hello everyone and welcome back to the jai huddle for today's episode i'm here with every matrix group ceo ebay grows hi everybody thanks for joining us and um first of all may i just say uh what a wonderful shirt you have on thank you for complimenting me on that yeah i'm trying to create a sense of spring here and in the late autumn early winter um see how it works it's a sunny day so i thought i'd bring out my dog t-shirt um you as well i have uh put on some flowers palm trees yeah exactly in the uk it's a little cold so like you want to want to create a sense that maybe i might be somewhere else hopefully soon we can go there yeah absolutely um but before we kind of start on our industry business questions can you also tell us about the the helmets you have there in in the background ah yeah yeah they uh they are my pride and joy those helmets um they are not to be worn in actual traffic um only in case of emergency when you really run out or somebody very very nice and sweet uh shows up and once you sit on on the back of your motorcycle you can take one of these off but yeah yeah i've been riding motorcycles for quite a few years um still managed to get out from time to time um it's great very very very good relaxation i recommend it no certainly um yeah definitely it's um motorcycling exciting kind of unpredictable maybe and that kind of uh links us to 2020 really and uh if we sort of go into into our kind of serious and business questions um looking at 2020 if it's possible considering what a year it's been could you sum it up for every matrix oh it's been wild i'll say i put to put that word well so many ups and downs um and huge movements uh that is like unprecedented but uh in the end we we came out really strong at the end and uh um yeah makes me feel very very good about uh going forward um to be able to go through a year like this and then come out strong then that means a normal year will do even better so yeah i'm very very pleased um sure i know for every matrix this year has been uh esports has been very very big for you this year and i know you've spoken all about it across the different months um how much has this year sort of changed every matrices focus on esports as a company yeah of course in our sports team so we are as a company we are very modular so we have our sports guys and our casino guys and our payment guys and they all do their things and uh and each have been hit in very different ways by by events this year but yeah so the sports team of course absolutely crucial uh to get this esports um running and i think uh the biggest thing for us and for me personally has not so much been the fact that we meant to recover some revenues on esports because we did and was very good but uh it was the ability of of the fine men and women of our sports division that they were able to take on esports in such a short time it is very different it's a different audience it's a different betting markets different sports uh different presentation so a lot of new things that we had to do um in a very short time going from thing home was this cuvette onto suddenly being where everything gets locked down uh on a daily basis you see tournaments disappearing in front of your very eyes and and then trying to replace this so we write really hard on it we delivered really well and at the same time of course as everybody's working from home as well so so yes um happy with the financial but extremely happy about about the team and of course it's also about it shows it shows the ability of the software itself uh because you can work ever as hard as you want but if if you're on a platform which which really is doesn't give you the agility to to do new things easily then then you just give up and and when i look around and i see clearly that some sportsbooks were able to do this like we were and others basically gave up and said well we are going to hibernate and wait until this is all over and we were going to just lick our wounds until then and you know come out strong at the end which of course is also viable but uh you know but those guys will have will have been left with let's say some disappointment about their own abilities um and and we weren't and this is what i really take from this um esports as such i mean it's it's a fascinating topic in its own right but yeah i'm more lucrative like this and you know it could as well have been some directive from a higher force saying everybody should now focus very hard on dog racing um and how well are you then at doing this in a very short time span uh so now i know that we could did an esports um one of interesting things happened to us lately has been our u.s entry so if that is a similar type of approach the um you you have to work end-to-end to do esports you have to create the markets and investigate new things you didn't know about before you have to present them in different ways you may be you have different betting types how many how many kills did you get on on this round of shooting etc etc um so it's an end to end effort and this way it's actually similar to what you would need as a let's say european sportsbook to enter the u.s market so so uh yeah um that that agility that will stand as well you obviously talked a lot about sports and sportsbook itself there because esports is quite quite linked to that um in 2020 obviously we had we had ups and downs for the sports betting calendar um but we also had uh for online casino um it was it was a it was a stronger year 2020. um what kind of major trends have you