech. And I guarantee, we will not fail you guys. Thank you. So Rafi, the stage is yours.
Rafael Ashkenazi
attendeeWhat an introduction. Okay. It's been a while since I've been in front of people and the investor community, but I'm just going to stick with my script. If you can scroll it back. Okay. That's it. Thank you. Thank you more for the kind introduction and warm welcome. It is truly great to be here with so many of my former Playtech colleagues and back in front of the broader investor and analyst community. For those that do not know, I spent 7 years with Playtech, prior to joining what become the Stars Group. I was acting there as the CEO of the company, until it was sold to Flutter in May 2020. As I evaluate opportunities for my next venture following the Flutter sale, I strongly believe that there was an opportunity for the new entrants to find success across the global iGaming landscape with the following 3 core competencies: one, a strong global brand that appeal to the gaming and entertainment customer; an absolute focus, developing the best product and user experience supported by best-in-class technology; and a management team with a proven track record of growing global digital operations. For these reasons, our management team was so excited about the opportunity to partner with Jim Allen and his team of the creation of Hard Rock Digital as the exclusive Hard Rock International and Seminole Gaming vehicle for global interactive gaming and sports betting. We believe then, and continue to believe today, that the sector is ripe for continued innovation and that Hard Rock's unrivaled brand power in gaming and entertainment will help us to capitalize on the global opportunity. As many of you know, Hard Rock was started here in London over 50 years ago, as a single cafe and Old Park Lane on Mayfair. While Hard Rock still has the legendary burgers, unrivaled music memorabilia, collection and iconic merchandise at its core, the brand has continued to evolve and now spans the full spectrum of hospitality and entertainment. Hard Rock is now one of the most recognized global gaming and entertainment brands and has an extensive footprint of over 265 casinos, hotels, cafes and venues in 70 countries, plus an in-place pipeline for future development. I'm going to go off creep for just a minute, because Mor spoke about Snaitech and about -- I just came in when you spoke about Snaitech, and you spoke about the value of the customers that you have on the retail side versus the people that are just digital customers. And I think when I saw the graph, it was approximately 3x more valuable. This whole concept of Hard Rock Digital is based on the same premise basically. What we see today when we operate our New Jersey operations, we see that the customers that we have on the land base that are also playing with us online, their value is at least 3x higher than the only digital customers. And that's exactly what we're trying to do within the U.S. and what we're going to try to do globally as well. And that's the whole premise of what we are set up to do with Hard Rock Digital. I'm going to go back to my script. The global footprint, together with Hard Rock exceptional management team, has fortified its financial profile, creating one of the only investment-grade balance sheets in the gaming sector worldwide. While Hard Rock has always partnered with the biggest names in music, you will now find the brand as a corner store partner for major sports and entertainment franchises. Just turn on Formula One races or Netflix, Netflix drive to survive. And you will see Hard Rock on the side of the Red Bull racing cars, along with prominent activations at the F1 circuits, Miami and Las Vegas races. When you open up a menu at your local Hard Rock cafe, you'll find items named after World Cup Champion, Lionel Messi, by the way, great burger, and characters from Lionsgate newly released John Wick movie. And during our next visit to the Hard Rock venue, be sure to check out the upcoming lineup of marquee musical talent, comedians and entertainment acts across 35,000 live shows annually. I'm going to go again off script as well. So it's 35,000 live shows, music live shows every single year. I can tell you, I spent my time in the Florida office in The Guitar Hotel there. Almost every time I'm there, I'm attending one of the music shows. I went to Metallica. I went to Guns 'N Roses. I can't even remember all of them, but it's like 6,000, 6,500 seats. These are people, who are coming to the Guitar Hotel almost every day. There is like almost every day, there is an event there. And all these people, they provide -- clearly, they provide their names, their e-mails, their credit card information, everything that we need in order to later on cross-sell them into other type of verticals that Hard Rock has. That's, again, the base of everything that we're doing. I'm going to go back to my script. We're talking about big names that could sell out larger venues, but are choosing the experience of playing at Hard Rock. Hard Rock International footprint also continues to grow. We just opened a New York hotel near Times Square; a luxury casino resort project in Greece on the Athens Riviera; and the purchase and planned renovation of The Mirage in Las Vegas, where a 36-story-tall Guitar Hotel will become the Strip's latest landmark and a tangible reminder of the brand's continued global expansion. In another exciting development, Hard Rock recently launched Unity by Hard Rock, the first global unified loyalty program in the company's 50-year history that will enable customers to earn and redeem rewards across the brand's global ecosystem. Hard Rock Digital represents the next logical step in the bread's continued evolution as we digitize that unique Hard Rock entertainment experience for our millions of customers worldwide. We knew that replicating that experience online wouldn't be easy and take pride in creating products with the heart of Hard Rock and live up to the brand's name, standards and global customer expectations. We're incredibly proud of what we've been able to create in such a short period of time and what is our product pipeline. Our first product, Hard Rock Sportsbook, was unveiled just over a year ago for the U.S. market and already has one of the highest rating in the market, with a 4.8 star rating on the App Store and a 4.6 star rating on Google Play Store. It caught the attention of the industry with Eilers & Krejcik noting its January 2023 product analysis that Hard Rock Sportsbook has, and I'm quoting, one of the most unique looking apps on the market that offers a deep dynamic betting experience to players. I could not have said it better myself. Open our Sportsbook app, and you will see that the difference immediately in the way we present our features like same-game parlays, in-upstreaming and head-to-head markets with frictionless user experience that includes a single log-in, multistate wallet and insta deposit and withdrawal from popular payment methods. And if you like our Sportsbook up, which the public certainly seems to, you're going to love our proprietary iCasino product, which is expected to be launched this summer. Currently, Hard Rock-branded online products are available in 7 U.S. estates, with additional market access secured across the country. Although we spent a considerable amount of our initial focus on establishing our capabilities and footprint in the U.S., we strongly believe in the power of the Hard Rock brand to capitalize on the well-established and growing international market opportunity. To do so, we spend a considerable amount of time and efforts evaluating multiple alternatives for international expansion, including building our own product and technology for international markets or acquiring operators with a recruited platform and capabilities for international operation or partnering with an established platform and services provider that could accelerate and support our international ambitions. After an extensive evaluation process, we ultimately decided that Playtech was, by far and away, the best partner for Hard Rock Digital. Our partnership with Playtech will assist us in delivering Hard Rock entertainment internationally across online sports betting and iGaming, while providing players with a safe, responsible gaming experience. In doing so, we will become the first operator with global omni-channel offering under a singular irreplaceable brand. Hard Rock Digital will also benefit from Playtech's extensive international market knowledge and operating experience, along with access to its full offering of software services, including its payer management platform, content aggregation, operations, customer support, payment and marketing services as well as risk management, player verification and player protection with responsible gaming tools. Additionally, the integration to Playtech slots, RNG and live dealer table games into our forthcoming U.S. iCasino product will provide us with what we believe will become the best offering in the market. At a time when certain digital gaming companies are struggling with their balance sheets and cutting back, all we see is opportunity. We have access to the only global unified gaming brand in the digital space, the ability to implement a comprehensive omnichannel strategy with global Hard Rock entertainment properties and a management team that has successfully built multiple profitable global platforms. A partner like Playtech provides us with a capital content and software solution to take advantage of current conditions for international expansion, and their interest and investment demonstrate the value Hard Rock Digital has created with our differentiated products and validates our strategy from a leading third party. We're excited that Playtech is no longer just a third party, but a valued partner to help us strategically enter the most important global markets. We truly believe that our combined strengths can be leveraged to deliver that legendary Hard Rock experience anytime, anywhere and entertain our players like no one else can. Thank you. I think we're turning on to Q&A?
Simon Davies
analystSimon Davies from Deutsche Bank. Three from me, please. Firstly, $85 million valuation, how did you come by $85 million? Why not $100 million? Why not $50 million? Is there a solid valuation basis for this? And secondly, can you talk a bit about the scale of the opportunity in Florida? When could that open up? How big could the market be? How big could your position be in that? And just finally on Live Casino, I think the deal, the agreement is not exclusive in the U.S., but presumably, you've looked at evolutions product up against Playtech. How do you think the 2 products compare now?
Rafael Ashkenazi
attendeeOkay. Let's start with the first question. There isn't -- I mean, there is a reason specifically for the $85 million. It's effectively an outcome of the negotiation that we had and what we believed would be the right balance between the dilution that we are accepting at this stage of the business versus what we believe the business is going to become later on in the future, right? So we always need to consider what is the level of dilution that we are accepting at this stage with the existing value that we have for Hard Rock and what is the level of investment we believe would be fit to our needs going forward for the next months and years to come. So it's a sort of some dilution consideration versus some investment considerations with balance between the 2 of them. Your second question was...
Simon Davies
analystFlorida.
Rafael Ashkenazi
attendeeFlorida. So as you know, the Florida case is now dealt with the appellate court. We are all waiting for the outcome of this appellate court. It can happen any day now. I mean, we don't know when they are going to publish their results or their decision, actually. But the oral arguments took place, to my recollection, on December 14. And we can see some decisions coming out, I mean, almost daily. Many of those decisions are for cases that were dealt with in October and November. So I'm assuming, in a short period of time, we will probably see the decision around Hard Rock and Seminole. I don't know when, but probably in the short period of time. When it comes to live, without getting into the details of the commercial agreement, we strongly believe in Playtech's live product, strongly believe in it. And we've made our decision, and we're going to run it and we're going to see how well they're going to perform in the U.S., but we wouldn't sign an agreement on something that we don't believe in.
Simon Davies
analystCan you say anything about the scale of the opportunity in Florida, if that does...?
Rafael Ashkenazi
attendeeI think that there are quite a lot of industry analysis around Florida and how big this market can be. Maybe if you want to draw some parallels, maybe you should look at the New York market. It's not going to be too far away from what we believe Florida can become.
Simon Davies
analystBut rather less competitive?
Rafael Ashkenazi
attendeeRather less competitive, absolutely.
Roberta Ciaccia
analystIt's Roberta Ciaccia from Investec. I have 2 questions. The first one is straight for you. So you've been very successful in the past with PokerStars, et cetera. What gives you the confidence that Hard Rock will -- under digital actually will develop outside of the U.S. and will be successful in the international expansion? Is it the brand; the association with Playtech, which will help you covering more states; or a mix of the 2? Is it -- the second question is more for you and Mor ideally. Do you think that long term, this could turn out to be a deal that has the same potential as the Caliente deal in terms of revenues and profits for Playtech?
Rafael Ashkenazi
attendeeOkay. So after leaving the Stars Group and then Flutter, there were all sorts of different opportunities that presented themselves to me. And I took some time off and I wanted to consider where is -- where would be my next step. This project, this Hard Rock Digital project is my third one in the industry. Playtech was the first one. Stars Group was the second one. Hard Rock Digital would be the third one and hopefully, the last one and hopefully, also the most successful one. That's the plan. We chose to go with Hard Rock, because everything that I said on my script, we wanted to have a platform that has a very strong brand and bring recognition worldwide, not just in the U.S. We wanted to make sure that in the U.S., we don't just have market access deals, because I think some of the operators that do not own their license, they may have some problems in the future. So that's a strategic advantage. So we wanted to have a company that owns the license to operate in a market. Hard Rock has a massive customer base and tens of millions -- I think over 130 million interactions on an annual basis. So it's a massive customer base. It's a massive VIP base as well, which is very important for our industry. And the other thing that we saw with Hard Rock, I mean they have so many different properties, but there is not all the properties, not all the communication, not everything is digitized. So I spoke a little bit in my script on the Unity program. The Unity program is the unified loyalty program that would go across all of the Hard Rock properties globally. So every time you go into a hotel, casino, a music show, a restaurant, wherever you go, we basically -- we will try to enroll you onto the Unity program, because you can clearly collect rewards. And then within that, those rewards, in out of the properties, it's so global. So you -- basically, you can go to the Florida hotel and you can stay there and you can pay in the casino and accumulate reward, but then you can redeem them, the same rewards here in London, when you go to the Hard Rock hotel here in London, just came from there. So that's the concept. The concept is to create effectively this ecosystem and a free flow of customers within this ecosystem. So that's the main reason for us to actually join Jim Allen, Hard Rock International and Seminole gaming. That was the premise of everything that we've done. The other thing about our global expansion, clearly, we signed the agreement with Playtech. We have -- I mean, we are expecting to be very successful. Caliente, as an example that you gave, is a highly successful company. I mean, they've done amazingly well in Mexico. I can't remember, I think they have over 70% market share of the Mexican market. It's very hard to replicate that success, especially in some of the other more competitive markets. And we're not necessarily aiming to take 70% of market share, but we do aim to be successful in the international markets on the back of the Playtech platform, capabilities, knowledge, experience. We're going to take -- not just the software, we're going to take the services as a whole as part of our deal. And with the brand that we have and the omnichannel practice that we are going to develop, that's effectively the base of our operations globally. And if we become successful as Caliente, thank God for that.
