Hello viewers, Tim Pool here, editor of Gambling Insider. I'm with a familiar face, Bjorn Krentz, CEO of Yggdrasil. Bjorn, how are you and thanks for joining us. Thank you very much Tim, always a pleasure to be here.
I feel great. The show has started. We have a lot of talented colleagues at the stand meeting and greeting with customers showing the latest and greatest and I will be packed a couple of days and I will start to feel it. Yeah. We're talking about a couple of milestones today with yourself.
Actually, soon, I'm not sure if it's soon or already gone, a year for you as CEO. But the company itself, we're talking about a decade for Yggdrasil. Ten years are going to be celebrated this year.
Can you talk us through that company journey so far? Absolutely. I mean, first of all, I'm extremely proud of all the talented people that have worked at Yggdrasil and that has made this journey possible.
We took the first bet in September. of 2013 and today as we speak we have over 150 customers in direct integration. We have over 200 games live. We are represented in approximately 25 regulated markets including US where we have two games live.
And of course, with all the innovation and what has happened on the technology side, in order to scale everything we do and be who we are today, a prominent and a well-recognized player in the industry. But you know, Tim, the fun thing is that it's 10 years. If you look back, we feel that we have done so much as a team.
But still, you know, when you turn around. it's still the beginning of something new and exciting. I'm glad you mentioned innovation because regular viewers will have seen we've spoken about innovation before. We spoke over Zoom and now it's great to do this in person. But I wanted to hit you with a more challenging question.
Innovation we know is a kind of you really make a big deal of that you want to innovate this industry and disrupt it. But what are the biggest challenges right now? And this is maybe something we've touched on before of trying to innovate in iGaming.
right now? It's a really good question, Tim. I mean, it's a very competitive environment. I mean, let's be true to ourselves here. I mean, we have three, four hundred games that is launched every single month.
Of course, you need to make sure that you are on top of the game. And innovation is something that is easy to talk about. But if you don't have it on top of your strategic agenda, I think it's something you say, but maybe not something that you realize. At Yggdrasil, we have innovation on the highest level. We innovate throughout the companies, not only related to product innovation.
But nevertheless, if you look at the way we work, we try to see our ecosystem from a 360 viewpoint, where you have a lot of BI from our... existing operations you know that we can dive into and there's tons of stuff that we can find there we have our tight corporations with with our partners where we get a lot of insight you know where we exist in the total ecosystem we have user group forums with with players we have tight corporations with streamers where we get first-hand player input as well and of course you know the interest that we have have in the general market dynamics so if you put this together we try to be as correct as we possibly can when we are judging what is working and what is not working in order to that it makes sense for what we are putting out there on the market that is relevant and that we never compromise on quality and innovation as we said and at the end it trickles down to talk about the product side of the business, trick us down to a very balanced math and mechanical mix that we put into the game with Yggdrasil flavored front end. that hopefully is very attractive in the eyes of the players. Sure.
On a general note, so innovation included, but not just restricted to the topic of innovation, what are your plans for 2023? Because you mentioned obviously the decade is... coming up in September was the first bet.
And as we said earlier, a year for you as CEO. What are the plans in general for Yggdrasil in 2023? So we have a lot of exciting stuff in the pipeline, as always. You will see much more core games being released. We delivered 12 core games with our own IP 2022. And this year we will deliver 22 core games, so it's a plus 10. We will continue to strategically work with our Masters program.
And what we do here is... that we work with the GEMS, the Game Engagement Mechanics, which we resell back to our master's partners and they can utilize that in their production. It's a very high-performing mechanical framework. We see that it works. And we also use these GEMS in our own productions.
And we talk about the GEMS. It's mechanical frameworks such as Gigablocks, Multimax, DoubleMax. And we feel that it's extremely important to build top of mind awareness about these mechanical frameworks just because of the market is flooded with so many games every single month. So what we do here is differentiate through mechanical developments and it works. And we push that through the program as well.
And of course new markets. We look at LATAM as an interesting emerging market. We're already live in Colombia, Mexico.
We just got our license in Buenos Aires City. And Peru is an exciting market and opportunity. LATAM is not a big market, but we believe that over time it will play a more important role.
So we want to build an early top of mind here. And of course the U.S. market where we own. have two games live today but our ambition levels are of course much much higher so we are excited upon the next pace or phase in in in that US market rollout sure I was gonna ask you about your programs and the mechanics but you covered them well there so you kind of saved me a question there Sebi but I wanted to ask you hearing about LATAM and you said it's not not the not necessarily a big market right now. I mean, let's say in 10 years from now, is that going to change?
How much potential is there in LATAM? Because depending on who you ask, a lot of people say that there's huge potential there. Absolutely.
I mean, all different markets develop in a different way, and the speed of developing a market can, of course, also be different. But we believe that there will be a much better market. bigger middle class in the LATAM market.
If you look at internet penetration, if you look at mobile penetration and all these KPI factors that makes it exciting for us in online gaming, to make an approach and do something. It's there. So the foundation, I think, in the market is there. And now it's just to build up awareness and make sure that the regulatory side of the market is working and it catches more.
and more interest and if you're there early then you can also build a nice game brand awareness and and brand awareness sure about a couple last questions for you um this one this next question we're sitting here at ice um apart from new business which of course is the obvious aim for everyone what exactly uh does a supplier a b2b supplier like a crystal what what do you guys get out of a show like ice london i mean is this a very uh special for for us because it's iGaming under one single roof. You have all our partners, all our stakeholders, customers is here. So you can be very, very effective when you book meetings and how you arrange your agenda.
And of course, a super important part for us being at ICE, taking the investment to be here with a lot of talented people. showcase the latest and greatest we have I mean when it comes to products technology and how that fits together and how we with that type of portfolio can be a very strategic partner of choice you know to to to our customers and and partners so I think ice is important to sort of wrap it all up if we see what I mean and then you are coming back home totally exhausted but with a lot of opportunities that you can work on and a lot of feedback that we also need to discuss in the meeting rooms and we have a lot of people that is walking around here so from a business intelligence perspective it's perfect everyone is here yeah and we can see what others are doing and what type of angst they are taking on on on certain approaches and we can feed that back and we can talk about that and see if that is something you know that that um we need to know we need to talk a little bit more about or if it's just something something to, you know, we are recognizing something. Sure.
My final question for you, you're the CEO, so this is a very CEO-focused question. As the CEO, what are your top priorities? So when you wake up, and maybe you obviously have your breakfast and all that, but when you think about work, what are the first things you think of and then maybe the last things you think of when you leave the office or maybe more realistically when you go to sleep at night?
How much money can we do today? And with how many percentage? Can we beat yesterday? No, just joking.
For me, it's all about the focus. That we all in the company understands our strategy well and our scorecard that is linked to our ambitions and what is key deliverables for the company in order to meet our strategic objectives. So are we all aligned? that and how do we build the organizational readiness around that scorecard and around that strategy.
Have we optimized everything in order to be the best that we can be in delivering the core business that we are in. I'm always thinking about these things but I have a very very talented team around me I'm so proud and they make my life easy so even if I'm thinking a lot about these type of strategic questions and what is around the corner and are we making the right decisions where it matters I know that the team is a well oiled team and they also make decisions where it matters and we need to do that because that's the only way for us to to be a challenger in this market and keep on growing and keep on rocking. Well, Bjorn, thanks very much.
Lovely to do this huddle in person, and good luck with the rest of the show. Thank you so much, Tim. Always a pleasure.
Thanks for having me.