hello everyone and welcome to the latest Joe huddle interview with gamming insider today we're here to talk about the affiliate sector with better collective CEO yes perso god hi yes but thanks for joining us no problem so obviously during this kovat 19 pandemic we've there's been a lot of talk about operators suppliers and especially kind of how land based has been affected but in terms of the affiliate sector you know what are the effects that the pandemic has had and even though we're we're not out of the pandemic just yet what's it like at the moment with the effects hopefully lessening with lockdowns being reduced and things like that I think like you've seen with operators there there there's been sort of - two things that has happened so sports of course went to a complete halt which affected sports betting and and better classic being as big sports betting affiliate that that obviously had an impact on us then on the other side Casino unlike escena has been been growing due to the shutdown of land-based casinos so people going online we've then as a special case also seen a lot of activity on on eSports and there just did an acquisition just prior to - the cover 19 outbreak of hltv dock which is the leading community side for counter-strike go so for us it has been some pros and some cons we were of course very happy to see football resuming with the Bundesliga in in May and now we we are really back in at least in in Europe with sports and and soon the u.s. so it was definitely a frightening time just at the beginning we looked at our cost base to really make sure that we were a lean and ready to come out stronger on the back of all this mm-hmm a couple of key trends you touched upon there in terms of the eSports and maybe other things like virtuals and even kind of table tennis betting which a lot of operators have said was quite popular doing during a look down are those verticals still kind of growing as quickly as sort of a couple of months ago what's the kind of pace of that at the moment I think that's a pretty big difference when you compare virtuals with with eSports virtuals really boomed and again that makes sense when you have when you have the real sport to to bet on but with eSports it's really its own vertical and there was a lot of conversion to that and it seems like that's just sticking so so eSport has really reached a new Plateau in terms of of the number of bets placed there which we're of course quite excited about and obviously you talked about the return of a football as well and have there been any any sort of trends you've seen because obviously footballs back but it's different we have we don't have crowds we have a lot of games in a in a quick amount of time is there more kind of a way team betting you know what of what has better collective scene really in terms of trends so from from the betting perspective yes the home team advantage is not as strong as it normally is but what was interesting to me was sort of the anticipation fall for football to come to come back and then in particular that the German Bundesliga was the first league that started and we really saw an interest across the world for that league so there I don't think there's ever been as much interest into the German Bundesliga that's just prior to the style restart of that leak yeah mm-hmm yeah and also in August we've got the Champions League in a in a different format to usual you know you got all the games played in a short space of time what a kind of better collectives expectations for that I think we're we're of course preparing for a quite intense period almost you could say a bit similar to to the the chairmanship like the European Championship or the Washington and and I think we may see that there would be a slightly smaller interest if you look at the average of games because they're gonna be so condensed as you say but overall we we do see this as an important time for for these games and especially for for engaging our users that surely will be looking for four places to place bets mm-hmm and we spoke a few months ago and obviously this was the before the pandemic and there was an expectation that the the euros would be the biggest betting event ever obviously unfortunately that didn't quite pan out but could could something like this champions the kind of compare to the numbers we might have seen for something like that to be honest I don't think so I think we have to wait till summer 21 for for experiencing sort of that that that big championship effect that that we always have with the championships sure yes obviously like you say that'll be next summer but for this year and for the for the rest of 2020 what are better collective plans maybe in terms of is there any more M&A in the pipeline or you know what are the kind of things you're focusing on and we still have a healthy pipeline so is that sort of ongoing work you're always a better collective and then we are relaunching a Vegas insider that come with a new version of the site ready for the NFL in September then and that is something I'm looking very much forward to will continuously work with hltv and since you know it was acquired in the February so there's still quite some work to do and but it's it's just developing well so so happy about that those are probably the two biggest projects that we we're looking forward to in the fall and overall in terms of the affiliate sector do you think you know the sector can sort of keep going strong at this at this time you know or any kind of pitfalls or hurdles to watch out for us as things sort of come out of lockdown I think I've said that a few times like we obviously need to see sort of a similar behavior from from from the the punters when all of this is settled to me it seems like that will happen but but still I think there's just more uncertainty in this new world also the risk of a second wave of Kobe 19 could impact sport so uncertainty has gone up meaning there's also a bit more risk than the normally mhm well yes but thanks very much for your time and for your insight my pleasure thanks for all the viewers for all the latest on the affiliate sector be sure to read lace the edition of traffic ology and keep up all the latest news on gambling aside calm thanks for listening and see you next time