Mor Weizer
executiveActually, I think that opportunity, given by probably [indiscernible] Hard Rock, given the fact that it's not just 1 state or 1 country or they have international, I think that one of the things we were asked about live, 26% versus 90% in terms of increasing numbers, and I will let Edo talk about that. But one thing you should like, footfall short, our industry is headed towards entertainment and more entertaining experience to the customers. And why I'm so excited about Hard Rock Digital is because of Hard Rock International. You won't find a single -- they are uniquely positioned. They are an iconic global entertainment group with 87,000 memorabilias; 35,000 shows every year; presence in 70 countries, 265 venues worldwide. And when we look into it, and Rafi shared with us some information about the brand recognition, it's high 80s and 90% in most countries. And I think the combination of an entertainment group that has this exposure and an amazing brand is unparalleled in our industry. And this is why when you combine that, together with best-of-breed products and solutions equipped outside the U.S. with best practices around online marketing and online CRM and retention, I think that actually, this is very, very exciting for everyone involved. And this is why we focused on that. The U.S. is in its early stage, 6 states, 3 of which are the majority of iGaming, 30-plus states in sports, no doubt about it, but only 6 states accepting online gaming bets, right? And Nevada is only poker, it's not even casino. So we -- it's early days. The market is dominant -- or there is some dominance by 3 groups, but I think that everyone understands that over time, there will be not a very big number, but only a limited number of other groups in the U.S. that will come alongside and will grow their business to be a very, very significant business in the U.S. Obviously, with HRD, there is an international opportunity on top of that, and this is why we are so excited. And I don't think that you will find too many brands outside the 3 that exist there and already established themselves as market leaders that are as well positioned as HRD in the U.S., Canada and outside.
Unknown Executive
executiveAs Rafi needs to head off, I think we've got time for one more question.
James Wheatcroft
analystRafi, James Wheatcroft here from Jefferies. Just a question around -- firstly, around pace, just understanding how quickly you expect to expand the business both in North America and then outside. And then around sort of future funding requirements, how you expect that to shape up?
Rafael Ashkenazi
attendeeSo the pace would be as follows: first of all, in the U.S. market, we're going to focus more on the iGaming states. We're currently working on replacing the technology platform that we currently use in New Jersey onto our platform. We are developing -- as I said, we're developing our own iCasino or iGaming product, which will be on top of this same Sportsbook app that we have. So it's going to have 1 app that supports the 2 verticals, plus the full PAM. So New Jersey would be the one that we are going to roll out with our platform very soon this summer, as I mentioned. And then we're going to continue to focus on the 2 other gaming markets in the U.S. That would be the immediate focus, hopefully, this year and probably onto like Q1, Q2 next year to get those 3 markets. I mean they are, by far, the majority of iGaming in the U.S., those 3 markets. When it comes to the international markets, I'll give you an estimation, probably this year, 1 to 2 markets. And then every year, thereon would be probably 2 to 4 markets. It really depends on how successful we're going to become, how proven the omnichannel is going to be, how well we are integrating the Unity program, how quickly the Unity program is rolled out in all the different properties. It's currently rolled out around 60%, 70% of the properties, and they are continuing to roll out more properties worldwide. So it's all going to be based on some certain elements that we're going to balance between, but effectively, that's approximately the pace. In terms of the funding, this is a very hypothetical question, because there is something pending now, which is quite significant for us, which I mentioned before, that was a question around Florida. So the decision is, I think, it's going to come out probably within the next -- I mean, it could be days, weeks or months. We don't know exactly when the decision will come out. But a decision -- a favorable decision in Florida would basically allow us to accelerate the pace of rolling out worldwide, and I doubt there would be any additional funding requirements at that point. If the decision is not going to be favorable, then it's something that we will need to probably start considering only next year. We have -- I think we have enough of a runway of funding to continue running the company with the pace that I just mentioned. That's it. So thank you, guys. I'm going to head to the airport.
Mor Weizer
executiveBefore we leave the room, I'd like to extend my thanks to Rafi for taking the time to attend this Investor event and give his perspective on the incredible partnership between Playtech and Hard Rock Digital. I hope that you are all as excited about this partnership as we are at Playtech. Now on to Slide 4 and turning our attention to the rest of the B2B Investor Day. I'd like to start by outlining how we are well positioned to drive revenue growth and expand margins in the medium term. As Shimon will discuss shortly, the B2B division has been transformed into a more diversified, higher quality and more collaborative business over the last 5 years, broadening our geographic exposure and product offering. All of this has meant that we are a much more resilient business. We have also introduced new business models. The innovative structure, the agreement model offers a proven path to gain exposure to the fast-growing newly regulating markets, while the platform model and SaaS increases Playtech's addressable market, giving it access to the entire spectrum of operators. From a regional perspective, we are incredibly excited by the potential to build and expand our presence across the Americas. The landmark agreement signed with Hard Rock Digital accelerates our strategy in the U.S. and presents a huge opportunity to capture value in this exciting market while also providing scope to leverage the Hard Rock brand globally. The NorthStar deal means we are well positioned in the attractive Canadian market as it regulates and builds on our early success in Ontario. In the LatAm region, Caliente and Wplay continue to go from strength to strength in Mexico and Colombia, respectively, while the Brazil market is hugely exciting for us given the market size, expects to regulate and our positioning via the structured agreement we have with Galera.bet. From a product perspective, the significant investment in live across physical infrastructure and content means much of the heavy lifting has been done, and it is now time to harvest this as the live market continues to grow extremely quickly. Edo will discuss it in much more details shortly. The culmination of all these growth opportunities means we are confident in setting a medium-term adjusted EBITDA target range of EUR 200 million to EUR 250 million. And Chris, our new CFO, will now briefly touch upon some of the high-level assumptions that underpin this target. I will hand over to Chris.
Chris McGinnis
executiveThanks, Mor. Just one slide for me, on Slide 6. As we announced this morning, we set the new medium-term adjusted EBITDA target for the B2B business of EUR 200 million to EUR 250 million. Before you hear from the team about the various exciting growth opportunities that we have, on this slide, I just wanted to illustrate how these opportunities will together contribute to us reaching that target. We've made significant investments into the live product vertical in recent years, and we expect this investment to continue to pay off over the medium term given the structural growth and leading offering that we have in this segment. Anita will, of course, talk you through all this in much more detail shortly. The U.S. and Canada present huge opportunities, although perhaps over a slightly longer time frame than live, just given the expected cadence of regulation, particularly when it comes to iGaming, which will develop on a state-by-state basis. And that's, of course, the segment where Playtech is strongest. We're all very excited about the strategic agreement with Hard Rock Digital that you've just heard about from Rafi. And although this will not have a material impact to our North American revenues and EBITDA in the early part of this medium-term period, we do believe it will drive significant growth as we move through that time frame. We're extremely well positioned in Latin America. Mor will discuss this more later. We already have, as you're all aware, several structured agreements, active and live in the region. We're continuing to look to replicate the success of Caliente in Mexico. The Brazilian and Colombian markets with Galera.bet and Wplay, respectively, we're expecting them to be the next significant growth drivers in Latin America. From a standing start, the SaaS segment that you've heard Mor talked about has enjoyed tremendous success since we launched it in 2019. And given the high contribution margin of this business, this will also be a further growth driver of B2B going forward. I think it's important at this stage to also just flag that there are overlaps with each -- within each of these growth areas. So just to be mindful when attributing incremental EBITDA contributions to each of these different growth opportunities. Finally, as I discussed in my earnings presentation a little bit earlier, there is scope for efficiency savings across B2B. The benefits will be used to ensure we capitalize on the growth opportunities that I've just discussed that we see across our markets. On the other side, they're all -- as there always are, there will inevitably be regulatory changes in certain markets that create headwinds, but we've built that into these targets. As well, there's always going to be other areas we continue to invest in as we see the growth opportunities ahead of us. Hard Rock Digital's global expansion that Rafi talked about is part of that. So we're assuming, as part of this target, EUR 40 million to EUR 50 million headwind from these items over the -- at the EBITDA level over this time period. So that is all baked into these medium-term targets. Together, all of that takes the medium-term target, as we said, to EUR 200 million to EUR 250 million in the medium term. Now this isn't necessarily the extent of our ambition as a business. I'd say, this target is broadly based on the current regulatory landscape. Given the inherent uncertainty in predicting regulation, we feel it's important to take this approach, and we can obviously update you as things develop. Okay. With that, I'll hand over to our COO, Shimon to explain how the B2B business has been transformed over the last 5 years, and we're taking advantage of the growth opportunities ahead.
Shimon Akad
executiveSo those go up and down automatically. That's very nice. Thanks, Chris. Hello. For those of you who don't know me, my name is Shimon Akad. I'm COO of Playtech and XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, it's Head of B2B division. In Slide 8, let's move on to Slide 8. Over the past 5 years, the B2B business has been transformed. This was a change born out of necessity, given market changes, technology changes and significant reduction in EBITDA we saw in Asia. However, it is a transition that has led to an increasingly diversified higher-quality and more collaborative B2B business. And as a result, today, we have a much more resilient business, particularly important in the face of much more uncertain macroeconomic conditions. Looking forward, as we are in the midst of a gambling super cycle, with multiple countries moving towards regulatory gambling, we aim to be the partner of choice for newly regulated markets. And we feel our experience and technology offering puts us in an extremely strong position to capture a significant portion of the value of the industry will create in the coming years. From the licensee perspective, our business model has evolved and now we cater for the whole of the gaming market. Today, we have the option of strategic agreements, platform deals and offering our content and products in a simple and fast SaaS model. The SaaS model approach has increased our addressable market and ensure we can capture significant additional volume. Going forward, we see large opportunities ahead of us, such as in the Americas, in our SaaS business model and in live, where our increased investment over the past few years is starting to bear dividends. And given the live market is expected to grow significantly worldwide and primarily driven by the U.S., there is still a big price to play for Playtech. And Edo Haitin, the Head of Live, will outline his plan to ensure we capture it in his customary hugely enthusiastic manner. We're looking forward to it, Edo. Moving on to Slide 9. Over the next 3 slides, I will outline some data that illustrates how the B2B division has improved over the last 5 years. From a regional perspective, back in 2017, we were over reliant on Asia with nearly 45% of our revenues generated there. And given its high margin, the EBITDA contribution was even greater. We also generated a significant portion of our revenue in the U.K., which was symptomatic of our extremely strong market position there. And in total, we had an over-reliance of 70% in the U.K. and the Asia market. Fast forward to 2022, where today, we see healthy share of wallet across the different jurisdictions, with U.K. and Asia roughly at around 30% of our income, Europe, ex-U.K., is at a balanced 31% and the Americas at 33%. The regional diversification has also been replicated across the product verticals, as can be seen in the charts in the middle column. In 2017, we were highly reliant on our casino business that was mostly built on slots business in Asia. As you can see today, in 2022, we have today a much more diversified and resilient income by product. Our live product has continued to excel and grow to over 20% of our income. Our structural agreements are at more than 15%. Our sports grown to 15%, and our platform business has become significant and 17 -- sorry, at 7%, and I will discuss that in the next slides as well. As a summary, we do 2 things: we better balanced our income across products portfolio, and we took our Asian slot business that has a low market entry barrier and have replaced it with live casino with platform and with services that all have a very high market entry barrier and therefore, are much more resilient going forward. Looking at revenue by customer. Over the past 5 years, we have materially improved our customer base. We measure customer by tiers. There's 100,000 -- over 100,000 tier, over 1 million, 1 million to 4 million, 4 million to 10 million and over 10 million, that is generated yearly income to Playtech. Given time and the constraints of how much time we have in the presentation, I will only say 2 things on that. One, we have approved our customer tier and grew the base in each and every one of the tier. Second, I want you to notice one of the tiers, specifically, the one that goes from 4 million to 9 or 9-point something, that has grown from 10 licensees in 2017 to a whopping number of 24 in 2022, meaning we've more than doubled in a very healthy manner. Moving on to Slide 10. While the B2B business is very close to recovering to the revenues of the highs of 2017, the large shift in proportion of revenues generated from regulated markets in 2017 to 2022 is remarkable. This has resulted in a much higher quality, more predictable B2B division with increased visibility. In 2017, we were present in about 13 regulations. And since then, we have continuously launched more and more regulations, so that today, in 2022, we are operating in more than 35 regulations worldwide. As a summary, we have, in fact, replaced income from Asia with income from regulated and highly valuable markets such as Poland, such as Switzerland and many more. As you would see in the slides to come, Edo, Marcus and Jonathan, we have continued to take a healthy share of market in regulated markets as our products and verticals continue to perform better in regulated markets. From a business model perspective, we have also seen a shift to broader range of high-quality business in 2022 compared to 2017. The success of the innovative strategic agreements in LatAm has meant that strategic agreements are now a much larger proportion of the revenue base. The SaaS business model from a standing start now generates 5% of all B2B revenues, and given the contribution margin, is circa 80% at the EBITDA level, this is even higher. Given SaaS is growing incredibly quick, we expect to see this become a big part of the business over the medium term. Finally, and as I mentioned in the important part, we saw an increased demand for the Playtech platform, and that business has grown to 7%. Moving on to Slide 11. Looking in more details in our platform business, we have listened to market needs. We have adopted our strategy around the core IMS. We've opened up our technology and have materially expanded our ecosystem to include third-party content. And this new strategy has proven very successful business to Playtech. Revenue generated from platform in 2017 was EUR 22 million, and it has increased significantly to EUR 43 million in 2022. The fantastic story here is that in 2017, our EUR 22 million income -- or platform income was almost solely based on Entain. And fast forward to 2022, our EUR 43 million income has little to no Entain income, and it is now based on a healthy double-digit number of licensees, even better than that. And going forward, we have a healthy sales pipeline of leading operators, migrating and upgrading to the Playtech platform. Similarly, the number of third-party suppliers that are now integrated to the IMS platform has more than tripled. In 2017, we had circa 30 third-party suppliers connected to our platform. And today, we have