foreign pool here editor of gambling Insider I'm at Sigma with archangelo of habanero welcome viewers to the GI huddle arcangelo thanks for joining us thank you very much for having me it's our pleasure um we're going to talk about all things habanero Your Role markets regulation online casino that kind of thing to start off with can you tell us about your journey with habanero from the beginning up until now it has been an interesting Journey it was my first it has been and it is my first experience with a supplier I've been in the industry for 20 years um but I never worked on this side of the industry so I have a pretty strong and long operator background and at some point I bumped into habanero games that's about seven years ago I was really impressed with what I saw I started working in my capacity as product manager I bet Victor who started working with um with this supplier with these gains and has blown away for all the right reasons so when the opportunity came and habanero were ambitious enough to start pushing Europe then I believed I was the right person for the job and and here we are it has been really interesting these five years you know we decided to start targeting Italy which is my home country by the way I was born in Italy so I am Italian and Italy of course is the second biggest Market that we have in Europe at the moment when it comes to when it comes to online casinos and that's what we made our name and um and then from there everything followed so at the moment we uh we we are live in over 23 regulated markets we've got two licenses and you know these past five years have been an absolute buzz and it's been incredible to to spearhead and and also being able to represent this uh fantastic company around around Europe and Beyond I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit based on that last answer you said the big operator background and you move to the supplier side um how would you describe the difference between working on that operator side of the industry and then the supply side from my perspective uh there's not much difference so effectively when I joined up an arrow I thought I could deliver the goods because I had been on the other side I knew what I knew how it worked I knew I worked more more like I had been a buyer so to speak right I mean I've been in a situation where I know how it works within organizations of different sizes because obviously but Victor wasn't my first operator experience I've been in other companies before [Music] so from my perspective at the end of the day what we're all trying to do is we're trying to build partnership and deliver the best possible solution to uh to the end users as we call them to the very players the customers the very focus of what we do both as operators and suppliers we've been we're in we're on the same boat and what we're trying to do we're trying to deliver the best possible quality to to our customers to our mutual and common customers so for me there's not much difference to be honest I haven't really I haven't really seen much difference and of course when you work as an operator you're preoccupied with lots of other lots of other peripherals and lots of other key elements that you might not necessarily care about too much when you work for a supplier and as a supplier you you might care about our position but not not in the same capacity as you do when you're working for an operator of course as an operator you have a vantage point where you can look at a lot of products and you can understand demographics in a certain ways things that you cannot do when you work for a supplier because you know you would never know who's playing your games I mean you see numbers you don't really know who these people are like their sex where they come from their age you know like so you can you can effectively analyze a little bit less but at the same time you do a different way of analyzing and you have a different vantage point because you do see a lot of operators which is something that you don't do when you're an operator you only see your suppliers so it's a totally different vantage point but that gives me the opportunity to have a piece of a wider understanding of where the industry has been going over the past few years um so yeah at the end of the day there's not much difference we work for the same the same Target the same reason the same uh results and the same achievements which we strive to we strive to deliver the best possible solution to to our customers and entertain them in the best possible way focusing on on habanero as a company we're sitting here at Sigma in November 2022 is coming to a close as we approach 2023 how would you describe habanera's place within within the market at the moment we we are a very Dynamic company um for us being agile it's an interesting one actually because we're extremely agile so we we really pride ourselves with the fact that we're extremely agile we're extremely scalable uh modular so the very core of what we do is to try and deliver the best possible product in the best possible way and that comes that that means doing it from a technical perspective in the best possible way meaning to be at the very Forefront of the technological Evolution and at the same time being able to deliver the best possible products and being able to maintain relations and understand customer needs better than anybody else so we love to be agile we love to be small when it comes to the way we operate the way we understand operations and the way we run operations being small and please do read you know within what I'm trying to say means being able to make decisions much faster than others and and in this ever-changing environment impossibly Dynamic environment that is an absolute must so this is how we see ourselves the values are fantastic content fantastic Solutions delivered in the best possible way and also in the middle we walk the fine line between Innovation and tradition right I mean this is something that particularly concerns me concerns me as a as a professional in eye gaming um this is not an environment that you can innovate wildfly with you can innovate but you also need to be very careful and respectful of psychology and psychology hasn't necessarily changed radically from what it used to be we live in a completely different environment when it comes to regulated environment and you know preoccupations of all stakeholders ourselves and our customers in order to be able to deliver the best the safest and the the the fairest Solutions within a safe environment for everybody um but at the same time we need to make sure that we also deliver