Andrew Cochrane underlines the importance of Latin America, a region that offers huge scope for growth with a healthy appetite for fast, flexible, innovative and highly regulated technology. “Looking to Latin America, we won’t adopt a ‘one size fits all’ approach, and will adapt to our audience through our localized sportsbook and language-specific casino content,” he told to SBC Americas. “Latin America is an extremely important region for SBTech.”
Regarding Brazil, Cochrane talks about the company’s strategy when regulation is still pending. “Our dedicated compliance team has decades of experience and are constantly planning for different scenarios. This includes Chris Binham, our new Director of Jurisdictional Compliance, who was with Betfair for eight years. While there he spent most of 2019, for example, in Buenos Aires working on the licence application for Buenos Aires province. He has also spent time in Colombia and Brazil with regulators, discussing ways these countries and their jurisdictions are planning to regulate.”
The country has recenlty announced a possible scheme of a limited number of operators, and SBtech’s executive comments on this: “Many operators are keen to break into Brazil but there remains some uncertainty as to how and when it will regulate. We were expecting regulation to happen in 2020 but this is now likelier to happen in a year or two. The recent announcement that they are considering limiting licensees to 30 is an interesting move and one we are working with our partners towards.”
“It is unclear as to what criteria the regulators will decide on as to who is selected. However this could be down to size of network, market coverage and the extent of operator responsible gaming controls which will inevitably be a key factor. With that in mind we are working with our partners to ensure they have the right market strategies and measures in place,” he added.
“Overall, we pride ourselves on achieving the highest regulatory standards possible across all areas of the business with compliance central to our operations. Ongoing knowledge, awareness and learning is vitally important within compliance as it is such a fast-moving and changeable area across the many regulated markets in which we operate,” Cochrane also said.
When asked about the possibility of opening offices in the region, he states: “We have always invested in infrastructure in territories where we have significant operations. A good example is in the US. We opened our Las Vegas office, which now has over 40 people, to directly support our work with the Oregon State Lottery, and we’d certainly look to do the same in territories in which we have significant partnerships.”
Source: GMB / SBC Americas