over 100. It has turned Playtech platform to become one of the most open platform in the industry while keeping its lead in terms of technology, capabilities and superior ROI to the operators using the Playtech advanced platform. Moving into Slide 12. I've hopefully successfully showed you that in the previous slides, that we have become an increasingly diversified and higher-quality B2B business. On this slide, I want to focus on what we have done from a technical and operational perspective to ensure we have become a more collaborative business. Firstly, we've continuously upgraded our technology and some of the key components of the system, such as our casino engine so that, today, we have most of our income in casino coming from our Newtek. Secondly, we have updated our architecture to make it more open, such that non-Playtech content can be plugged into the Playtech platform. And so today, operators on the Playtech platform can enjoy a super rich content offering from the Playtech studios and in addition, from a long list of non-Playtech studios. Thirdly, and as already described, we have simplified our APIs, so that the open architecture and newer APIs serve to both diversify our platform and to faster integrate with new business. We see both the ability to offer a rich third-party offering in every market and the fast and simple distribution in every market a material strategy for our business going forward. Our platform goal is that the operating using our platform will generate superior ROI over other competitive platforms. If I can go off track for just a second. I think Rafi was just here just minutes ago talking about the power and harnessing the power of the Playtech platform, IMS and products, and this plugs right into it. We strongly believe we have certain to say that we are successful in that and that the Playtech platform gives operators the edge they need over the petition. Let me further add that the market has always recognized Playtech IMS as the superior platform in the industry. The main holdback in the past was not a pricing, but rather the fact IMS was a closed system. Once we have opened up the platform, we have seen a material change in demand for the Playtech platform as a business. We, today, see leading operators and, especially in regulated markets, look to work with a trusted technology partner. And we strongly believe that this has a positive -- that this positive trend will continue into the future. Last but not least, Playtech has also materially improved its Casino RNG income, ex Asia, and has shown and continue to show healthy growth. That is mostly attributed to a successful launch of Playtech own IP brands such as the Age of the Gods and the amazing Fire Blaze as you will see in the next few presentations. I can comfortably say today, the vast majority of Playtech RNG Casino income is based out on Playtech unique IP. Moving on to Slide 13. The chart in this slide, plus the maturity regulation based on years since regulation of online, adjusted for specifics of country against the rate of growth for the online gambling market for a broad selection of countries. What we can see is that those countries that become newly regulated tend to see strong growth early on, which is why it is crucial for operators and technology partners to build the presence in a country that is newly regulated or about to be regulated. However, growth typically slows down after a certain period, which tends to be driven by several factors such as increased competition or regulatory pressure. At this point of time, we are in an advantageous position in multiple countries across the world, which are moving towards regulated gambling or have newly regulated to the sector, which should drive future growth for Playtech over the medium term. Moving into Slide 14. So why are we the go-to technology partner for newly regulated markets? Firstly, we have a broad product offering in the industry from the IMS platform, our PAM, to product verticals, casino, live casino, sports, poker and bingo, this gives the operators in experience in the online segment a one-stop shop for all technology needs. Can I go off track for just a second again. I think I had one of the questions before asked about our product offering, and I think that's one of our strengths. The fact that we have a one-stop shop, and that operators who are very large in retail, we have a huge business in retail. I want to now capitalize or move it into the online and make sure that the business does so much better also in online, also in COVID hits and retail is closed, are actually seeing Playtech as the one-stop shop to go and work with. And we see more and more demand in that direction. So therefore, having the one-stop shop, having the offering is a material part of our business and our core. And you will see later, and I think Mor mentioned it in his presentation as well, and the cross sell that we have. Once we have won the products into the other products, we see as well a material part of the improvement of the business of Playtech in the last 5 years, if I can continue. Secondly, as we would like to outline in the live presentation, we have a high-quality offering in live, the fastest-growing product vertical with amazing content and innovation. Thirdly, our Services division is an incredible knowledge of hub. Playtech has accrued a significant of experience in the gambling industry from partnering with over 100 licensees globally. The advantage that this knowledge and know-how transfer lends to our partners cannot be unstated, particularly for businesses that are new to the online segment. Fourthly, navigating a newly regulated market can be tricky, and there are many pitfalls to be aware of. Playtech, vast amounts of experience that operators can utilize to ensure regulatory is minimized. And finally, both regulators and the gambling industry recognize the importance of developing safer gambling solutions, and Playtech has been at the forefront of this process to ensure gambling customers are able to enjoy the benefits of a safe and secure playing environment. Our safing gambling tools, Playtech Protect, help operators stay ahead of rapidly evolving responsible gambling standards. Moving on to Slide 15. We have diversified our business model. And today, we outlined 3 business models introduced over the past year: strategic agreements, platform and SaaS, as also mentioned by Mor before. Our strategic agreements model has been material pillar of our business. I won't go into too much detail here as Mor will cover it in the LatAm presentation. And as I discussed earlier in my presentation, we have become a more collaborative B2B business over the past 5 years. We have opened up the ecosystem to allow third parties to offer their contents onto our IMS platform. Today, the Playtech Open Platform allows licensees to access thousands of the industry's most popular online, in-house and third-party games at any time across any channel and on any device, licensees on Playtech platform can boast with thousands and more of slots that are disposable. Finally, we have launched our SaaS business model based on new technology that is built of smart and simple APIs, offering quick efficient and easy integration into Playtech products, meaning, unlike in the past where projects took several months and more, today, Playtech can offer its casino, slots, table games its live and its poker in a quick, efficient an easy integration that takes several weeks. And now a vast amount of operators who may have a limited means of resources can easily integrate with Playtech and enjoy its leading products. This not only improves our time to market, but in fact, increases our distribution and significantly increases our addressable market. Further, it also provides a foot in the door where operators can now experience working with Playtech and gradually, over time, provide to Playtech more cross-selling opportunities. This is a hugely attractive business model, one that we've seem to work very well for us. And finally, my last slide, I promise, as a summary, I'd like to say the following: in the last 5 years, we've changed our strategy. We made Playtech B2B much more diversified and hence, much more resilient. We have a healthy pipeline of sales ahead of us, and we see a lot of opportunities in the future coming forward. All the hard work and the fantastic results that you've seen was done by a lot of people across all of Playtech. People who we call family between all of us. And standing here, I know that a lot of them are watching this or will watch that later. I'd like to really extend my thanks and my love to all of you for putting your heart, fo putting all your motivation, for putting a lot of hard work, a lot of weekends and nights to making sure that Playtech is as robust as it is today. So with that, I'd like to thank you as well for your time and patience. I hope that was informative. Next for us is Edo with Live. He will talk about the exciting opportunities. I assure you, the next presentation will be more colorful and more exciting. After that, will come, Jonathan and Marcus and talk about the exciting opportunities in the U.S. And last but not least, Mor will come and talk about LatAm and structured agreements. Without further ado, I move you on to Edo.
Edo Haitin
executiveThank you, Shimon. Hello, everyone. It's great to be here. I'm Edo Haitin, Playtech Live CEO. Some of you already know me, and some of you will know me quite soon. I'm managing the Live Casino business and operation and product globally for Playtech for the last 6 years or so, and been doing it with a lot of passion, love and big vision that we have for Playtech Live within the Playtech organization. I'm going to tell you a little bit about what we are doing these days, what we have been doing in the last few years and give you also maybe a little bit of a glimpse into what we are working on now to reveal in the near future. I think some of the questions you've touched upon some of the areas that we are working in to gather more traffic coming into our tables and how we are doing that and I will, of course, elaborate. And I'll do it without a script. Live is unscripted. So I'm taking upon that task for myself as well. No discounts in Live, and we require ourselves the highest standards not only on the tables, but off the tables as well. Before I start with my presentation, I want to follow what Shimon said, and there is at least a couple of thousand of Playtech employees watching this stream now, including my family also. So I want to extend a big thank you for them for the hard work they've been doing; for the ability for me to stand here and represent what they've been developing, hosting, broadcasting and really providing the best live entertainment today in the world. We've been positioning ourselves quite well in the last few years to start capitalizing on the investments that Playtech has been doing in its Live vertical. We've been focusing a lot on building infrastructure all over the world. Mor spoke about 10 studios that we already have been having. A few of them are already being expanded to host more tables, more experiences; to host different type of live services and products; and to really do that on the highest level of delivery. We are looking to do more of that in the near future. And to do that, we need our team to be at its best shape. Our most important investment is in our team. We like to have smiles on our tables, smiles off the tables. And the human aspect of Playtech Live is what leads us to where we are today. The innovation that positions us in the market is not only in the technology, it's also in the creativity. It's in allowing people to think big, and it's in getting them to produce the best products in the world. We are investing a lot in building those products. In the U.S., in LatAm, in the rest of the world. We've been monitoring the progress of our products and their popularity and we are quite satisfied with the results we've been shown today. A lot of it is coming from investments that we've been doing in the last few years. And a lot of it will come in the near future and will be more and more visible. Live Markets set to expand rapidly. I think this is something that you all are aware of. The live product has been very, very popular in the last few years. We've been all seeing other companies doing very well. We've been seeing Playtech live doing very well. And we believe that this is only the beginning. We believe that live is not only a place for players to place a chip and wait for the result. We believe that live is a place for communities all over the world to get cultural entertainment in the way that respect them, in the way that allows them to spend time to come back, to get fun in the palm of their hands from their home. In COVID, it was very obvious that people cannot leave home. After COVID, we've been still seeing big rides in the popularity of our games. That is because we are offering people the entertainment that they are after. Video is on demand. We are seeing it in Instagram, in TikTok, in YouTube. Streamers all over the world, all of us are consuming video. This thing is now being live broadcast as a video transition. That means that people are still in the know-how of sorry, in the lookout of entertainment, which is live, which is video-oriented, and that's what we are trying to give them. We're not looking to provide people with platforms that they cannot play with yet. We want to give them entertainment that respects them and is available for them to play. We are focused on taking market share. We've been doing that for the last 2 years, and we are leaders in regulated markets. A few markets all over the world already seen our products as being the most popular ones. And we're doing that first of all, by targeting expansion in strategic markets of that type. You can see here a few pictures and we've been talking a lot about techs and people were leaving the [indiscernible] here. I'll focus on what you're seeing because live is, first of all, what the eyes are seeing. And in the middle, you can see the example of the Jet Set Racing Roulette. We've been launching that. We launched that a couple of weeks back. And this is a big Playtech project, which connects different verticals within Playtech, the virtual sport and live. And we are doing more and more of these projects to connect the dots within Playtech to find the value to unlock value within Playtech bringing it to the front of stage with Playtech live with our products. Dedicated services are also very, very much in the center of what we do, and we are proud to say that we are probably the best in the world of doing so. In the picture over there, you can see on the top, our famous Caliente Studio, streaming from Romania. At the bottom, you can see an OPAP studio fully in Greek, streaming from Romania as well. Both of these markets, we are market leaders, clear ones. And that is because we are providing an entertainment, which is focused to the territory that we are streaming to. The product are focused on the people that are consuming them. We are not bringing our agenda and pushing it down the throat of our operators. We're trying to look for the value that they need in their business and to supply exactly that. If it's a sports business, we supply more sports-oriented live product, bespoke games, everything that B2B service that we are providing can empower our partners to make more with our products and to have their players more relating to the brand where they are playing for. Innovation. Innovation is a big word and people are throwing it a lot. And we've been blamed in the past we're not being innovative enough. I think that came from a place that's not understanding innovation and what it is. Innovation is not only developing the latest technology. It's about using the right technology at the right time with the right audience, is about making the technology accessible, fun, allowing people to have fun. That's a big word in the gambling industry. Is gambling fun? Is losing fun? We don't know. You need to ask, but we think that we can make it a fun entertainment experience where people pay for the time spent rather than wait for the results to come. We want people to feel respected when they sit at our tables, and we are doing that with a lot of innovation, as we said. First of all, we are losing technology. Yes, the good old technology that always is used for innovation. Augmented reality, we mentioned here, we are the first ever company that uses augmented reality in real time that affects its games. We are doing it for a few games already in a row. We have launched the virtual sport Roulette, the Jet Set that I mentioned earlier. And we're also doing that with bringing our services into more accessible places and more relatable ones. At the top here, you can see our landmark studio in Scheveningen, Holland, in Holland Casino, a Landmark Casino in Scheveningen. This aquarium shaped studio is serving not only as a place for people to play online. It's serving as an entertainment piece for the visitors of the casino that can see it from the outside, get entertained and maybe also play from home. This studio is not the only one that we have from that sort. We have a similar one in Zurich and Switzerland and more to come. Below that studio, you can see a different type of innovation that we're bringing for Playtech live. Again, treating its lobby is the main entertainment hub, is a place where people come, spend time, just like you enter a casino, and you have the table, you have the bar and you have a few slots. We integrated Quickspin recently, and now we are offering Quickspin slots at the moment, only slot of course, in the live lobby. That is allowing people to get a better funnel when they come to the Playtech live lobby, Mind you that is probably -- or not probably the second most visited real estate in gaming today. And that real estate is where we are building our business from. The lobby is providing an experience for a player from the minute he comes into until the minutes he goes out of the lobby. We measure highly the funnel that the players are taking within our lobby, how they get from a game to game. What is the game of choice when they enter the lobby, what is the game of choice that they go out of the lobby, and