something extremely exciting and thrilling to to to an audience that wants to be thrilled effectively so I read I infer what you say about being as you say small maybe more bespoke that kind of thing you know so not small in a certainly not a negative way but maybe not like a legacy supplier no one in particular but maybe too big and not agile enough you know that's that's kind of what I I again from uh from what you're saying in terms of being small and more we are small we are we are a very very small head counts um we very much interconnected we are big as in we have different offices around the world we do business everywhere but at the same time we are a small company and uh and we have we have an ethos within the company where we're able to be uh horizontal in our decision making process um we're very careful with our recruitment processes so that when we get the right people which is 99.9 of the time the right people stay and they contribute to a company they they grow within the company they make the company grow Now by doing this what do we do we try and maximize the possibility to effectively being effective being effective in our mission to support customers and deliver Solutions I'll give you a basic example because it sounds like a corporate you know talk but um we live in an environment where margins have been effectively been decreasing because of a series of a series of developments that we've seen so we live in a small that you know sorry in a world that keeps getting smaller and smaller and smaller because of communication and because of possibilities technological possibilities but at the same time we live in a world where people are looking father a field than what they used to be doing in the past this applies to companies that try to make the business model keep their business models more and more and more sustainable and and we try to be there to be able to deliver Solutions the only way we can deliver Solutions in this ever-changing super Dynamic environment is to be able to adapt and possibly predict which means being able to support our customers or our prospects into what they want to do what they need to do expansion adaptation resilience we have it all and and it's at the very core of what we do so quality is just a very exceptional quality it's just the beginning of what we do then we make sure that we deliver that exceptional quality in the best possible way with with the customer at the very center or whatever we do no you know being small in terms of size company size makes a massive difference but only because those few people that are part of this company that made this company are the right people and they got strong ideas and practices if we were to look at geographies different geographies you mentioned Italy earlier you mentioned kind of the size of the market if you were to reflect on your European markets over the past 12 months or so um what would you say what would you point out as Trends performance that kind of thing [Applause] well consolidation is a big Trend right I mean we we're seeing things where um markets are being effectively reshaped by this regulation of course has also made a big difference to some Bonafide markets uh that we become accustomed to over the years it's exciting times challenges all over the place um I still have the the the impression that there's a lot to do in order to being able to work with regulators to a point where we can play into each other's hands so that we can deliver the best possible products and the best possible experience to a common concern which is the player the player is at the center of our concerns The Regulators concerns the suppliers concerns The Operators concerns I think I think we we need to we need to keep working towards making making this industry more and more mature so that regulators and stakeholders can work together towards keeping the industry sustainable and at the same time making it the safest possible for the player while delivering a product and a solution and solutions that the player is actually interested in so what have I seen trends consolidation Market reshaping restrictions very interesting taxation models uh interesting is a is a good word to say for the different yeah that way and and scare mongering when it comes to uh you know being able to allow the stakeholders to even exist within a market it's an ongoing process that we see where I think I think we're all going to come out better out of this but it's absolutely essential that uh the relations between the stakeholders and Regulators uh become a little bit more mature so that we can all so that we can all really contribute towards making the industry a healthy sustainable and and growing uh environment for the benefits of all um we we as a company we've entered a few markets in the past 12 months or maybe 24 months uh two of the most exciting developments for us have been the Netherlands and Germany again challenging markets very challenging markets for different reasons making a lot of headlines recently indeed but as an Italian I've seen it all obviously you know because someone who entered the Italian regulator that the you know I would say the template for all regulations and development and further developments uh being there have been lucky enough to be there on day one uh when I worked for for an operator in Italy um you know these are these are this is this is a food for thought and exciting challenges that you know we keep riding to try and better the environment another interesting thing that we've seen in the past 12 months of course I don't know if we can discuss something further afield from Europe but obviously the US present incredible opportunities and and realistically when we look at what's happening in the regulated markets the online casino regulated markets in the US we really do have the feeling that what we think that is is something that it's extremely exciting because these are new markets incredibly powerful markets that are born mature but at the same time they've got a lot a long long long way to go so that they keep maturing on the online element so um it's been interesting we've seen recovery from from uh from from from a dairy I would say um unpalatable and and unseen environment which was obviously 2020 and 2021 where we've seen a dramatic genetic genetic modifications to to the environment um but I think we're slowly going back towards uh towards normality and was a more sustainable environment effectively well plenty of food for thought there thanks very much for your time archangelo enjoyed speaking with you it's been a pleasure Tim all the best bye-bye