seen this year in sports betting and in casino yeah um this is where it's good for us that we're diversified of course uh so we of course did take a beating on the sports uh esports aside uh still we saw big drops uh as everyone did uh big drops and uh and betting volumes on the sports of course there's nothing too bad on uh it was esports and then massive amounts of table tennis but uh yeah um so but then yes we have a very strong casino product and actually it's it's the one where we have our largest clients we have uh very large uh brands across europe using our casino products and by and large all of them so just huge boosts uh in activity um in in those in the real heights of of uh kovit may uh was like an extraordinary month on the casino and so um this was great our clients made a lot of money and since we're revenue shares based we also in turn made really good money on this it came back leveled out and came back to let's say more normal but even now um in november when we are talking we are still at a much higher level than we were in february so certainly a lot of this has carried over and and companies have learned to exploit and manage the product better and players have been attracted and while some will return to offline betting um others are sticking to the online and yeah it it has boosted [Music] everything around our casino really and um in the end meant that actually covet uh came out a net plus for us um with the casino actually outweighing the sports and now um in a very good situation because now sports is back and uh and we are we had the same levels as pre-covered which is pretty nice um it's obviously positive end to the year for sports betting like you say given given the the considerable lows throughout the year um but we're looking at the different verticals so so esports sports casino and something we've maybe not talked about yet but virtuals as well um i know there's a lot of variables with with lockdowns and with covid but what are your kind of hopes with these different verticals in 2021 yeah i've been a i've been a big optimist when it came to esports that it would win chain a last year and i'm i have to admit that it has been not quite as strong as as i hoped it would be worth the return of sports um but but that that that set i mean we are still at much higher levels again it's a little bit like the casino much higher levels today in november when there's a full um sports calendar running here than we were in november last year pre-covet so esports has certainly taken hold and taking a significant share and this is not a small amount and this is like a 10-fold increase year-on-year on on esports prepared so with all said and done um and of course it means that now where before it was so small that you would even wonder is is it worth bothering doing this i mean i mean you might debate esports at the same level as some very very exotic um regular sport now it's become let's say around the number five sports it still is behind football and tennis and basketball but it's above many other regular sports where before it was way down the line in you know badminton level range or whatever some tiny exotic thing for the specialist now it's a major thing and that in itself means that it's getting the attention of our clients and it's getting the attention of our development teams to continue to improve we of course did a lot in a very short time but yeah um that also means that there's much left that we could have done even better um if if we would have done a normal development process and said oh we're going to launch esports it's going to be a 12-month project uh from internet we meant to squeeze it into a three month uh like flurry blitzkrieg attack on esports and we got very far uh and now most site is a rating and the results will improve even further um we're continuously adding more more content uh more feed deals more streaming and so on and improving in various dimensions so yeah i feel bullish about long term absolutely and uh my final question to you on is is on 20 20 21 again but on on a personal level and for every matrix and not just sort of vertical specific what are your general hopes for the year well i have many hopes personally but let's uh let's start with the company at least we have taken a big step for us which is to apply for this new jersey license we are aware that it's expensive and it's going to take a long time to enter the use market but we're doing it based on having now gotten a strong business based on european customers we feel ready for this um and my strong hope for this obviously is that we are going to launch a few clients um it's uh we will be preparing a lot and putting a lot of effort into this um so let's go out and win some deals um on the european side um the main thing i'm hoping for is for our third big product to record some wins so we won some very very strong deals and have them live for casino we have uh seen very strong growth on our sportsbook we have a payments division as well it's a product we invested in latin and i'm hoping for a very good deal uh on this as well to lift this up to where our other products are today well ebay thank you very much for your time and your answers and i wish you the best of luck with with all those ventures thank you very much tom to our viewers thank you for watching and be sure to catch up on the latest news on gamblingsider.com where you can also see the latest issue of gaming insider magazine which is the november december issue until next time see ya [Music]