we make sure that our lobby experience is maybe even finer than the Netflix one. We've all been looking around the Netflix lobby a long time, not finding always what we want to see. We are trying to bring players into our lobby and bring in front of them content that they want to play. More than that, we're trying to bring in front of them content that they don't have to pay to all the time, like Trivia that I will speak about a bit later. We are trying to create a full-blown entertainment experience, and we are doing so these days. At the bottom, you can see another pillar of our strategy in entertainment, and this is our branded content. And not just branded content, we are aiming at the most known and relatable branded content in the world, focusing on game shows. Game show have been an instrumental piece in our growth, especially in the growth of players. I want to speak a little bit about the question that was raised before about how we are seeing almost 100% increase of players and a relatively lower increase in bets. That is because we are bringing a lot of gains of traffic that is there to interact with our games in a non-gambling manner. What does it mean? We'll speak about it probably in the next Investors Day. But we are definitely looking into monetizing big traffic, much bigger scale than we are seeing in the gambling world and opening our services into people that want to interact with video, that want to watch video and also participate in the transition that they are seeing. This is a big shift in entertainment that we are seeing around the world. This is not specific for one territory, and we definitely are acquiring brands that will help us to get there and provide those gains and those experiences for players all over the world. A little bit on where we are to date in terms of territories because we mentioned infrastructure and we mentioned innovation and [ Sandeep ], you don't mind if I go there because I feel a bit locked over here. We have more than 300 tables worldwide, streaming 24/7. This is not something to take for granted, 300 tables playing now as we speak, people are on the tables. Tens of thousands of players are playing concurrently and increasing every day. That is being done from the 10 live studios that we have to date. Three of them are already built in the U.S. The third in Pennsylvania will go live in a couple of months. It's already fully built and ready to go, and we are training teams and recruiting teams over there. We're taking the time to build the products as they should be in the U.S. And that is very important to understand. New Jersey and Michigan studios are fully operational, but we have built much more than we are showing to date. We have built our best-seller products on the U.S. soil. Fire Blaze Roulette went live in Michigan actually a week ago, which is the #1 game for Playtech across all verticals, and that is already showing very, very satisfying player values within the Michigan state. Next in line will be Adventures Beyond Wonderland, which is in the most popular game that we have with the biggest traffic numbers that we are seeing. This is already built and ready to go in New Jersey. Same thing will go to Pennsylvania, and we will equip the state markets in the U.S. with our best products and not just supply the core games and look at the American consumer as sort of let's say, only a gambler. We will look at the American consumer as a consumer that wants to consume entertainment, that wants to consume respectable time and not just to lose on a blackjack table. Our studios in Spain and in Switzerland and in Netherlands are, of course, allowing us to get control on these markets. I think our leadership in Spain is outstanding. We are holding more than 50% of that market, and we are doing so not for the first year. That is only our wallet market. And still, we are the only company that has managed to innovate itself and launch a non-wallet product within the Spanish market. We have our patent pending live slots already live in Spanish, in the Spanish market. We are the only company that have done that. In Switzerland, we have our Zurich Casino studio, which allows us to stream again, Swiss-oriented content with local dealers that provides the right cultural experience and the right service to the market. In the United Kingdom, we already have 2 tables streaming, not far away from here with more tables to be built over there. In Romania, our second largest studio to date, we are doubling up and we are working on an expansion that will allow us to stream double the amount of tables that we have there now. Latvia, where I'm located, our headquarters hosting almost 200 tables to date and growing as well. And of course, our last build studio last launch studio in Peru, holding already full in its common capacity and we are tripling the capacity of that studio to be launched this year in around 3 months, the new tables will come in the new area. I'm a product guy, a management guy and people's person, but you here for numbers. And we are definitely proud to show our numbers this year. I think that the revenues increase is clear, and it's nice, but I'm going to focus on the players increase because we are here to serve people, we're here to serve audience, and we are here to bring them value. If they're coming to our tables, if they consume video and you can see the hours of content streamed, how we jumped, that is the correlation to the jump-in players. People are consuming our content. We are not only selling gambling services. We are, first of all, selling content, time spent, entertainment, getting use -- people are getting used to consuming our services as time spent, not only as gambling. And we are definitely learning from the data that we are gathering how to monetize on that already learned. And this will be, again, something that we will expose in the future. The stuff that we're working on now are definitely going to allow us to diversify and to get more sustainable revenue into our innovation of live casino. Competitive advantage: Obviously, I think that our vision is different. We're thinking different than the other major competitor in the market. We respect them a lot. And they are focused on one thing we are doing that and focused on also other things. First of all, entertainment as mentioned, but not only, we are looking to provide our gambling services in a way that people want to interact with them these days. First example, our live slots, patent pending as well already live for 4 years and been expanding its popularity dramatically in the last two. What is live slot? It's a community game and community is a word that we don't hear a lot in gambling, but it's actually the most relevant word to date. All the big wins that we are seeing, all the YouTube videos are around community wins, not about a singular win, everybody winning together, also sometimes losing together but having an experience together and that's what we are trying to tap into creating a more mass unified community experience that people feel less alone, the loneliness feeling is something that we definitely measured as a high concern by our users during COVID, but that haven't stopped when COVID ended, people want to be at their home, but still feel that they are part of something. People want to play less alone and more with other people. They want to go and everybody knows their name or where everybody has the same problems. They want to play together. They don't want just to risk their money. They want to pay for an experience. Another advantage or differentiation, as you want to call it. And last -- a couple of weeks ago, I was in New York and some of you were there. And I heard one of the players in the market actually mentioned that bespoke games are not the right economical model for live casino. We think differently. And this differentiation in our offering has led us to create some of the most popular games on our licensees websites. Bottom there, you can see well, well, well where we empowered and attain with their own full-blown, not a risk in, not some kind of a side project full blown game show that is aimed at a more U.K. market audience and is developed in that way and all of the theme is around that market. Hence, the popularity that this game is achieving. Fabio, welcome. It's good to see. I've been saying that we are market leaders in regulated markets. Here are a few examples. All of them are definitely European, but we don't intend to stop in Europe. In Spain, I've mentioned, we are more than 50% of the market, in Italy 44%. And in Greece, we are more than 40% of the market. None of these deals are exclusive. All of these markets, we are leading by choice. In Greece, all of our licenses have other live providers on their websites, including the one that you have in mind, all of them. But still, we are gathering a bigger market share. Why is that? Because of the localized services we are giving to our clients in those markets. Greece has been a true success story for Playtech live and we've been doing that through the dedicated tables, through the dedicated games that we are equipping our clients with. Our Greek speaking dealers are the best of its type, and they are bringing the players to the tables. Pieces of furniture, [indiscernible] are all great. We have those as well. But the smile, the personal attention, the ability to entertain while deal because you are respected in the back office of the studio that is what sets us apart. And that is what sets us apart also in those markets. In Greece specifically, we also launched localized game show content. Last year, we launched who wants to be a millionaire, Greek version for the Kaizen Group. And we are taking the model from the TV of capitalizing on concepts throughout the markets, throughout the different languages and offering them to the local audience. Again, respecting the local audience, giving them a return for the money they put on the table. And that's why they are choosing our tables. Market well, we are still not market leaders, the U.S., but we intend to be -- and the upside is definitely ahead of us. Yes, we came second to the market. We are well aware of where we are, and that is partly our source of success, we are not shying away from what we've been doing late or wrong or need to do better. That is what we've been doing from the first moment I've entered in Playtech live. We've looked carefully inside to see what we need to improve, what our players are after and how we can create different value for our operators. And in the U.S., we're going to do exactly that. We've been taking the time that we've been allowed to take because we came a bit late to build infrastructure. And infrastructure in live sets the tone for many years and after. Our studios are the most state-of-the-art studios in the U.S. We have our best gaming experiences already built on the ground, as I mentioned earlier. And we are launching more and more licenses. We in Michigan, we are already live with 8 parks and poker stars. In New Jersey, we're already live with bet365, our beloved worldwide partner, and parks and more licenses are to be launched this month, next month and in the months after. I can assure you that you're going to see all of the major players consuming our products as well and us providing them the value that they need in the American market and in the state market, as we do around the world. Nonetheless, we are not looking away from the fact that the market -- American market that we are all talking about is not really the American market, right? Is a state-by-state market. And is there a place for live to serve the whole American market? Should we start treating live as a technology solution rather as a casino solution -- and that is exactly what we've been doing. Our live platform is the most advanced live platform in the world. It's built on top of the [ IX ]. It could be also delivered without, but the capabilities that we have are unique not only in the [ live scale ], but globally, live platform is not only for the gambling services that we are providing today. And in the U.S., for the U.S. market, we definitely have the opportunity to show that in the future. Going back to the present, another huge success of Playtech live in the last 2 years, and I think that's very visible, our LatAm market expansion and leadership. We are all talking about the soon-to-be regulated Brazilian market. We're an absolute leader of that market. I think the numbers are well clear, the popularity of our tables. And again, it all starts from a bit of a Bossa Nova that we are playing on our Brazilian Roulette being the most popular table in the market. We're looking to create the right experience for the Brazilian player, and we are doing so and the success is there. In the middle, you can see Spin A Win Wild Brasileiro streaming 24/7 from our Peru Studio, again, a game that was created for the Brazilian player with the elements that they know from their culture and again, giving them the respect that they need and that they want when they are putting their money on our tables. And that's why they are coming back. Content-led innovation is something that we've been doing dramatically well in the last few years, I might say. And that is shown from the different variants and formats that we've launched. First of all, I will start with Everybody's Jackpot, a game, which is the first of its kind mini-verse game, actually offering a community experience of a jackpot. We are all talking about the importance of jackpots and how those can be life-changing for one person and really frustrating for the others. So we are turning it around. And our Everybody's Jackpot is actually paying for everybody which is on the table. Everybody wins. Just like Oprah Winfrey, everybody gets a car because that's the experience. And you all laugh now because that's the positive vibe that we want on our tables, everybody wins, not huge amounts because it's everyone. But let's have an experience, let's write about it in the chat. Let's come back together, hey, I saw you yesterday on the jackpot, that was great. Let's come back tomorrow. We meet people from all over the world, and we see those trends on our tables. We analyze chat dramatically. We learn a lot about our players and our business from the chat. And those kind of products are a direct result of that analysis of data. The data is not only in the numbers. We see a lot of data in live in words. If it's good, if it's bad, if it's working, if it's not, and we are improving and not shying away from that feedback, a lot of providers that I know doesn't really like to win the chats, blocks players. We let them go as long as they keep the language same and honorable for our presenters, we'll let them go if something is not working well, you should tell us. I should deal about that. I should not silence them my players, and that's the result where we are providing concepts that are immediately popular. Another concept that we are going to launch very soon on the success of who wants to be a millionaire is another AAA branded content from Sony with our Jumanji experience coming in 2 months. Jumanji, the bonus level is the name of the game. And that's going to be the biggest game show that the world has ever seen. It's going to be launched firstly in Riga, streaming to all over the world. And next year, we are launching this also in the U.S. for the U.S. market. Jumanji who wants to be a millionaire and other brands of that type clearly shows the path that we are after entertainment, global known brands, brands that create that feeling in your stomach, that you want to play, that you know what you're going to get and brands that allows us to bring more people into our services, more people into our games and allowed them to have great experiences. A few examples that are already working for us very well. First of all, Mega Fire Blaze Roulette, that I just mentioned was launched last week in Michigan. This is not just a game for us. Obviously, this is the #1 game in Playtech, producing very big numbers for us daily. and we've capitalized on that IP in a very original manner. We all know dedicated tables. Why that's already been there, done that. But what's the future of dedicated tables. How much of a table with the brand can sell, how much that could be innovative for us to advise our partners to do that. We don't. We advise them to take less 7 seaters. We advise them to take more scalable [indiscernible]. It's a solution that saves money for both operators and increase our margins. We advise our operators to not just take a dedicated simple roulette and offer that next to the most exciting roulettes that we and our friends from across the street offer. We advise them to take Fire Blaze dedicated roulette, creating a new standard in dedicated roulettes that every brand in the world has, but creating more value through that to the brand. Why? Because the concept of Fire Blaze is popular. A build of that is very cost efficient, and the number speak for themselves. In Spain, that allowed us, of course, to be the complete #1 provider in the market, and we are happily saying that this is not only the case in Spain. In Greek, I mentioned who wants to be a millionaire dedicated for Kaizen Group doing very, very well and more and more games that we are doing that are specifically approaching a niche audience if it's the Italian audience or any other country around the world. Bespoke. I've mentioned that we are doing that, and I've mentioned how much it gives value for our operators. You can see a partial list of our products that have been developed in a bespoke manner for our licensees. You can see the diversity of type of products, and that's only partial lease, as I've mentioned. We are doing more games this year with the same partners, meaning there is an economical model behind it. And our approach is B2B. We do not have an agenda that we are pushing our operators. We are not driving them to do mistakes for their business. We are here to help them grow their business and not just force them to use certain products and not just force them to do things that will make them look exactly like their competitor, differentiation through innovation that is what we are offering to our partners. And we've been doing that. This is not only a slogan. And those games part