hello viewers and welcome to the gi huddle today i'm with yuri ermantraut chief executive director of atmosphere yuri thanks for joining us thank you for having me yeah it's a pleasure to have you on um looking forward to talking about live casino and the company uh to start off with can you tell me a bit about um your role uh what you do and the company journey so far sure it was pleasure so regarding atmosphera so it is a b2b software provider uh which offer live casino products to the market and we set up the company in 2020 and we think about ourselves as a forward-looking team that's trying to bring fresh ideas studio design fresh ideas for example in studio design in game interface for sure in marketing features and pr books [Music] regarding me i think my role is a classic ceo so i'm trying to carry the load of overall workflow like company vision the strategy main points also i'm deep in the product development right now because uh we are about to complete our class product portfolio live casino product portfolio and for now i think we have like around 20 plus uh partners from different markets uh of course of course we are known as trendsetters in yardfield and well-known approach to sharing the information our thoughts our feelings about the market about us so i hope i answered your question yeah absolutely as you say quite a quite a young company but use the word trendsetters so definitely kind of making making your mark uh on the market um at the moment how competitive is the live casino market it's become more and more competitive i think every month not even every year so uh because of several things first of all uh the big companies for example like pragmatic uh they getting uh they're getting bigger and bigger and more interesting from the product perspective this is my personal opinion uh also a lot of new really good uh live casino providers uh entering to the market for example um like several months ago i finding new new competitor uh latino infinity light provider and i i'm waiting when they will start live so i think it's quite competitive and but it's become more interesting and interesting to compete because you are trying to find out some new features which could help you to grow fast to compete for the player so [Music] yeah yeah as you say an interesting market plenty of innovation i think is is a good way to sum it up um i know atmosphere you take a bit of a a unique maybe innovative approach um internally with the company i know you're keen to talk about how you approach people and things like human resources um can you tell us about what you call personal branding it's one of my favorite questions and and one of my favorite topic because we quite spent more time and more focus on this in atmosphere i i want to to tell you a little bit uh how i [Music] how i uh decided to create atmosphere and why and uh it will be sure i wanted to create a live provider because i met believed in people from the from this industry and also i saw the opportunity from a synergy of those energy of those people and ambitions and [Music] for me people the most valuable resource and the success received for achieving goals and uh if you want to get maximum from [Music] your team even from yourself yeah even yourself it's it's important to say you need to give them also maximum that you can and also it worked in such way so in order to human resources to be renewable replenished and generate the necessary results it's important to invest in them and also we use different approaches and methods of setting tasks and monitoring sometimes i could use the world you must do it so directive approach because i think we need to save time and we need to do it fast and i'm sure in what i believe i'm sure in this moment that we need to do it fast and must in this way it is not only two approaches we use much more around five but it's most important also for example they have a lot of opportunities to decide by themselves so they already individual players that are responsible for the fields for the pr for example for the product development independent independent employees i think all these things uh helps me to build build such strong team independent team when we start i was only i was the only ambassador of the company to speak about atmosphere about what we do what we plan and um now we have round five so [Music] i have the the people responsible for pr and for example my colleague who is responsible for this ambassador atmosphere and responsible for vr and we have ambassadors for hr field product field design and i am really happy about it so they become so strong and independent and they believe the same way as i and i believe in the same way as they uh so any and it's uh all made the circle of trust to each other uh when i tell this i am so feel happy you know to understand it because it's it's it's one of our goals to feel people comfortable to bring new ideas bring energy bring perfect atmosphere and atmosphere company let's be honest yeah yeah definitely i mean i can sense that uh flexibility coming across the from what you're saying and and definitely it's good you said trust because that was a word i was going to use you know it sounds like um trusting each employee each individual um how does that affect the the company's corporate culture overall i'm not sure if there's been any any recent developments kind of new things in this area for atmosphera personal brand of individuals of my colleagues of my team it's an intel it's part of company's brand so and for me it is it is the area in which we succeed the most this is the main basis of euro human relationships uh within the team uh as well as an important kind hiring tool so it will trust inside atmosphere and also outside the market and [Music] regarding the corporate culture one day maybe it was interview uh in an interview to to you uh with you uh i would i will say that we established cultural culture atmosphere but for now uh i couldn't say like this um five years ago i read the book called it's called calculated religion the author uh and this book was about the importance of building of building a corporal culture in the companies and they through the example of five huge brand one of them was uh harley davidson and i fell in love with this book and is in this ideology and i was waiting for the moment when i could have an possibility to create it by myself or before i established an atmosphere i was trying to find out the company with such ideology on the market because i like employees but now i can create it inside an atmosphere and so as i told you with the creation of atmosphere i realized that the time has come and i can create my cultural religion based on on the personal feelings and values and to be honest it's not an easy pass so as i said i would like not just declare that we have corporate culture so i want people i want all people all team every single colleague to feel it and to believe in these values i think well the right way yeah yeah no as you say it's it's a journey and and definitely um it's it's