hello viewers and welcome to the latest episode of the gi huddle i'm here with emmanuel lamprakus ceo of vet bonanza emmanuel uh thanks for joining us uh thank you for inviting me here today uh hello everybody let's start this interesting series of interviews and [Music] yeah um to start off with i thought it would be great if you could just tell us a little bit about that bonanza so uh you know brandon in the african region um and a little about a little bit about the company's history okay was incorporated back in 2018 and started operation in 2018 because the legislation was changed and the sports betting market was regulated [Music] operations it started mainly initially with a plant-based sportsbook for a few months and after a few months they started to offer to display us online as portfolio and casino games and virtues of course and since then uh that bonanza had a successful uh progress uh until uh [Music] [Music] all these years you know african nigerian market is a bit fragmented still today so that bonanza was one of the 150 companies who received their licenses to operate in nigeria today when that moment has a successful story to say but of course we believe that we have a lot to do in front of us [Music] in the future um as you mentioned the the the bets and investment kind of made industry news recently um the the the bigger investment the more recent one um and you mentioned as well the nigerian market can you talk us through a little bit about the the kind of the history of the market you mentioned it's it's fragmented um what what kind of journey has the nigerian market more generally gone through and what are the kind of trends you're seeing now uh nigerian markets uh it is we can say it is an established market now like kenya maybe ghana and nigerian market is more about sportsmapping and [Music] about also lottery games [Music] less numerical as we know the rest of the world nigerians nigeria has is a big country more 200 million people live here and has more than 70 million 70 million active veterans who are betting to win they bet the average bet would be seven eight dollars and uh they used to bet every day every day that's why also numerical games are quick games they have a lot of pros within the day but what is very interesting is the sports betting park which is increasing constantly and players are more familiar now with new devices within technology technology and the we are young uh no of course as i said nigerian market is still also an impact on that but we do see now that nigerian market going through some medicine acquisitions because the characteristic of the nigerian market is but the biggest part of that market is still on relies on retail business right 80 percent of everything is retail the internet penetration of the country uh as good as it is in other countries around the african countries around iranians for example interpenetration nigeria has along with kenya they have an average of 60 but the characteristic is that more than 90 of the players are using their mobile device like only seven to ten percent are using technical web [Music] and as i said the retail business is very strong because the people used to live out of the house the most of the day and they like to socialize and they like to gather in places where they can change opinions discuss with others and place their vet afterwards so this is the business our businesses in nigeria this is uh completely different let's say from companies where very big elsewhere but they are not only their marketing in order to be successful you here online need to maintain uh both segments and at the same time yeah you mentioned obviously a big focus on sports betting and and i think it's quite common knowledge that in nigeria you know football is it's a football crazy nation uh people love football people love to bet on football and the statistics you mentioned there about the the overall population and it's quite a high percentage of that population that do bet um could probably compare to other countries given that the new premier league season has just started uh for bonanza but maybe for the the whole industry what are your kind of expectations in terms of volumes uh for the for this current season and betting numbers uh i believe uh the overall the overall market is difficult to estimate given an accurate destination and [Music] like we said the nigerians wait the new season every year to start they save money for that to get prepared for the new season so we see a pick from course but continuous about the overseas the the market size is difficult to [Music] so it's a big market uh of course the companies now are trying to localize their products for the uh to make their product more attractive because like you said [Music] they are sports fun and especially when it comes to the leagues because of nigeria so they are very demanding so our expectations are high season so far we improved our products and our offerings to the players the lighter version of our products [Music] so the nigerian players don't have high-tech devices to enjoy the same level we have the same quite similar experience with other players and every year we in the short term how do you think the world cup will affect the the average nigerian better because obviously the premier league stops so there's less you know there's no premier league betting but will there just be a huge amount a huge surge on on international football betting i cannot say certainly what will happen but as i said nigerians are mostly interested on the premier league [Music] crazy we'll [Music] [Music] yeah it's a little bit different this year and as you say it's it's uh it's difficult to know exactly which way it will go with the world cup being mid-season um but if we're to to look at bet bonanza the company more specifically um obviously we talked about uh betsyn and uh the recent investment from from betson how is this you know has this accelerated any of your goals or any plans how is the kind of growth roadmap looking for the next sort of a couple of years uh as i said uh this one was a minority stakeholder uh the operations and the numbers start to have a good traction shareholders however betson believes that we are on the right track and we can continue to do what we are doing so far and of course we have access to bets on valuable resources and um and we can cut in when we need it but for the moment we will continue to operate as we used to do before and [Music] [Music] is uh they need to be patient uh let us grow lettuce we are happy with uh with what we are doing today and we'll continue to run our operations i think from now of course our understanding is that petron wants to remain with its state [Music] this company and of course they are willing to help [Music] [Music] um a final question for me specifically on again on bet bonanza what's what's the kind of next for you guys do you have any new products in the pipeline or is it more a case of marketing to you know attract attract new players and do the same thing with the sportsbook is there anything different in the pipeline or is it very much this offering the same core offering no we actually what we did so far was to improve a lot of things regarding our platform things and we said i mean we tried to localize the product even more also we developed the lighter version for older mobile phones and now we are planning [Music] also to offer a very good app for the players who want to use enough because okay mobile penetration necessity is high the smartphone penetration is increasing now it is around 40 percent so the nigerians are able to buy cheaper and better devices so they need a good product so the product revolution is always now rob we want also to to improve our product by offering [Music] better games [Music] out there and we'll try this evolution part rather than launching at least a short term additional gains or additional to our players we focus mostly on building a good team of people and a robust organization and the deal demanding retail network uh they store uh install gaming and better equipment there but also we focus a lot on the online to attract more players and keep them happy and have a good experience with us so hopefully for the next period we will be focusing more on going further our progress and more and use all the available channels to reach our customers but we are looking around of course we are aware of what is uh available in the market what can be successful here in nigeria or not because imagine that you are experiencing some very successful games elsewhere so we are just focusing what we know better well emmanuel thanks very much for your time and for your answers and and best of luck for all your ventures at bonanza um and yeah uh good luck with the rest of the year thanks for joining us thank you very much tim thank you for inviting me here today and i hope to see you soon again absolutely likewise thanks very much you