of them are the most popular games on the licensees websites. Going back to Fire Blaze. Again, offering value to our licensees, not only through the network products. You can see very clearly and very openly licensees that have dedicated Mega Fire Blaze Roulettes as their headline dedicated roulette, not just a branded entailed roulette, but a literal Fire Blaze one. Holland Casino has the same. That's on [indiscernible] Caliente. All of these are having the dedicated roulettes with the standard of Fire Blaze. And our intention is to create that standard all over the world, also in the U.S. But Fire Blaze has been more for us than just a roulette. We recently launched Fire Blaze Blackjack and very soon, next month, we are launching our Portuguese version of Fire Blaze Lucky Ball, which is our [indiscernible] version for Fire Blaze. This will be fully hosted in Portuguese by the way, from our Peru studio. Skill based in gaming with Live Trivia. Live Trivia has been an instrumental part of our success. It's been driving enormous amounts of traffic to our tables, to our lobby for the last 4 years. We've been developing that vertical systematically. And here, you can see our latest delivery in that vertical, which is who wants to be a millionaire Live Trivia. This is a completely nonwagering product I want to emphasize. We are offering that daily on our lobby. We are offering that only for the sake of the fun time that our players are getting in the lobby, creating a fair experience, an inviting experience. Our lobby is not only a place you lose money or spend money. You spend time. If you want, you can also spend money. You can also just win money on the Trivia and spend that and come back tomorrow for another Trivia entertainment hub. Fairness. This is a global recession time. We are not only looking at safer gambling. We are looking at fair gaming. What does it mean? Offering freedom to the players. You all know multiplier roulettes. In the past, everybody has to bet, straighter bet, right? We ask ourselves why? Why make the players lose more. And we -- in Fire Blaze we indeed develop the option to bet any type of bet, line bet, split, corner, everything can go to the bonus. You are not forced like in other providers of products to lose money or to risk more than you want in order to participate in the fun parts. The fun parts are there for you. All of our games are allowing you to interact even if you're not betting within the game. If you play who wants to be a millionaire roulette, you can still play the millionaire round even if you haven't participated in the round. You haven't risked a cent, but you can still play on our games, creating warm feeling, home feeling and a place that you want to return, that Trivia and the rapid launch of products that we are doing and the innovation that we are bringing into that, also creating an anticipation with our audience, what's new. What they have released this week. And we are trying to make sure that our lobby will be at least somehow different, almost every week for the players that we have. This is not just a place that holds games. It's a live place, and we make sure that we extend the experience of coming to the lobby, when we were speaking yesterday, a little bit sorry, today about AI use -- and definitely, you're going to see that in the live lobby very, very soon. We all know that when you enter a casino, people approach you, maybe you want to sit here, maybe you want to sit there, maybe you want to drink. If you're in our live lobby, we also want somebody to approach you. We also want you not to be intimidated and run away. We want you to sit down, relax, maybe watch a little bit of games, then decide if you want to play if you're already an experienced player, we could take you directly to your table. And that technology is already something that we embedded. We are working on it. We are testing it. And our host is going to be a very, very surprising character. Besides our regular innovation and our work to deliver more products, more studios, we understood that we want to do much more things and that live business, the live vertical is growing not only up, but also to the sides. And there are many, many types of products that we see, live product that we see from our vantage point that people want to play that people don't even know yet that they want to play because that's natural extension of what they're playing today. The game shows the variance of roulettes, all of the technology embedded in that. The new audiences come from social media, the new audiences that played video games, they want to play video games. They want to play regular games. They don't want just the hard core casino-oriented designs. And we've looked -- as we always do, like we've done with the virtual sport product, we've looked inside of Playtech to connect the dots. And we say, hey, there is a really talented bunch of people producing amazing content in Stockholm. Next to our neighbors. We took them inside our Playtech Live family. We integrated them into our lobby, and we are already offering here in the U.K. Quickspin slots within the live lobby. Another category on the same lobby, Roulette, Blackjack, baccarat, or slots. That's the first step. In the meantime, we are developing Quickspin live first game. And Quickspin Live is a sub-brand of Quickspin that we established not long ago. We announced it. And the first game would be Big Bad Wolf. And you can see the first images already here. This game is going live in June and will be a completely different live experience tailored for slot players, tailored to bring more audience into the live vertical from the other verticals and for places that are not even gambling. From video games and social games from everywhere that people want to interact with content, through games, we want them to play live. Big Bad Wolf will be string from Riga, but it's completely developed and distributed by Quickspin. It will be available through the Playtech live lobby and through Quickspin regular integrations, existing integrations, meaning that Playtech, not only Playtech live Playtech as a whole is going to catch much more floor space within the live casino space. We're going to be much more competitive, we're going to have more entry points to our lobby, and we're going to produce more content and more variety of content, more types of content that will suit more audiences around the world. Below the Big Bad Wolf, you can see the new Adventures Beyond the Wonderland slot game, which means that we will also have Quickspin performed at the RNG of Playtech live producing content which is suitable and sort of matching what we are offering on the live product. Obviously, Wonderland has been our most popular game, having a slot that correlates with that game, taking features, characters and all the spirit of that game is obviously something that we should have released some time ago. We're going to release it this year and the experience will allow players, of course, to jump from the RNG game directly to the live game, back to the RNG and, of course, also play both at the same time to the convenience of our players. Quickspin Live will not only focus on slots and a Big Bad Wolf. It will produce more games. And as we roll more games, the strategy of what we are doing with Quickspin will be a bit clearer. It is not something that is going to compete with the core games and products that we are doing in Playtech live but it's going to complement and make sure that we have a full array of products, whether those are streaming products, whether those are live whole services, whether it's any type of live interaction that we can embed with other products within the Playtech Arsenal and definitely use our talent in Stockholm over there to create the highest level of content. We are not aiming to create more of the same. This is not just another in, let's say, development arm for me to release my dreams into the market. This is definitely something that brings the essence of Quickspin that you all know. The company is producing very highly finished products, design level, which is the highest standard of the industry. And that is the standard we are trying to bring. We are not bringing in a company to create a sub-brand, but actually an upper brand of quality. I think that beyond Quickspin, beyond the innovation game shows, it's important to understand that we are looking at the platform of live beyond the core games beyond putting a chip and waiting for the result. We are looking at sustainable revenue that will allow us to dream even bigger. We definitely see that we have a platform that is not existing anywhere else. Disney doesn't have a live platform, for example, and they definitely need one. And I think that live games and live experiences and the ability for us to bring him in this room now into a live experience and having all of you play within 10 seconds within any device that you have, and we've demonstrated that before is the future of where we are taking live. To bring it everywhere and to supply the right service to the right audience. And doing that, I believe, will take us into the next few years. Maybe a few questions before I pass on the torch.
Jonathan Doubilet
executiveIt's pretty clear that I don't have a script, I guess. But unlike Edo, who's also unscripted, it's not going to be as entertaining unfortunately. I'm not boring, but it's hard to follow up in your act, Edo Doing well, yes. So I do have some talking points or I start with these. So for anybody who doesn't know me, my name is Jonathan Doubilet. I'm the Managing Director of Playtech for the U.S. region. I've been with the company for roughly 11 years, bounced from capacity to capacity within different roles within the company. I've lived actually in Tel Aviv. I lived in Vienna and currently in New York City. And one thing that I've come here to basically instill within you today is basically that we're in America, we are established. I might be employee #1, but we number over 130 personnel today. And I think there's no better way to basically broadcast that than by flying in the American representatives. So I'll jump into things here by going to the first slide, which I apparently control. Right. I'm glad I got a laugh out of that. This is basically a summary slide, all right, just to get to the point here. These are the main -- let's say, these are the milestones that we want to focus on. These are the messages we want to get out, I want to leave here with all of you having confidence in Playtech's ability to deliver in the states. That's definitely what my strategy is. Again, I'll mention that our presence is established. We have multiple offices, infrastructure. We have server set up across the U.S., personnel covering every different role necessary. And I mean, for those of you that don't know, we're going to focus on what we know, okay? Casino RNG, live dealer, that's a bread and butter, all right? It's not to say we're not going to do sports. We're doing sports as we speak and other verticals. But all in all, we know casino best and we always have, and we're going to focus on that spearheaded growth. We have to take into consideration the relative size of the U.S. market. We're talking about the #2 largest iGaming and sports betting market in the world, all right? And we're just getting started there behind the U.K. ahead of Australia already. All right? Those are the 2022 figures. And to give you even more confidence, we have access to about 79% of the current iGaming market within the United States. We have contracts or pending contracts, we have projects that are ongoing, which give us access to that amount. So what does 79% mean? Well, at the end of the day, in 2022 numbers, that's $4.2 billion in GGR. Another thing that I'll run by you is that our games are performing really well. When I first came over to the U.S., basically, I was asked, Playtech game is going to perform here. They're built for a different market. I won't tell you the truth thing. They really do. What's catching in the U.K., in Europe and LatAm easily translates over to the U.S. You don't need to have a retail brick-and-mortar slot machine on the floor in order for that to translate this successful online, all right? Obviously, that doesn't hurt, but I'll go into more detail about that in a minute. Also capturing wallet share. Again, releasing premium games, whether that be bespoke. All of our great content is actually just getting going. We've been up and running for a few years now with that MGM but that was just the start, and that wasn't even with the premium content that I'm talking about. Our GPAS content, which I'm going to speak about in a few slides from now. And then perhaps a bold statement, but I believe and I am targeting top 5 status. What does that mean? The #1 most reliable industry analysts within the United States who tracks all slot, it's called [indiscernible], was referenced, I believe, by [ Rafi ]. So [indiscernible] have a report, 50 best slots, right, 50 best table games, everything. I do believe, and I firmly believe that we're going to be in the top 5 suppliers, if not even greater than that. Top 3 right now are scientific games or sorry, Light & Wonder, IGT, Evolution/[ Net end]. There's a few others, very respectable competitors of ours. But yes, honestly said we're going to be there, and I have no doubt about that. Retail potential, we'll talk about a bit that was demonstrated via the rollout of SSBTs for the first time in the U.S. by Playtech. And then obviously, which we've mentioned numerous times, but I can't stress it enough. Our investment in Hard Rock Digital it's not just an investment. It's basically a message and is doubling down on our investment in the U.S. market and our commitment to making U.S. relevant and highly performing games and products there. Right. So where are we? Again, I was employee #1. But again, 130 people strong today. We have 3 studios, one of them under construction. We have headquarters in New York City, that's finished construction, but awaiting accreditation. We have a mixture of existing Playtech colleagues and experts from other companies that have been operating within the U.S. for near on decades. Together with them, we've built up what we think is a very powerful portfolio. We've come through the 500-plus games and titles that we have within Playtech's repertoire. And we found what we know is going to work. And we've actually done some AB testing and some trials to make sure of that. So this map just gives you an idea of where we are mainly clustered in the Northeast, but we'll see more on that in a second. Establishing a reputation in the U.S. was something that we set out to do from day 1, okay? We wanted to get off on the right foot. We are not an American company, unlike some competitors that we have but we wanted to show that we can operate equally well as an American company would. Some of the ways that we approach doing this were increasing visibility, obviously. And actually working with some of the largest media outlets within the states. So we have high-profile contacts and coverage by publications such as the Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Edo is a regular on there actually. We have to check that out. And I appear from time to time, again, a little bit less -- a little bit more boring than the Edo's guys. But aside from that, what we're championing or what we're positioning ourselves to do in the U.S. or positioning ourselves to be looked upon as is a thought leader in responsible gambling okay? No other B2B supplier within the U.S. is positioning themselves as such, certainly not at the scale of Playtech relative to size. So we're doing that by working together with institutions such as the UNLV. Responsible Gambling Council of Canada. And by the way, I'm not here to just speak about the U.S., actually, Canada as well, originally from Canada, if you were wondering why I don't have an Israeli accent. Yes. So Canada is being covered here, too, and let's not forget that, and you'll see that as well in the coming slides. But basically, we're getting great coverage. We're being seen as a great supplier, a great partner to work with. And essentially, again, a thought leader in places that matter more going forward. This is a big slide for me. Basically, this breaks down what the U.S. ecosystem looks like as of 2022. Okay? The overall -- excluding in-house sports betting, all right, and I'll get to this in a second, why we're kind of removing this from the addressable market. But excluding in-house sports betting, we're looking at a $6.2 billion market. Okay. And that's primarily based upon 3 states at the moment. And why do I say 3 states? Well, iGaming is legal in 6 states. Delaware has a MONOPOLY through the lottery, which is really limits everything, and it's a very small state. You have Las Vegas or sorry, Nevada, where you have poker-only. But when we talk about iGaming states today, we have Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Michigan, all in which we are licensed and operational. You also have Connecticut and West Virginia, and we'll get to those. But what am I saying here is basically total iGaming Playtech access, that's how it's labeled. What I would say is our market access within the U.S. is equivalent to about $4.2 billion in GGR, okay? That is exclusive to 3 states that I just mentioned for iGaming purposes, the outstanding or unsecured access all right, consists of a handful of operators. Literally in the last year, and I can't be prouder of our company, our international salespeople, our local salespeople, we've come together, and we've managed to basically secure a large actually the majority of the market. So from a contractual perspective, I have no fear, okay? So a handful of operators that are left that we still get the sign. But also the 2 additional states that I mentioned, West Virginia and Connecticut. Frankly speaking, we will go there. I mean there's no doubt about it. But I really have to deliver in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, where we're already situated up and running first. What does that mean? Getting all the integrations in place, getting us in that top 5 bracket and then, of course, I can think about West Virginia and Connecticut, all right? There's also more to come, which we'll go