EGR North America: Taking slots across the pond

With the burgeoning US market continuing to attract more European stakeholders, Push Gaming’s Director of New Business & Markets Fiona Hickey, wrote an article for EGR that examines the prospects for those crossing the pond to make their entry and just what they face to roll out efficiently.

I’ve been keeping tabs on the US market at Push Gaming for over three years, and have long since understood its potential, particularly as more states have followed New Jersey’s lead and regulated online casino. However, we always knew back then that moving into the US would be a mid to long term goal giving us time to create strong foundations before launch. In my article – I’d like to share some of our lessons learned when it came to getting ready for the US, and hope that it will help prepare other studios for the big leap too.

First up, any company should focus on entering a new market when the timing is right, when they are technically, corporately and most importantly, compliance-ready.

Over the past three years, we have invested a huge amount of time gathering relevant information and gleaning insight from partners and existing stakeholders across the US, preparing the ground for our initial market entry.

A key part of that was ensuring we made the most of the strong relationships built in Europe with key operators that also have experience and a strong reputation trading in the US.

Building from there, we have also worked with established advisors in the US market around acquiring licences, through consultants providing their analysis and comprehension of the different regions to aid in our research and eventual development.

It’s essential to craft the right platform from which you can successfully deliver an offering that resonates with partners and players as something special. For us, that’s been a truly evolving conversation with our partners to ensure that we’ve got a solid proposition, and now that we’re on the cup of launching in the US, we’re really excited about it.

A question that many have asked me is should a studio develop specific games for the North American market, and I think a generalisation that many people make the mistake of making is that North America is just one market.

There are, of course, dozens of individual examples, with each state having its own specific idiosyncrasies. What you have, in effect, is a nation that has an incredibly diverse heritage and culture, and what might work in New Jersey for example, most definitely might not resonate further West.

This can also be seen in other places like Europe where many iGaming businesses have been traditionally focused, so because of the parallels between the two our preference is not to just make games specific to one market, but to focus instead on the universal standard of great entertainment.

As a result, one thing I can say for sure is that players in North America, while not as mature in the iGaming space as Europeans, are learning fast and beginning to see the breadth of quality content that is out there.

That said, they are also incredibly astute and when you look at what social games they have been playing, you’ll see many similarities to the features we integrate into our mechanics.

There is without a doubt more of a traditional land-based casino player to be found in the US compared to Europe because of the US’s Las Vegas-based gambling heritage, however, that is changing quickly.

New Jersey, for example, which has been evolving in the past five years has seen great success with innovative titles from studios that have made a name for themselves with players as brands that don’t adhere to the traditional approach.

Brands like these will potentially find more favour in the US moving forward, and the horizon holds the promise of a particularly exciting time for the North American markets. The next 12 months will see several established and popular studios that create engaging content make their debuts there.

They will be creating games that will be incredibly different from what the region is used to, but that is also exciting. It’s a great time for the market and I think that also helps our entry as players will get to understand the style and uniqueness available to them, not just through us but also our competitors.

This will allow the market to fully grasp the true diversity of the entertainment on offer from the titles that will be released there going forward - providing the next level of engaging content, especially for the more mature markets in the US like New Jersey.

For anyone adopting the same strategy, they may see that it naturally pushes them up a gear. Moving into the US swiftly having carried out sufficient due diligence with a keen focus on compliance places you in a position of strength.

As a business, you grow and develop to meet these challenges throughout the years, building essential momentum to help create amazing content - if you can ally that with a platform that has the potential to grow significantly, then all the better.

There are differences in every new market be it Michigan, New Jersey, Ontario or anywhere else, and depending on the tools you make available and what specific angles the partners you’re established with are considering there you get a feel for the approach that aligns best with your company ethos.

The last three years has seen Push deep in that conversation and we’ll continue to be so, scaling as we go. There’s a challenging amount of compliance but that won’t see us fundamentally change who we are as a company - being entertainment and player first has served us fantastically well till now and there’s no reason why that should change in the US.

Click here to read Fiona's article on EGR's website.

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