Could you talk to us about your CG Games division?
Comtrade has been in gaming for over 20 years and to suddenly start producing our own games poses the bigger question: why now? After all, it’s about as late to the party as one can get! There were three main reasons for this strategic move. One was the fact that as a major platform company we have developed deep and long-term relationships with large established operators, so it made sense to widen our offering to them with high quality games content. This established client base also provides an important initial route to market, which is something new game companies can often struggle with.
The second reason is that having games opens up the entire online market to us. As a platform company, you are bound by the long lifecycles that come with platform decisions, which means only a small percentage of the market is relevant to you at any one time. Having games opens up the entire market all the time.
And finally, and most importantly for our potential clients, we have had the expertise of building games in-house for many years; it’s just the fact we have been doing it for other companies. We also have our own RGS technology, which means we can build high-quality games very efficiently.
How successful has the launch of CG Games with Mansion88 been?
Mansion has already been a platform partner for about six years, and they were ready to take our games immediately. The launch has been excellent, and we are excited to increase the number of titles available to them.
We have also recently launched with Spinbet, another one of our platform clients, and this has also been very successful, providing us with insights to a completely different type of player.
What is next for the CG Games division?
Licences, integrations and expanding the catalogue! We have just obtained our MGA and Romanian licenses, with the UK license to follow shortly. This means we already have thousands of potential clients, and the focus will be on making our mark in these territories and rapidly building our client base.
We also need to expand our slot catalogue. We initially launched with ten games, but having a larger portfolio of games is essential for making a real impact. Maintaining a consistent pipeline of games is equally important. We have an initial plan to release one game per month, focusing on quality over quantity, but I am certain we will need to increase the number of releases over time.
Comtrade has been in gaming for over 20 years and to suddenly start producing our own games poses the bigger question: why now? After all, it’s about as late to the party as one can get!
How important is the partnership with Alea in bringing Comtrade’s games to a wider audience?
It’s still early days, but this partnership is very important for us. Alea was extremely receptive to our initial plans and shares a similar business approach to ourselves. They are very customer-focused, value integrity, and are quite simply great people to work with. Alex Tomic is a prominent figure in the industry, and having his support, along with that of his entire team, is fantastic. While our initial partnership idea centered around South America, we have since expanded that further.
What are Comtrade’s general expansion plans. Are there any particular markets you are looking to enter?
Now we have our Romanian games licence this will be a big launch for us on our existing platform clients. We also hope to expand right across this market and believe the big names we will be going live with will help us do that. We also have a small number of other major aggregator/supplier deals coming up soon, but our main focus will be getting live with operators.
All eyes in the industry are currently on Brazil, and we hope to launch there in the next couple of months. However, as we are new to the games supplier segment of the gaming industry, every market presents significant potential for us.
Looking ahead, what else is Comtrade looking to achieve for the rest of 2024?
We have set modest goals so far and we are still learning new things about being a games supplier. But for the remainder of 2024, we have some tier-1 operators that are in the pipeline for launch, and our focus will be on increasing the number of live operators.
Launching new games is going to be a crucial element to our expansion and September will see the launch of our brand-new Crash Game, "Pilot Piggy." This has a very different look and feel to most crash games but still has the familiar feel of this hugely popular game type.
As part of this new division, we have recruited some very experienced Business Development Managers and will leverage their relationships and expertise. This already seems to be giving us a head start for a new games provider.
Steven Valentine, Chief Commercial Officer
Comtrade Gaming Q&A: Better late than never! (gamblinginsider.com)