Truly unique products are thin on the ground these days but BetGames’ CEO Andreas Koeberl is confident he has a winner on his hands ahead of its launch not the Canadian market. Here, he explains more about the trailblazing product and how it aims to bring the worlds of sports betting and casino closer together.
Twain Sport has caught the attention of many in the industry having gone live with leading brands globally – tell us more about its universal appeal.
It’s a product like no other, essentially. There’s always talk of ‘innovation’ in the industry but I’m not sure the description is always warranted with a lot of similar products. Twain Sport bucks that trend and delivers a brand-new concept that might create its own vertical.
We’ve been able to offer a simple yet engaging proposition globally since evolving Twain Sport to a 24/7 offering, we’re thrilled at how it has performed since launch. But it isn’t the same product we saw on day one either. Beyond the round-the-clock scheduling we now have, we’ve engaged with operators and bettors to build their feedback into subtle tweaks to gameplay and presentation that have given us the more intuitive, mobile-first optimised product we see today.
We haven’t finished with the evolution either. Such an approach proves valuable in consistently strengthening and improving Twain Sport. Coming soon we’re looking at introducing AI-generated commentary in localised languages, allowing us to cater to audiences wherever we operate and scale more effectively. It’s a delight to see it gradually grow and refine.
What was the inspiration behind its development? Did you identify a gap in the market that led to Twain Sport’s creation?
Standard sports betting is so well-established and popular that trying to compete with it wouldn’t have worked. We looked at what was currently popular in the world of social media, gaming and general entertainment, and the trend is toward fast-paced and on-demand.
We wanted to create a product that complimented live sports betting and was easily accessible, presenting the opportunity to enjoy it whenever the mood takes a bettor. Twain Sport’s action-packed nature with immediate rewards and a fantastically high production quality allows us to deliver on that initial goal.
Now we have a fast, fun betting experience that replicates much of what live sport betting offers but is more accessible so that if bettors have 15 minutes to spare between the second and third quarter of a basketball game or can’t wait for the kick-off on the next big soccer match.
So, naturally, they can play a couple of rounds of T-Kick or T-Basket with us. Sixty-second matches every two minutes, 24 hours a day every day allows us to fulfil that promise, keeping bettors engaged, before and after big events – Twain Sport fills the gap and then some.
Speaking of gaps – can Twain Sport achieve the holy grail of cross-selling between major sports and casino-style betting?
Undoubtedly. It offers everything that most casino games do – instant thrills and payouts. BetGames’ roots are in converting sports bettors into casino players. The advantage we have is that Twain Sport bridges that divide without any of the barriers to entry you’ll see with most casino games.
We did our due diligence during early development, looking at the target demographics we’d be putting Twain Sport in front of in each region. The key, is to keep bettors engaged, promoting a reason to cross-sell, and with our stream of on-demand basketball and soccer, we have a unique product that definitely fits the bill. We got it right, and to see that groundwork come to fruition is hugely satisfying.
One of the many reasons that Twain Sport ticks the number of boxes that it does is that it’s a versatile product – bringing sports into the casino world, and attracting sports fans too, moving them away from the lower margins associated with sports betting. It offers operators a lifetime value on par with casino margins, while greatly boosting their customer base.
When will Canadian players see the launch of Twain Sport and how will the market there react?
Now that T-Basket is available 24/7, we’ll be launching very soon indeed and with several operators.
What we’ll be launching with is unlike anything else on the market – Twain Sport offers up 60 seconds of action-packed basketball and football games played by real athletes competing in bespoke one-on-one challenges, every two minutes, throughout the day – so we’re confident it is going to receive the same overwhelmingly positive response it has enjoyed in other regions.
We’re launching into a unique market too – one with incredible potential. We’ve researched our audience and designed Twain Sport to specifically target that 25 – 35-year-old bracket that the average Canadian bettor falls into.
By delivering that demographic the fast-action entertainment it demands, along with our branding options, we can ensure we’re supplying a fantastic tool which helps promote trust and showcases the value and integrity of our brand and product.
SBC’s Canadian Gaming Summit is going to provide the perfect launchpad and the timing couldn’t be better – what do you expect to gain from the event?
Putting Twain Sport and T-Basket in particular front and centre to the very people we need to show it off to is ideal just before we launch in Canada. The market there is buoyant and growing rapidly and with its love of sports and fast-paced entertainment, we couldn’t hope to have an offering more attuned to hit the ground running.
We see Twain Sport as the future, catering to the new generation of players that are looking for instant thrills and payouts. We’re very excited by the prospect of introducing it to another new audience and I’m sure it will be a great show.
