SIS at Sigma Brazil: “The Latin American Market it’s a great place to be at the moment”
June 30, 2023 / Digital Gaming News exclusive content
During the BIS – Sigma Americas in Brazil, Digital Gaming News had the opportunity to talk with Mr. Paul Witten, Sales Director of SIS, who told us his view of the Latin American region as a growing market.
Paul Witten said, “This is my first time at a gaming show in Brazil. So this is a content provider, global content provider of e-sports, horse racing and lotteries. We’ve had some success with customers in Brazil, already talking to them. This show has been a great destination to meet lots of new contacts. I’ve been really impressed with the organization, the scale. This is a proper conference and it’s been really good to meet so many people.”
- Could you tell us about your company and its presence in Latin America?
Of course. We’re as a business, we’re almost 40 years old, so we’re a very long-established business in the gaming sector. And we started with horse racing from a UK perspective and have expanded globally. So we provide horse racing and live horse racing with video data and prices across the world. We have content coming in from about 50 jurisdictions, including Australia, the UK, Italy, the Far East, the US, and Latin America, and we combine that into packages and distribute that to betting operators around the world. Latam is a real focus for us now in that space. Secondly, we have an eSports business where we provide live 24/7 competitive matches of players playing FIFA, NBA, and Counter-Strike, and that’s been a real growth area for us in the last 2 or 3 years. And again, very popular in Brazil, particularly NBA. And then finally, we have a numbers business, live lotteries business, a very long-established business in the UK, and that’s expanded now to become a global portfolio of products where we have three different product lines. And that’s early steps for us in this market because of legislation. But we’re looking forward to seeing what we can do with that in this market as well. Across LatAm generally, we’ve started to really invest not just in coming in here and expecting that we as a British company could come in and effectively tell people what to do. That’s not how we like to operate. What we’ve done is invested in people on the ground here locally, particularly in Mexico, who speak the language, who understand the culture, who understand what the players really want to play. And we’re adapting our product to that and the way of doing business to suit the market. So we’re really looking forward to some growth in Latin America. I mean, it’s already started and we’re very excited about it. But over the next three years, I can see this being a real rocket for us and we’re looking forward to it.
- What is your opinion about the development of the gaming industry in Latam?
Well, it’s interesting. Obviously, at events like this, a lot of it is about networking and talking to people. And I’ve talked to a lot of people from Europe who’ve come over and a lot of people locally in the industry. This feels very much like Europe was 5 or 10 years ago, and that’s when it’s at its most exciting because everything is new. New ideas are coming through, new companies are forming, markets are opening out. And that’s a really exciting time to be. And I think the whole Latin American area has an opportunity to learn from what’s happened in the rest of the world, but to put a Latin twist to it, to super marketplace, that’s a tremendous place to be at the moment.
Enjoy the complete interview here:
