While American, Canadian and British companies tend to dominate the Internet gaming industry, there are companies located in other regions of the world making their mark. Among them is European Game & Entertainment Technology Ltd. Ab, which was founded in February 1999. EGET is headquartered in Mariehamn, Finland and maintains research and development branches in Helsinki and Stockholm.
On Sept. 10, EGET announced that Lauri Gorski would be the company's president and chief executive officer, succeeding Mika Jahkola, who had led the EGET for the previous year and half.
In this week's Q&A, Gorski talks about the company and what he sees as its role in the online gaming industry.
IGN: What does EGET do?
Lauri Gorski: EGET offers an opportunity to licensed game operators in regulated jurisdictions to expand their business to a number of new distribution channels--Internet, mobile, digi-TV, etc.--while re-shaping the relationships with their customers and retailers.
So far we have signed contracts with four operators. Three are lottery operators: PAF (Finland), National Lottery (Luxembourg), NorskeSpill.no (Norway). One is the Finnish Trotting and Breeding Association--Fintoto.
IGN: Who are your main competitors and how do you think EGET differs from them?
LG: EGET's main competition comes from operators who would rather drive their R&D projects in house. This is rather expensive, and could have been justified four years ago when there were really no other alternatives. Today it is neither cost effective nor time efficient.
EGET's roots are in the gaming industry--we spun off from a regional lottery--and that reflects in our pragmatic approach. Our know-how and experience allow us to offer a comprehensive solution that can be smoothly implemented to establish a successful online operation. I believe the know-how and professional services we provide were the key for winning our existing contracts.
IGN: Can you explain what EGET's WinOne technology is? How does it allow for the cross-selling of your products?
LG: WinOne has been now running for almost two years, since December 1999, with our first customer in Finland. The system itself is a robust and secure platform that supports a wide range of products (games). As a matter of fact, PAF--our first customer in Finland--is to my knowledge the only lottery that offers its Internet players a choice of lottery, sports betting and casino games.
If I would have to pick up a feature, I would focus on the personalizing capabilities of the system. The system is not static, it dynamically adapts to the behavior of the players. At any given time the system can profile the customers into communities specified by the operator. The advantages of this can be seen immediately, especially when it comes to marketing new or different products to the players.
To give you a simple example, the operator might decide to offer a new high-end "Ferrari theme" instant product to the players who match the following demographics: male, between 25-40, plays more than X dollars monthly and have been regularly betting on the Ferrari winning through the season.
IGN: It seems like nearly all of your clients are government-related gaming organizations. Is EGET trying to branch out to other types of clients or is there a special virtue in dealing primarily with government clients?
LG: Our policy is to focus on licensed game operators in regulated jurisdictions. These are usually state lotteries or similar organizations. Most of them are members of organizations like the World Lottery Association.
EGET have committed ourselves to fully serve this market segment and comply with their main rule that rejects cross border operations. Any operation targeting a global audience--or an audience in any way outside of its country jurisdiction--does not therefore qualify as our potential prospect.
IGN: It says on your Web site that EGET specializes in "personalized" gaming. Why are personalized gaming services so important?
LG: One-to-one marketing is today an accepted reality on the Internet, and it will clearly become important also to our customers. Established lotteries who operate an online system address the mass market of anonymous players. Delivering personalized services to their players can bring them advantages that can completely reshape their business.
IGN: What types of promotional gaming services do you provide, and who are your clients for this type of service? Do these companies also offer real-money gaming?
LG: Promotional gaming has not played a major part in our solution offer so far.
We do, however, have experience of operators who would like to offer games for entertainment only. There can be many reasons for that--market testing, experience building, education of the market while the needed legal framework or license has not yet been formalized. The ultimate goal is to have a full offering of games over all new media channels.
IGN: In terms of real-money games, what games are in EGET's lineup? Does EGET only develop the games or is a backend solution also available?
LG: EGET's WinOne includes a number of different standard games that we believe to be the minimum requirement of an operator. They range from fixed odds sports betting and lottery games--lotto, instant cards, spiel, keno--to casino games--roulette, black jack. We are still developing a few more, but our main focus is on the actual wagering engine.
We believe that the games are only 10 to 15 percent of the system. More than that, developing the games, translating them into a format compatible to our system, does not require EGET's proprietary skills.
We are finalizing an interface to allow any third party software vendor to produce games that can be easily integrated into our system. Conceptualizing games is not easy, and it very often requires a deep knowledge of the country where they will be offered: traditions, culture, language. These all affect the success of a new game.
EGET focus on providing a strong and reliable engine capable to handle all the issues people tend to forget while they are playing--security, financial transactions, marketing, eligibility checks, operational issues, CRM, etc.
IGN: What is the relationship between PAF (Åland enningautomatförening which directly translated means "The Åland Islands' Slot Machine Association") and EGET?
LG: PAF was one of the founders of EGET.
Some of our most experienced employees were formerly employed by PAF. PAF has also been our first customer, in operation since December 1999. While EGET have grown to become an independent supplier to the lottery industry the relationship with PAF, as an Internet operator, is still extremely valuable to EGET. Our long-term relationship has made it possible for us to gain experience of the industry that is advantageous to all of our customers.
IGN: EGET has several offices located throughout Scandinavia. Will the company open offices in other parts of the world?
LG: The company started in Åland, an autonomous region of Finland formed by a large archipelago in the Baltic sea between Finland and Sweden. The language spoken in Åland is Swedish and because of that there are very tight relationships with Sweden. Finland, Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries are thus a natural home market for the company.
As I mentioned earlier, conceptualizing games to local needs is not easy and requires a deep knowledge of the country where they will be offered. This is true to Scandinavia where EGET have local knowledge, and this is true to all other geographies as well. Instead of addressing all the markets alone, EGET will extend our cooperation with companies operating in different countries.
Our other offices will be opened to support the needs of these partners.
IGN: What do you see as being the most important issues facing your clients in the upcoming years when it comes to attracting and retaining customers? How important are the various interactive gaming services to this?
LG: Personalization is the key. This will revolutionize the way in which services will be offered to the public. Entertainment generally and gaming specifically are at the front of this change. The main obstacles for implementing personalized services in our customer industry of state licensed operators are previous investments in online systems. These legacy systems require years for payback. They do not only hinder the use of new technology, but also stop the implementation of new business models by limiting gaming operators from setting up new services which do not require retailer distribution channels. Internet-only operators do not have this obstacle to bypass, and they have been much more flexible, focused and successful in implementing new Internet-based services.
IGN:You've just taken over the leadership of EGET. What are your immediate plans for the company? How do you see the company growing in the near future and what do you think are the most important areas for EGET to concentrate on for future success?
LG: EGET are presently an established provider of personalized gaming systems to front-running operators. The market growth in the industry is high, and the number of customers is likely to grow fast in the near future. This will provide a good basis for the organic growth of the company. EGET's present customers are mainly in Scandinavia. As the use of the Internet and mobile communications increases also in other countries, EGET will be extending our services to them too. EGET's future success will rely on our capabilities to provide our customers with secure, flexible and reliable products and services.