over in the next slide. The only other thing that I'll mention here that I didn't address is actually the sports betting market. And I'm not going to downplay it. It makes all the headlines. But you'll see in a second why I'm not talking about it at length. We have, as I mentioned, rolled out retail sports betting in Ohio for the first time and why Ohio because it has a distributed gaming model, which is much like what you'll see in a lot of European countries, any alcohol serving institution is eligible for a gambling license and can place an SSBT within their premises. And this is something that is very conducive to the types of products that we have. We have over 50,000 SSBTs distributed worldwide. Well, now we have 50,100 and 100 of those are in Ohio right now. And I'm actually proud to say as well that on a per machine per day basis, we're generating more GGR than anybody else. So that gives me very positive a lot of confidence going forward and saying that we will strategically deploy sports betting when and where it makes sense, when and where it's profitable. The elephant in the room that I just mentioned, prior to retail. The in-sourced sports betting market in the U.S. comprises roughly 96% to 97% of the addressable sports betting market. Simply put, these tracking [indiscernible], BetMGM, Caesars. They all have their own in-house platforms. So that's not really a target for me. I'm going to go back to the bread-and-butter approach, iGaming. There's a little bit of that that's being done in-house, but it will never be fully out. It will always have an outsourced component to it -- so market expectations. Everybody is asking what's going to happen in the States, when is iGaming going to be sweeping the country. The answer is slow. For every one state where iGaming is present, there's 5 states where sports betting is present. And it will continue like that. Within 5 years' time, we're going to get to 48 states legalized. Okay? Obvious exclusions are the mormon states of Utah, Idaho as well as I would imagine Hawaii, but that could also change. But this slide, what is this all about here? It's actually showing that despite the fact that the ratio of iGaming states -- or sorry, sports betting states to iGaming states is heavily favoring sports betting states, 5:1, 50% approximately, just under 50% right now, if not around there is being generated by iGaming. And I'm talking about the GGR here. So for every $1 being generated in a given sports betting state, there's $5 being generated in an iGaming state. Okay? And that says something about our strategy and why we're choosing to focus in on iGaming. And there is light at the end of the tunnel. There is a bright light actually. New York has frequently discussed -- politicians in New York have frequently discussed and tabled bills to legalize iGaming. Senators Addabbo and Assemblyman Pretlow, people who have actually developed a very good relationship with are very adamant that this is the next big source of income for them, and they know that they're losing out to neighboring New Jersey. Now when we're talking about New York specifically, we're talking about what's estimated to be at about $2.8 billion per annum in GGR. That's no laughing number, okay? The country of Spain is about 1/3 of that. So just one state legalizing gives us 3 Spains, and I'm pretty happy to work on that and expand there. I won't mention much else here, but I think you get the point and the gist of what we're going at. Why are we focusing our strategy primarily on iGaming because that's where the money is. From a B2B perspective, at least. To give you an idea, I mean, again, not just that we're established and we have employees and experts. But we're also licensed. We're in actually 9 jurisdictions today licensed. We're up and operational in 5. 3 of those are iGaming/sports betting states and a number of those are sports betting only states where we've rolled out our IMS PAM. And as mentioned, in Ohio, where we recently rolled out our SSBTs. I'm not going to forget the great province of Ontario which is actually larger by land mass than any other of these states here. But it's -- admittedly, the population is only about 35 million sorry, 26 million not a small number. But everything is mainly clustered around the Northeast, and I think that's the trend that we're going to continue to see. And again, we'll expand out from where we are, those 3 states. And wherever we see a strategic opportunity. What you see highlighted here in orange are planned or projected by 2025 or I'd say, 2025 states where we would like to be licensed. I point out here, Connecticut. I point out here New York and potentially Florida. There's a lot happening in Florida. There's a lot of gaming that goes on in Florida as we speak. And I don't see any reason for us not to get licensed. We'll have to find a compelling reason sometime soon. I think we could. We very well could. But aside from that, we're also getting licenses right now in Indiana as well as West Virginia. West Virginia being a state that allows for iGaming today and again, one that we're going to expand into. And Indiana being one that is constantly trying to pass bills to legalize iGaming. I do believe that it will happen in the next year or 2. And it's a state not much smaller than Michigan. And again, it's expected to generate something on par with the country of Spain. So another state we don't want to forget about. All right. So the question in your heads is -- okay, where are the numbers, where is Playtech, great, you have all these contracts signed. I called last year, the year of signatures, the year of doing of commercial activities. This year is a year of delivery, okay? This year is where we complete our integrations, where we've already demonstrated that with PokerStars in Michigan as recently, they even launched a dedicated table, I believe if you don't. Yes. Good fact check. PokerStars in Michigan, Sports Illustrated Casino, which is actually owned by 888 Holdings, betPARX in Ohio. And I can safely say that we have upwards of a dozen different integration projects going on at the moment. And the idea would be to address -- to take that 71% of the market that we say or is it at 79% -- regardless, I think it's 71% that we have secured and basically deliver and the -- what that will culminate in is, again, that top 5 strategy. Once we are integrated, once we are live with all the market access that we have, I'm very confident that we will be within that top 5 slots ranking, if not higher, okay with it, if not top 4, top 3 even, it's possible. Not going to talk much more about that. The last thing I'm going to say, and this really underpins the confidence in that top 5 projection or target is that we've actually taken our games, and we've AB tested them. We've trialed them. What does that mean? We have betPARX using our games and our platform in 3 different jurisdictions. We have NorthStar Bets using our games in Ontario. We're able to look at our games side-by-side being compared with the games of likes of IGT, Evolution, et cetera, you name it, all right? And from the sample, which is not a small sample, it's not insignificant whatsoever. We consistently maintain around a 17% to 18% wallet share through our slots. How is that going to translate when it's not on our platform? It will be a bit less than that for sure. But it gives me, and I think it should give everybody a lot of confidence that Playtech, especially our Mega Fire Blaze games, that's actually a standout item here. But the Fire Blaze games, actually, when we compare them to other classics like Capital Gains, Cleopatra, which are ranked at #9 and 11 in the Eilers & Kreijcik's rankings. Our games are actually outperforming those games. We have games ahead of those in ranking. So again, it all falls down to, yes, we have content that works, that competes with local established industry stalwarts from the brick-and-mortar industry. So once those integrations are up and running, once you connect those with all the market access we have, and once you take into consideration that we're performing with a 17% wallet share, again on our platform, so probably slightly lower. There really is potential and a big chunk of that $4.2 billion addressable market could be coming our way. All right. I'm going to cut it there. And basically, how I've -- we've divided this up, I'm going to introduce my esteem colleague, Marcus Yoder. He's our Chief Commercial Officer for the United States. This represented right now where we've come to, where we stand as of now, what we've accomplished in the U.S. and Marcus' commercial acumen, I believe, can show you and demonstrate where we're going. All right. Thank you. Great.
Marcus Yoder
executiveThanks. Okay. And hopefully, you're not expecting a Ted Lasso accent because I don't have it. My name is Marcus Yoder, I'm the Chief Commercial Officer for Playtech USA. I've been in gaming since 2010 after joining IGT and their fledgling interactive business. I led efforts to open up Canada legalize New Jersey, Delaware, Nevada and open up Mexico for online gaming with Codere and I was part of the acquisition and integration team of DoubleDown for IGT. So both real money gaming, social gaming, then I moved into the land-based gaming, building the sales function at Gamblit which was a skilled chance hybrid gaming company, where we closed national deals with Caesars, MGM, Boyd, multiple tribal operators in 15 different states, ALC, Loto-Quebec, and the Alberta Gaming Commission. I had a brief engagement with GAN. So I got a chance to look under the cover and seeing what Playtech had become, I wanted to become part of it. And I now work closely with the leadership, Shimon and Mor and to set strategy and with Jonathan and the global product and engagement team to execute on that strategy. So some of the online casino highlights. And basically, when we talk strategy, we have a term that we talk about in term called land and expand. We basically landed and now it's our opportunity to expand. We do this by continuing to grow our current operator count as Jonathan had mentioned and bringing those live in 2023, which you'll see happening. This also means bringing our proprietary game count to be 100 games plus. We're well on the way to achieve this. We do have to deal with state-specific requirements on a case-by-case basis. That can slow things down, but we actually have a various new compliance and regulatory team based in the United States, working with our international colleagues to get through the regulatory process as rapidly as we can. We have seen that our gaming feature suites such as Fire Blaze has been performing as well or better, as he mentioned. And we're also exhibiting a real partnering approach by working on bespoke games for our operators. Surprisingly, a lot of different providers don't want to do that. Here, you'll just see an example on the left-hand lower side of how we created a Pittsburgh Steeler branded Blackjack game for betPARX in Pennsylvania, very, very specific game but has been very successful for them. Core to Playtech's iCasino content are the power suites. Fire Blaze as we mentioned, combines a perennially popular theme such as ancient culture and supernatural with unique lock-in spin bonus mechanisms that are very popular in the land-based casinos in the U.S. This suite is one of our best for player retention and is the top performing Playtech games suite in North America to date. Cash collect provides an engaging mechanic design to appeal to a casual player. The first game in the series, Sahara Riches became Playtech's top performing new game of 2021 and as the top-performing game in Ontario, we're bringing this into the United States as well in the next few months. The next series after that to come to the America will be the Age of Gods power suite. This is our award-winning series based around Roman and Greek mythology and has gone on to become Playtech's most popular and recognizable in-house property. Always popular with players. The Age of the Gods has ordered [ 180 million ] in jackpots in '21 alone. So therefore, the popularity. We'll be launching Age of the Gods in the second half of 2023 into the U.S. Each power suite gives us multiple different game titles to bring into each of the U.S. states. So I believe in Age of the Gods alone, as of now, we have 28 different titles that we can bring in. Another aspect is bringing in the branded games. So Playtech partners with market-leading studios and brand holders such as Warner Brothers Discovery, Sony Pictures, Comcast, NBCUniversal and so forth. And the games with American popular branding have already been launched into non-U.S. markets with amazing success, and now we're bringing those brands back home. We see amazing player engagement with the brands. The brands entice the player to try the game and those with deep affinity for the brands continue to play that game over and over again, others will move on to other titles and styles of games. Gold Rush is a game with one of the highest market share -- market shares in Playtech's entire portfolio. And Playtech is -- we're also expanding our relationship with Warner Brothers Discovery, who owns that brand. Walking Dead amazingly is -- can still -- globally so popular. We were able to recoup our minimum guaranteed payment within the first few quarters of launching this game. And that game has been in the [ black ] ever since. And with Sony Pictures, we brokered a multi-title multi-vertical deal, which includes the Jumanji franchise that Edo has mentioned for Playtech Live and Breaking Bad for Playtech Casino. We covered live pretty well, I think, but just a couple of points that -- to reiterate, the upside is definitely ahead of us. With our 3 studios now serving -- or about to serve all 3 major U.S. iCasino states. We're also able to serve into Ontario from Riga and are able to serve into Ontario from New Jersey and Pennsylvania leveraging that investment in those assets that we've made. And as Edo showed, our market share in Spain, Italy and Greece, we have consistently taken market share from the incumbent, and we have every plan on executing on that as well. We'll do this by remaining focused on partnering with our operators by supplying them simply better customer service, right? It's a theme that we've heard in the market, and we're already doing it better than the incumbent. Flexibility as well and creating the bespoke games that I mentioned earlier. And as always, hiring local dealers who know the casino landscape per state and player preferences makes a really big difference. On the player account management, over the next 2 to 3 years, we anticipate a series of PAM replacement cycles by operators. We feel Playtech is well positioned for these opportunities and are actively engaged with operators who are evaluating their options to switch platforms or even for some greenfield opportunities. I've had the opportunity to look under the hood of every PAM that is out there. And one of the consistent messages that we hear is that our ability to leverage our customer engagement center is what differentiates us. Our experience of moving people from 1 PAM to another is unique in the industry. The example was moving Parx online from the GAN platform to become the brand betPARX on our platform after executing the migration and betPARX beginning to utilize the IMS systems powerful customer engagement center. BetPARX has grown monthly average net gaming revenue from [ 3 million ] to being on track [ 4 million or 5 million. ] The key to this success is the use of customer journeys inside of the customer engagement center to guide players to, for instance, complete a deposit, play a first game, play a second game and potentially even move players from being just the sports better to also being an iCasino player. The tools of the customer engagement center not just for marketing and suggesting an additional game play though, with the Betbuddy tool, we also build customer journeys to help people identify potential problem gamblers and help them moderate the risk to continue to enjoy playing our games. As mentioned, we're doing this with association of the American Gaming Association, UNLV and the Indian Gaming Association so that we can share our experience and best practices and help recommend policy. I want to take a special note around tribal gaming in the United States. There are around 527 tribal gaming establishments in 29 states. Casino gaming has grown to be between 40% to 50% of all GGR in the nation, roughly about $39 billion in 2021. With 30-plus years of experience in tribal gaming, tribes are also now expanding to pure commercial casinos, not on tribal land, witnessed what the Seminoles have done for their existence in -- in Las Vegas, same for San Manuel, who picked up the Palms. And this is going to continue. There's another example of the Quapaw Nation of Oklahoma becoming 1 of only 3 commercial casinos in the entire state of Arkansas. So tribal gaming is something that is very important, and we're focused on it. We've also seen the Rincon Band of Luiseño Indians in California decided to eschew Class III games completely for Class II games. This moves them under the control of the National IGRA as opposed to California -- California regulator. Class II games are any game that the outcome is determined by bingo. Class II game providers have become so good at creating visually stunning and thrilling games that compete with Class III games now. This is significant as it radically increases the freedom of the tribes to offer gaming on their own terms. Based on our research, we have seen that the number of Class II gaming machines has now surpassed a number of Class III gaming machines in Oklahoma, which is one of the largest gaming states in the country. We have already strong relationships in tribal gaming so that we can now bring our solution set to tribal operators. One example is a Class II mobile on-premise solution that we have assembled with the help of 2 strong industry partners, and we should have more news about that in the coming months. So long and the short of it in the United States, as Jonathan intimated, the infrastructure is established, we've secured the iCasino and live market access in the iCasino states, and we've landed, and we're going to continue to expand. Thank you.
