IQ-Ludorum plc is expanding its services into South America thanks to a deal with Lotobras S.A., a company that supplies online video lottery and gaming solutions for the Brazilian market.
As per the agreement, IQL, a major software supplier to Caribbean-based sports books, will introduce its gaming kiosks to the richest Latin American market.
IQL will team with Lotobras and Cybertronix, a Canadian-based developer of stand alone-gaming kiosks, to provide 10,000 gaming kiosks in the Brazilian states of Parana and Santa Catarina.
The kiosks will come with IQL's IQ-Casino 4.0 and will provide walk-up gaming for users. The devices will be labeled as IQ-Kiosk and will provide operators a turnkey package that includes hardware, the gaming interface and secure back office reporting and payment systems.
Brazil is widely regarded as the gateway to the Latin and South American market. The country is home to more than 175 million people, and 17.3 million of them use the Internet.
IQL's General Manager of Marketing John Roberts said getting a foot in such a key marketplace will give his company an advantage as it looks to expand throughout South America.
Roberts said the kiosks are slowly starting to gain popularity worldwide, but each country where they are placed has specific laws and regulations about what kind of facilities can host them. Some countries allow for pubs and clubs to host them, while others like Brazil restrict the use of the kiosks to bingo halls and licensed betting locations.
"The idea behind them is that you can put them where ever the jurisdiction allows you to put them," he said.
The games aren't connected to the Internet but are linked to a central random number generator, Roberts said. The RNG is linked to a central, secure site that isn't accessible through the Internet.
"It is a centralized network system," he said. "But it is not connected online. It behaves like it was on the Internet, but it is not. It is an Intranet system."
Roberts said the gaming kiosks were first displayed at the Global Interactive Gaming Summit and Expo in May in Toronto. He said it was at that conference when regulators from Brazil came and expressed an interest in the product.
The kiosks are built in such a way that if a jurisdiction allows sports betting, it can be added to the offerings for consumers. Roberts said IQL units are already in place and running in Mexico, Panama and Columbia for electronic points of sales (EPOS) sports books. Those units allow people to place wagers over the EPOS system. He said plans call for those units to be integrated with the kiosks system.
It was also at GIGSE that Peter Notle, who runs a gaming consulting company in Brazil, talked about how important the country is in terms of the rest of the continent.
"Whatever happens in South American will first happen in Brazil," he said. "That is the test market and the trend setter all in one."
Roberts said implementing the kiosks in Latin and South American before other parts of the world made sense.
"We see that kiosks and the EPOS kits are ideal for the Latin American market," he said. "There has been a lack of ability to kind of control the wagering business."
Roberts said IQL has had interest in the kiosks from other parts of the world, too. Officials within the Philippines and other Asian jurisdictions have expressed interest in the system.
"Since we have signed the contract, we have had interest from a variety of different other companies both in Brazil itself and other countries," he said. "It is a pretty sexy product. It is a lot like any Internet game, it is just that you are playing it on a touch screen."
An overhaul of gambling laws in the United Kingdom, where IQL is based, could also create new opportunities for the gaming kiosks as well, Roberts said. Proposals are on the table to deregulate the gaming market in the UK. If passed, consumers would be able to play casino style games at places other than traditional casinos.
A yearlong rollout of the 10,000 kiosks in Parana and Santa Catarina will begin next month.