Peter Nolan, Digitain: “It’s fair to say we had the best ICE ever”

Peter Nolan shared his opinion about the new edition of ICE London and told Focus Gaming News how Digitain’s new products were received at the event.

Exclusive interview.- Now that a new edition of ICE London has come to an end, it is time for reflection and analysis.

Peter Nolan, strategic consultant at Digitain, granted Focus Gaming News an exclusive interview to share his views regarding the 2022 edition of the event and to analyse how visitors received the new Digitain’s iGaming platform, Centrivo.

What balance do you make of the 2022 edition of ICE London, which took place after a two-year break?

I think it’s fair to say we had the best ICE ever. Obviously, there were a few exhibitors missing, as heavily reported, but the online industry presence was very healthy, in my opinion.  

Overall, we were very pleased by both the number and quality of the visitors who came to the Digitain stand, which was an exceptional space, if I do say so myself. Credit goes to our marketing team, who pulled out all the stops in terms of the quality of the stand, a unique ​luxury watch promotion and also the world champion cocktail makers on our free bar.

We had a team of over 100 working on our Digitain stand, to support the launch of five new and exciting products and deal with potential sales discussions – another indication of our confidence in ICE as our number one exhibition to target.

What were the products that aroused the most interest among visitors at your stand?

I would say that our new iGaming platform, Centrivo, our new Live Casino and our new Payment Gateway were the product heroes for us this year.

Centrivo offers partners a highly flexible, secure and stable platform with a wide range of features already integrated, including 400 international payment providers – overall a great basis for launching and developing a successful iGaming business, wherever they are in the world.

Our luxurious, new Live Casino, beamed from our new studio in Yerevan was very positively received, as you would expect with our industry veteran, Matthew Charlesworth driving the product development.

What were the main needs or concerns that you identified among the attendees?

I suppose that depended on where the attendees came from. We saw more potential partners from Latam this year than previously – and the discussions generally centred on platform requirements, including localisation, the ability to differentiate the brands and payment providers integrated.

For visitors from established markets, conversations around supplying content to existing platforms, such as Live Casino, Virtual Sports and our sportsbook dominated.

How do you evaluate the launch of the new iGaming platform Centrivo?

We were pleased with the launch of the Centrivo, gaining great awareness at the show via product presentations we carried out on the first two days. 

Also, the ​luxury watch promotion further raised awareness – I doubt there was a busier stand at ICE on Wednesday afternoon

We saw a great deal of media coverage of the launch of the new platform – capable of handling a mind-blowing 10,000 transactions per minute – and this will have helped the launch.

Evaluation comes later when we compare our actions with the resulting take-up and integration of the product.

“We were pleased with the launch of the Centrivo, gaining great awareness at the show.”

Peter Nolan, strategic consultant at Digitain.

And what about the new live casino product, Digitain Live?

Again, we’re very pleased with the launch. The overall look and feel looked excellent beamed onto large screens direct from our custom-built studio in Yerevan. The visitor reaction again was extremely positive, especially when we received compliments from some Live Casino specialists from other companies who visited the stand. We have had to recruit and train all our Game Presenters in Yerevan and they have been fantastic, picking up the games, the rules and the required behaviour very quickly.

Did the prelude to the World Cup in Qatar impact in any way the demand for solutions linked to sports betting?

We already have a number of initiatives in development for the World Cup, including additional betting content, sure to be popular.

We are also consulting with our 150-strong partner network, to ask them what they would like added to our range for the competition.

We expect betting levels to significantly exceed those seen in the 2018 tournament. If you look at the betting history of the World Cup, the turnover has grown over every tournament since Italia ’90 and we do not feel this pattern will change.

From a Digitain perspective, our partner network has grown significantly since the last World Cup, so we will obviously see much higher volumes being processed through our platform than previously. However, we still feel that our World Cup 2022 organic growth with being significant over the previous competition. 

Coincidently, we are launching our new iGaming platform, Centrivo, at ICE and that enables us to provide more customer choice in terms of betting options and supporting content as well as process even higher levels of bets per second than previously, so we will ensure there is an even better player experience during the tournament.

“We already have a number of initiatives in development for the World Cup.”

Peter Nolan, strategic consultant at Digitain.