Mor Weizer
executiveSo we will do kind of a little bit of LatAm. We're almost there. We're almost there. We are -- we will do a little bit of LatAm and then a wrap up of the day. On LatAm, actually, I was not planning to do that. There is a gentleman in the audience, called [ Doubilet, ] is our Head of Business Development and M&A, right? Who was involved and led all the structured agreements, including in LatAm, was very deeply -- I mean led and was deeply involved with Hard Rock Digital as well as NorthStar but he doesn't talk, right? It's a problem. You put him in a small dark room and you tell him that we are going to negotiate, right, and good luck for everyone. I was trying to think about an analogy, right? I was thinking about what will fit the U.K. audience. And I would say like a good SaaS-special operator, right? You never hear about them. You never see them but they get things done, and that's what we saw. I will cover for him today, and we'll say the following. The focus of the day hasn't been on LatAm but I think that it is important we take a few minutes of your time to remind you of the significant opportunity in this region and why we are well placed. With regulation, the key driver of growth in the gambling industry, the LatAm region is prime to see an acceleration in growth over the coming years. There are several large countries in the region with a growing middle class and a thriving sports culture. And we feel this is an area where Playtech is well positioned. Moving on to Slide 52. Structured agreements are an innovative business model that Playtech has utilized to great effect over the past few years. While all structured agreements differ in scope, we describe a typical partnership. We partner with local heroes with a strong retail brand and presence, but without the necessary technological and operational expertise to succeed online. Under a structured agreement, we provide a platform-based solution as per a conventional model where the operator takes the IMS platform and the majority of our products in addition to a range of marketing and operational services, some of which are subcontracted out to a third party. This model also involves a revenue share framework with the operator with Playtech's share typically higher than in a conventional model to compensate for the provision of these additional services. Playtech also typically injects capital into these operators to help facilitate growth and in return, receives either equity or an equity call option, which can be exercised should the operator be acquired allowing Playtech to enjoy the value creation. Playtech looks to grow with that operator as the market grows. We contribute our market-leading technology as well as expertise and experience in launching online businesses in newly regulating markets, while the partner typically has a strong brand and deep knowledge of the local market. These results with aligned incentives that can be and are almost always very, very impressive. We typically only sign one structured agreement in each territory and given our expertise in newly regulating markets, these agreements can allow an operator to take advantage of being one of the first to market and gain big market share early on in the process. It is also important to point out that structured agreements are not exclusive to the LatAm region. We are open to signing this in any other region. At the same time, structured agreements are not the only business model that we have in LatAm. There are conventional software and services agreements to ensure we are in a position to capture as much of the market opportunity as possible. Moving on to Slide 53. Slide 53 gives an illustration of the life cycle of structured agreements. At the start, the venture is usually loss-making as funds are used to establish an online presence such as marketing and launch costs. As the partnership progresses and is successful, high operating leverage means that the venture delivers high growth in earnings as we saw and continue to see with Caliente and others. Looking at the other structured agreements signed within this region, we can see there are multiple agreements primed for strong growth over the coming years with Wplay already profitable. Looking out to the future, we are already thinking about other markets such as Peru and Chile and Argentina that are newly regulating and how we can position ourselves to take advantage of the early growth these markets typically see. Slide 54 illustrates our amazing track record of our structured agreements so far and the value we have created from them. We created nearly EUR 1 billion of cash from William Hill since we started the deal in 2009. This includes the amount we received for selling our stake in the William Hill Online business as well as the dividends received during the agreement and the royalties we continue to receive. Similarly, we generated over EUR 550 million cash from Ladbrokes in total since the structured agreement started in 2013. From Caliente, we have already generated over EUR 350 million cash in a much shorter time. As you can see, all of these are still growing. It shows the potential when you look at all the structured agreements across the Americas as well as others in our pipeline and still to come. On Slide 55, we highlight 2 agreements, which we are very excited about in LatAm, Galerabet in Brazil and Wplay in Colombia. Firstly, on Galerabet, Brazil is a hugely attractive market with a large population and the eighth largest GDP in the world. Most importantly, it is on the path towards regulating with sports betting expected to be regulated in 2023. At present, the market is unregulated and exhibits a significant competition from unregulated players. Once the market becomes regulated, we expect to benefit over the medium term as unregulated companies leave the market, resulting in Playtech being well placed with its structured agreement with Galerabet and its expertise in navigating and growing in newly regulating markets. We also have a structured agreement with Wplay in Colombia. Wplay is a leading brand in Colombia with a significant market share. It has a strong growth trajectory as players shift to online, while a growing middle class and favorable regulation mean we can expect strong growth from this structured agreement. Finally, on Slide 57, you have now heard from the leaders that are tasked with executing on the growth opportunities that we see in the B2B business. And I hope that you have come away feeling that, firstly, the opportunity is huge for us and given our offering and positioning in the various markets; and secondly, we have the right people in place to help deliver on our targets. As a reminder of the key messages that we want you to come away with after this Investor Day, firstly, as Shimon described, the B2B business has been transformed into a higher quality, more diverse and more collaborative business over the last 5 years. The introduction of new business model has meant we have increased our addressable market with SaaS and found a way to capture more value given the expertise and technology we have within Playtech via the structured agreements. The Hard Rock Digital and NorthStar deals provide us with a tremendous platform for growth across the exciting North American region while Caliente provides us with a blueprint on how to execute in the LatAm region with Wplay in Colombia and Galerabet in Brazil, the most exciting opportunities at this current time. I hope Edo's incredible enthusiasm showcased the excitement we have within Playtech for the live vertical. And how we are now well positioned to take advantage of the rapid growth that this vertical affords with our investment in infrastructure, leading content and expertise. This is the first time we have set a medium-term B2B EBITDA target. And for me, this demonstrates how this business has been transformed and the confidence that we have in executing on the multiple growth opportunities we see. I now open it to Q&A. Thank you.
Edward Young
analystI am Ed Young from Morgan Stanley again. My question is mainly around structured agreements, if that's okay. When you said in your part that structured agreements, I think, were 24% of group revenue. What are the EBITDA? How should we think about the margin profile of structured agreements compared to the group average? Second, we had that slide showing the sort of path of structured agreements, how there's more and more operating leverage going through the business. And you also mentioned William Hill and Ladbrokes both of whom, obviously, exited or pulled away from being such close partners with Playtech. Not necessarily bad value. I have to say, obviously, there's some -- you could question whether they develop those decisions in William Hill's case, I guess. But is that the outcome? Is that a likely outcome? Or is that how you see structured agreements sort of precipitating at the end? Because you're saying essentially the longer they go on, the more operating leverage you get, does that naturally force those partners to sort of consider how long term and sustainable those partnerships are. And in that light, could you give an update on where you are with the legal dispute with Caliente, please?
Shimon Akad
executiveChris, do you want to take the first one?
Chris McGinnis
executiveI'll take the first one on the margin profile. I think the early days of any structured agreements are fairly similar. It's a start-up business. So the revenue impact is minimal, whether it's from the -- well, there's no profit share in the early days because it's not profitable. The revenue share is minimal because the business is just getting off the ground. And if anything, we may be incurring some costs in terms of building out services capabilities, each one is slightly different, but obviously, that's a component. However, that ramps up very -- can ramp up very quickly, particularly with the successful ones. You'll see a period where the revenue share royalties start to take over. That becomes a bigger component. And then Caliente might be an extreme case, but particularly in the recent years as it's reached the scale as a business and to become very profitable. And you don't need -- they're still investing a lot in marketing, but I don't necessarily need to continue incrementally increasing the marketing spend that they -- they get operating leverage, and that increases the share that we get through our general services fee from those businesses. And then the incremental revenues at that stage come at a very high contribution margin, probably 80% plus. So that does make -- as these businesses mature, it makes the margin profile for us very attractive.
Mor Weizer
executiveAnd on the model itself, I will say that, listen, it's a new model that we invented many, many years ago in 2009, right? And people questioned us and asked us, why do you do that? Why do you become a partner to William Hill online and I think in retrospect, obviously, it worked very, very well for us and our partners. It's an ever evolving -- and you can argue that actually BetMGM partnership between MGM and Entain is not necessarily very, very different to what we actually did for the first time with William Hill and then followed up with Ladbrokes and many others. As we outlined earlier today. Obviously, it's another evolving and developing model. It started with predefined call options, then we had certain relationships where we had an option, then we had certain -- that never been exercised. Obviously, with William Hill and Ladbrokes, they exercised the call option. In other cases, there was an option and expired and in actually new structured agreements, in some cases, we don't even have a call option over the Playtech stake which is -- which means basically a lifetime agreement, operating leverage is the business operating leverage, which means basically we inject certain funds into the business to start up the business and then basically reaches to a or to a position whereby it can use its own operating leverage to grow the profitability of the business, take market share and potentially extend beyond the local territory we started together with our partner in. So I would say, but I will say it's a never developing model and to be honest, actually, it served us well in certain cases, it's not the end of the world. The part of this model is that in some cases, it may be the case that we start up the business, we contribute our expertise. Our local hero partner contributes the access to retail, the access to the local market and the local audience as well as, most importantly, the brand. And together, we built a very profitable business that has a lot of value. And after a number of years, can be 5, 10, 15 years, we part ways, and we actually enjoy the value creation, which is also something that is not necessarily a bad thing for us. Considering the fact, considering the characteristics of a structured agreement, the fact that it's a long-term agreement, sometimes without a call option. Considering the fact that it has -- it's -- I would say, the most comprehensive type of contracts, including IMS and Live Casino and casino and bingo and poker and in many cases, on an exclusive basis, considering the partnership nature of the structured agreements, I think that actually, when you compare that to the more conventional software-only license agreement that you have to renew -- before it was 5 years, now it's 10 and 15 and 20 years, but still limited in time and scope, right? It's a very, very attractive model. And as you grow the business, as you establish the business for the customer, they appreciate what Playtech contributes, and as a matter of fact, see us as a true partner in the business as a strategic partner to their business and the value creation. And this is why we are so excited and pursue it. And it's a key strategic or key element of our strategy, as we indicated a few times already when we discussed our strategy.
Edward Young
analystTwo very quick follow-ups. First of all, structured agreements as they stand now, they dilutive or accretive to group margin? Or you're not going to give that? And then second of all, the follow-up on Caliente was just -- do you have any [ further cut ] under expectations around the legal dispute?
Mor Weizer
executiveAbout?
Edward Young
analystThe legal dispute that's -- ongoing account. Do you have any -- I mean provide the color?
Mor Weizer
executiveDo you want to take the first, I'll take the second. Or I can...
Chris McGinnis
executiveI mean the second one is no comment, so I can answer that for you.
Mor Weizer
executiveNo, no. There is -- that is true. But there is one comment I do want to make, which is extremely important on that, right? While I can't refer to the legal dispute and what we had to say, we announced and obviously publicly stated and shared, right? I want to make it very, very clear. There is no impact on the business. And the business continues to perform stronger than ever. And that's very, very important to say. Regardless of the fact that we have something that we need to sort out between us and our partner, which I can't refer to and can't comment on.
Chris McGinnis
executiveAnd on the margin profile, very simply, I'd separate but Caliente, given this maturity, it's accretive to margins without question. Probably all the others are dilutive, given their earlier stage, broadly speaking.
Unknown Analyst
analystYou've talked about Snaitech possibly entering new markets as a B2C operator. And you've got a B2B business that might enter new markets as a partner to a B2C operator. So which of those 2 routes would you prefer into a new geographic market?
Mor Weizer
executiveI think that's the beauty about the model of Playtech. We can choose either one or a combination of both. We have certain territories where certain expertise like Snaitech, for example, HPIbet, which was done internally, but it's a good example of where we can involve Snaitech. We can do that together with subcontractors and provide online marketing and online CRM. I don't think that there is one size fits all and with Playtech, it's all about the flexibility and the different choices we can offer our potential strategic partners. Obviously, any territory we will go into on a B2C basis, we'll have to take into account the characteristics of the market and the position of B2B, which still remains our core business. So I would say that actually, when looking -- the way we think about it is we analyze the different territories, the regulatory environment, and if it is attractive, we start analyzing who can be the best partner to Playtech, and how we approach them differs between market to market and its own characteristics, and it can be either Playtech on a software B2B basis only. It can be on a structured basis agreement. And actually, there were certain cases where we considered involving Snai given the fact that they have certain expertise, operating retail that Playtech does not have. We -- our own expertise within the B2B is mainly online marketing and online CRM as well as the conversion from retail to online, but obviously, Snai brings another element to it, which at a different level, which we started considering involving Snaitech with.
Unknown Analyst
analystOkay. Can we stick with Snaitech. I was struck at the Snaitech Capital Markets presentation that it only partly relies on Playtech's B2B services. Now we've had this presentation about how great Playtech's B2B is eventually just Snaitech migrate on to the B2B platform completely and enhance the B2B business.
Mor Weizer
executiveNo, actually, it's the other way around. If you think about the B2B revenues we generate from Snai since we bought this business, because we keep it separated, right? We maintain the same -- we maintain the relationship and extended the relationship between B2B and Snai and actually, when you think about the revenues generated on a B2B -- from a B2B perspective, on an arm-length basis, it's actually almost quadrupled, if not quadrupled already compared to what it was in 2018 when we bought the business. There are certain parts of their business that are so customized to the local audience that we felt will be wrong to change and force the B2B on to Snai, right? And this is mainly around sports and retail sports, where they actually customize the product specifically to the specific needs of the Italian customer, and we thought that actually it will be [ harmful ] for the business to move them away. However, we do in retail in VLTs and AWPs, we do collaborate, and we definitely extended our relationship from an online gaming perspective.
