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AMELCO
The US view: Amelco Brandon Walker, Head of Amelco USA, speaks to Gambling Insider about the firm’s US operator clients... and maybe one day Netflix or Amazon? So BetBull is an exciting one for us. They are also looking to launch towards the end of March/beginning of April. In the US, Hard Rock is certainly a big one for us. It is a shame that Florida, where Hard Rock is based, got stopped in its tracks. The state was live for about four weeks and they were absolutely smashing it. But that’s not to say we’re not rolling out more states with them. We went live with them in Arizona a few weeks ago, and we will be launching with them in Virginia next week. They’ve got a large roadmap ahead of them in terms of other states where they’ll want to roll out. FuboTV – the well-known streaming service in the US – is a big client for us. We are live with them in Iowa and Arizona and, again, we have a large list of states where we will be rolling out with them in the next few years. Other than that, we have a number of other mid-tier clients in the US, but those are our main ones.
Brandon Walker Who are your main clients and your main markets? Our main markets are in the US. Obviously, the US is broad. Canada is also on our radar at the moment. It’s gathering a lot of attention with Ontario going live in the next month. That’s not to say we’re taking our eye off anything else. We have a close eye on the UK; Africa, to a certain extent. We’re looking at launching clients in South Africa in the coming months. South America is also a place that we’ve kept a fairly close eye on. We’re not present there at the moment, but with certain South
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American countries talking about regulating in the future, we’re keeping an eye on going there too. What about your key clients? For us, key clients in the UK will be BetBull. They’ll be our first end-to-end solution in the UK. Primarily, the way that tier-one operators who we’ve worked with – the likes of Ladbrokes, Coral, Paddy Power, William Hill, Betfred – have used certain components of our software; they’ve never used our full end-to-end stock, it’s always just been a modular component that suited them.
Who is Amelco’s dream client in the US? I mean, if we were having this interview in a few weeks’ time, I could probably tell you about how we landed our dream US client. I suppose, though, it’s a tough one. We do go out and hunt who we want, and Hard Rock was certainly one of those. We got what we wished for and it’s been great. Of course, you generally look at your big operators – your DraftKings and FanDuel and groups of those ilk – but they’re not really looking for a software provider any more. They’re beyond that. So, when it comes to your dream client now, I think it will be one of the bigger streaming services or ticketing services. That could be a Netflix, Amazon, Disney or Yahoo: one of the massive corporates looking to get into the sports betting space. I would say it would be one of those. The personnel you would be working with would be very advanced; people that aren’t just looking to dip their toe in the water. You know that if they are going to go for it, they’re going to go hard. If you’re going to work with a client, you want to work with someone who is looking to match the likes of DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM from a marketing perspective, as well.