Chris McGinnis
executiveTo be clear, they use 100% of their live casino as Playtech, where their largest RNG provider, they're 100% are poker, 100% are bingo. So they are a very extensive user of our technology, although there are some elements as Mor said that doesn't make sense for them to use Playtech.
Unknown Analyst
analystAnd last thing, you want to grow the SaaS business to 500 relationships or more. Is the slots content good enough now? Or do you need to compete with the biggest providers of slots? Do you need to step up in terms of number of studios, number of heads, number of games?
Mor Weizer
executiveYes. I will say that currently, the SaaS platform is offered outside of the U.S. or outside of North America, i.e., Canada, US-Canada, Mexico. And the content is very, very popular, very, very appealing because we already operate with the Tier 1 operators. They educated the market. And now the long tail of small midsized operators, other brands can enjoy the same content that the Tier 1 operators have. I will be first to admit I just came back from Gibraltar being very open about it. There are certain territories where we feel -- and I won't get into that, but into the specific territories, but we definitely recognize and identify certain territories where we want to improve our content. Specifically, I'll give you one area, for example, one region. It's a Central Eastern -- Central Eastern parts of Europe where we believe there we can do better. But we made a conscious decision that we are going to focus on that. And I believe that next Investor Day, if it won't take more than a year or two, we will sit down, and I will be able to talk about our content in these areas. The same way when we penetrated the U.S., we had the team looking into the U.S. market into what will appeal into the -- in the U.S. market and started developing content specifically for the U.S. market. So I won't sit here and basically be arrogant, I'm not arrogant or naive or stupid enough to basically sit here and say, we have the best content for each and every territory. That is why, by the way, the world is almost divided. You have Aristocrat very, very strong in Asia as well as the U.S., but mainly -- I mean in Asia, they're almost in a league of their own. You have Light and Wonder and Aristocrat and IGT very strong in the U.S., but not really in Europe. And in Europe, you find other suppliers that are successful. So obviously, it indicates that it's not -- there is not a secret sauce that is global, and you need to cater for the local audience. I will say that the Playtech games are very, very popular across Western and North and some other parts of Europe. Definitely in Latin America, definitely in the U.S., as you heard earlier and Canada, there we did, however, identify a small number of territory where we want to improve, and we are on the task, and I believe that within the coming months, we will be able to resolve that and improve the quality to -- not the quality but prepare or develop certain games that will fit specifically for those territories. Shimon, you wanted to add?
Shimon Akad
executiveYes, if I may, just a few things on that. 100% correct, right? We are on a pathway of a journey. We're always looking to see what we can do and how we can do better, not perfect. But we are built already today within Playtech from 8 different studios. And each of those studios have their own characteristics and their own specialty and their own focus on what they do and how to do, one of them can be focused more on the U.K. market, one can be focused on the Netherlands, one can be focused more on bingo products, we have different diversified studios that have this one -- one in a -- combined strategy on what they do and how they're doing their work. But yet again, each of them works independently and has its own path forward in the day-to-day as they do, and they have a healthy competition between them. And yes, it's also true that sometimes and once every couple of years, I think when Chris talked about us getting better and how we do, sometimes we will take the least performing studios within us. And we'll decide to part ways with them, and we look to integrate, buy or take people with that are highly competent and bring them over into Playtech and that -- makes sure that we always try to do things a little bit different, a little bit better both from in-house knowledge and from knowledge that we bring from the outside. So all in all, we are doing well in many markets today and in the last couple of years, we are examining ourselves not only by the share of wallet within the licensees, and many of them are public, so we can see how good we are, right? And when we need to get better and sometimes we do need to get better. And we see that with most of the licensees, were with them over some time, we will have a double-digit figure within the share of wallet of their casino, be it, live casino, be it slots, be it table games, so we know where we want to aim and where we want to get. We also do that today within market because now today, most of the markets are regulated. And when the regulator releases the numbers, we can see where we are. And in those markets that we've been enough and we've done good job. We -- again, we have double-digit figure within that market. And therefore, that's one of the reasons that Jonathan felt a little bit more confident before where we want to reach and where we want to get. Some of those markets that we started a little bit late. We're growing. We can be at 5% or 6%, be it in the Americas, or be it in other places in Europe, but we see the mature market gradually over time. And if we do our job properly, will bring us into double digits. And where we see that we -- even when we put the effort and we are not, then we take more thinking into it. And we know that we get -- we need to get better, just like Mor said, and we're looking to get in that sense, a little bit more specific studios. And in that sense, just like in live, also in casino in RNG, we will deliver a lot of dedicated content. We will work hand-in-hand with the licensees and with the operators to make sure that they get the content that they want. We will do a lot of specific market RNG slots development and content for the local licensees with the local operators working with local markets. So there's a lot that's been done internally. And as always, there's a lot more to be done going forward.
Mor Weizer
executiveIf I may, one comment on that. You asked about started with SaaS, right? And I think that one of the -- the reason I know that in certain territories, we need to improve is because it came out of a discussion with our Head of SaaS, [ Diane ] in Gibraltar a couple of weeks ago. And actually, everyone talks about data. Imagine yourself now 350 brands, soon enough, 500 brands, spread across very, very diversified portfolio of brands in different territories, providing us with insights. The reason I know that certain territories should be better catered for is because when I was sitting with [ Diane ] and I said, why in this territory, we are not as big as we should be or expect to be. She basically pulled out an entire analysis and basically showed me that actually in these territories, we are not -- our content is not as competitive compared to other suppliers which obviously led to immediately a conversation with our Head of Live who is based here in the U.K. but was -- not coincidentally, but was in Gibraltar with us, and we had a big together with Shimon and others, we had a meeting, and we made the conscious decision to focus on these territories, and we will cater for them. But it's the insights that come from this diverse model of SaaS, which is an added value, not just the diversity of this business itself and the growth opportunity that it brings in terms of revenues and EBITDA given the margin profile.
Unknown Analyst
analystAnd does that a material investment that you'll have to announce.
Mor Weizer
executiveNot at all. Not at all. It's a very small investment.
Shimon Akad
executive[indiscernible] seen at all, not just in that, most of the foundation has been actually already put in the last 5 years. And yes, in some areas, we want to do more. But in a lot of the areas, what we need to do is shift resources from places where we see little potential to grow into areas that we see more potential of growth. And one of those are indeed a studio that will cater for a specific area that we want to do going forward. But for that, we'll -- we have a little bit more work going forward. But again, we leave it also. We will leave some stuff also for next year. Don't worry about it.
Unknown Analyst
analystOkay.
Unknown Executive
executiveSimilar to what we did with Quickspin eventually. We were developing -- talented resources to develop and design and create the IP that we need in order to control relevant markets.
Unknown Analyst
analystLast one, you showed a pie chart that split revenue by product services -- by platform services, casino, live, et cetera. So naturally, I want another 5 or 6 pie charts that show where you supply live platform and casino to all the same people to understand the revenue drivers. But the segment on that pie chart you haven't talked about is services today. Can it grow? Is it simply an adjunct to structured agreements? So what's in that bucket? And is it a growth opportunity?
Chris McGinnis
executiveIt's definitely. Mor, Shimon, anyone add to. This is definitely a growth opportunity. It will grow with -- by default, as you said, [indiscernible] with structured agreements. But I think we've also built the services function through a few different things we've done, including the structured agreements, but there's an opportunity to leverage that further and provide other services to our other licensees. So I do think it's a growth opportunity as well.
Shimon Akad
executiveSo I don't know -- I mean obviously, structured agreement is an amazing thing for Playtech. Want it to work really, really well in the past few years and today. But what we see is that some of those operators, and I think I mentioned it before, especially the big ones coming from retail that were hit by COVID and suddenly online is not just another expansion of the business that actually becomes a necessity because you can wake up one morning and all your business is retail until the shop is being opened again -- and the casino, the land-based casino and all of them in the past few years or in the past months, actually rushed to get more and more online business. And we see them preferring to choose a trusted partner, hopefully, us in that sense and preferring to go to use our IMS as a platform. But one of the other things we see as well is that they come with a lot of knowledge and smartness in gambling operations in retail and land based and much less in online. So we believe that even if it does not amount into a structured agreement, there is a potential for us to increase what we do in terms of rev share through additional services, and we can be more flexible about it. Just like we've been more flexible with our business approach with our platform and with our business structure, we can be more flexible in how we extend those services. And we think that ultimately, not only will you get paid more rev share as part of the services, you will actually make sure that those licensees will lead the market, and we will pay more rev share also in the other parts of the business. So it kind of -- I think the fit itself and all in all, makes more sense to us. Hope it kind of answered the question. Thanks.
Unknown Analyst
analystJust a couple of follow-ups, please. First one on Chris', on your waterfall chart, you talk about all the different drivers of that [ 90 million to 130 million. ] I know there's overlaps, but any sort of ballpark in terms of how much contribution to North America -- sorry, not North America, but U.S. and Canada can provide? And the second question is, we spoke a lot about sort of quality of the product and content. You haven't spoken very much about pricing. How competitive is your pricing across your various products? And are you seeing any sort of downward pressure on that pricing?
Chris McGinnis
executiveYes. On the growth -- the different sort of contributors to that growth. I touched on it briefly, but I think the initial drivers will probably be more [indiscernible] live with an element of that coming from the U.S. and Canada but live more globally. The U.S. and Canada is -- as we've said a few times, we've invested in building a foundation there and a team there. And the revenue is going to come and follow that. So I think over that medium-term time period, the U.S. and Canada will become a bigger contributor. But I think in the initial days, it'll be live and SaaS will be the bigger drivers and then the U.S. and Canada to follow sort of shortly behind that.
Shimon Akad
executiveMaybe I'll start with the pricing, and [ Mor ] will help me out. And then I think when we look at ourselves and we look at the models of pricing, we see ourselves as quality suppliers of technology and of content, right? And we strive for the best quality in the market. We invest a lot in it. We invest a lot of R&D, a lot of time, a lot of passion, a lot of love in the products we build, in the technology we do. We try -- we work very hard to make sure that people we have are the best people in the industry. This is part of who we are and what we are, right? And accordingly, we want to make sure that our pricing is fair. We don't like to come to the business with the highest range of pricing and -- because we don't want to squeeze our partners or licensees, we want to work with them hand-in-hand. We want to come to a price offering that makes sense to both sides. We think and we see in our experience in the last decade or so that I've been in Playtech [ at least ] is that when fair pricing and fair commercials are involved in the business, you build a long-term relationship and gradually, we'll get more and more products and more and more income and more and more share of wallet from that operator or licensee diverted to the Playtech products. So we'd like to come with fair prices. On the other hand, we would not like to see our prices hit bottom rock or do things that some of our competitors do. And sometimes, they will really reduce the price to try to compete and take the prices of the whole -- entire market down. We don't -- we keep a spend of where we think is a fair price of model going forward. And one of the good things about Playtech is that consistently over the time, where we are and who we are and what we're going to do. We're not going to come and squeeze you when we see that you can be squeezed, and we're not going to come and I'm sorry to say, drop off [ price ] just like some of the competitors do because we'll be [ living ] what we do and who we are. And we think, again, as you would have seen in the presentation that given time, it has paid us of people know who we are, they trust us, they know what to expect, they know what to get over time. And that's kind of the model of pricing. We have been asking in the past as well. There were a lot of mergers, right? What do you do with mergers, what happens? There is some squeeze there. Yes, there is pressure. There is a lot of negotiations, and we just mentioned dark rooms and SaaS operatives and how we handle negotiations. Obviously, in reality, things are much more colorful and light. And I'd like to think that again, in the last couple of years, I don't remember, maybe 1 incident, I have to be honest, but probably the other 99,000 incidents on a very friendly and business manner to conduct the business with all of our partners. We really like to work with them in hand-in-hand. They know what they get. They know what to expect. We come with a fair price of model. We don't see any large pressure -- there was more pressure a decade ago. I would admit there was -- obviously, pricing was much different when Playtech was kind of alone between 2000 and 2010. And -- but most of the prices have already aligned to kind of market normal prices. And to a really good place where we feel comfortable. And when we really feel that the prices are going to last for the years to come, and I feel quite comfortable about it. [ Mor, ] do you want to...
Mor Weizer
executiveI will just say we will not hesitate to do the right thing. It's not necessary as you heard because there are no real pricing pressures. I think most important for me, when I look and I always try to go back to data, we just want to tender -- the extension of 2 tenders -- government tenders with 2 monopolies, right? One, we announced. One, we haven't yet even announced. I don't think -- I'm not sure that they made it public, so we can't really refer to it. But in both cases, we got the rating around the tender. And I can tell you that we were very, very close to the others. In one case, we were slightly below. In one case, we were pretty much in line with the others. So it's not necessary. But if it will become necessary, I think that given the scale of Playtech and given the size, the quality of products, we will do whatever is necessary to win business. I'm not suggesting we are going to drop the price, but we will be very competitive in our approach in order to secure new businesses and extend existing relationships.
Unknown Executive
executiveWrap things up. Just like to thank the speakers for attending and all of you as well. Final part would be lunch, which will be served next door. So if we make our way over there.
Unknown Executive
executiveThank you, Sandeep...
Unknown Executive
executiveYes, thank you, Sandeep.
Unknown Executive
executiveThanks, everyone.
For developers and AI pipelines
Programmatic access to Playtech plc earnings transcripts and 32,000+ others is available through the
EarningsCalls.dev REST API. Plans from $24.99/month — full transcripts, speaker segments,
full-text search, and the recently-added /api/v1/transcripts/recent polling endpoint for ETL pipelines.