always difficult creating your own your own way your own path and i suppose it's also um it's also a challenge when that path is you know you're aiming for different things it's not just your kind of standard this is that we're going to do like everyone else as it sounds like you know you've got you've got your own uh vision a little bit different a little bit unique yeah yeah you know i was uh google it about how to create the cultural culture it's unfortunately google couldn't answer all questions and maybe not unfortunately because i will be copy past uh if i if i if i'm fine but now i will rely on on my feelings and thoughts and yeah it's it's not one of those uh you can just ask alexa or siri they won't have it for sure for sure yeah but it uh by step so we starting from uh paying a lot of attention to the soft skills uh so that we for example when we hire people so we look uh not only about the expertise we're looking also on the soft skills of the potential candidate like we're looking for a like-minded people uh to the company yeah for sure so i i can see kind of the the um internally how you want to move atmosphere forward um if we were to talk about maybe externally so uh the industry and kind of uh trends at the moment uh what are the biggest challenges um suppliers like like yourselves face and obviously you mentioned already that live casino is very competitive so already that's that's a big challenge right there you asked me about my challenges yes the children said atmosphere faced yeah yeah in the marketplace so company challenges uh you know the companies in the industry face maybe not necessarily internally uh you know separate from the from the the branding discussion i think for atmosphere the main issue for now that we faced is uh competition for player detection so because we have a lot of integration a lot of partners we are already live at many many casinos and it's not enough it's just a small part of workflow and that you need to do to success in players attention maybe several years ago when we started it it will it was enough but now for sure not uh big companies have more could offer more products they are more professional they have more professionals i try to say they have more expertise in some marketing tools uh using their previous expertise and yeah that's what we face right now so many as i told you like providers i mentioned pragmatic which already familiar to the end users and the many others like conair infinity with a new product they bring their new expertise in the market they already know this problem use this problem and prepare for this so they will enter they will enter they will go live with some interesting feature which helps them to compete we in previous year we haven't uh got these features now we started with like tournament with now we are working on such tool like free chip which help us to involve people playing our games also working on increases the speed of the video of video broadcasting so this is it will improve the user experience but first what you need to do is to push the player open your game and uh and then you will then you are trying to returning and this is the other step yeah absolutely interesting marketing tools i think uh not create marketing tools will be the problem the the challenge number one for the market and for atmosphere for sure [Music] um a final topic i wanted to talk to you about is kind of we talked a lot about um internal policies and we talked about about challenges there the the future looking forward um with everything that you've mentioned how do you kind of see the live casino industry maybe changing the rest of 2022 the next couple of years is it going to change a lot i mean it sounds like as you said new developments innovations all the time if you don't mind i want to ask the same question to you you know because i think you asked it many many times to different people and uh i think you collect a lot of expertise in this question and that's interesting i think that's the that's the first time i think in a geo huddle i've been i've been put on the spot and say uh answer the question um live casino specific well okay the ques a question i um okay let me answer your question for the question with another question right sorry to do that but uh i mean you mentioned you mentioned a few brands earlier and you mentioned pragmatic play i guess so for me when i'm thinking about the future of life casino i'm thinking about uh the impact evolution has because evolution is is obviously huge as a brand i think potentially where evolution goes maybe not dictates but definitely helps determine you know where the um where the sector goes because obviously they have a big market share um will they lose market share will other brands come forward or will they keep growing does that make sense as kind of a point to think about when we look at the future yeah for sure they are huge and massive and everywhere but they also push the market to develop yeah and they also push pragmatic as some of the companies with this speed becomes growing more faster than an evolution it's only my personal opinion yeah well i think that's fine because this year and the previous year they uh did great job and from the perspective of the product the quality of product and it's it's really good for the market that uh not only evolution drives the market yeah absolutely um i think but yeah go ahead and swing to your question my opinion regarding the second part of this year uh if we if you're interested uh about my thoughts about the figures so i wouldn't say nothing because it's better to refer to such interesting companies like i don't know ash to gambling capital they would rate forecast but from what i see i mentioned before there is a huge competition for users and we will and also there they are a lot of quite good products and companies on the market so we'll see new [Music] future features marketing features which will help everyone to have to attract users to hold them and to succeed uh because as you see uh products quite familiar to each other i mean the type of product so i folded blackjack and so on some game show product [Music] but the tools which help you to attract this product will be for sure different and the method how companies will use it on which market so i think uh what we will see is this challenge not only providers cares for sure not only cares about how to increase ltv of the player for sure first of all the brands b2c brands care about it uh but they think overall of the player not to a particular brand i mean particular provider of casino or slot but providers like me like us we thinks only about how how to be interesting for the player yeah yeah absolutely well yuri thanks very much for your for your time and for your answers i think maybe to sum up our our discussion on kind of how how it will move forward and if i were to give uh an opinion as you asked me for mine earlier i think live casino is going to just continue to grow and in comparison to other verticals i think live casino is still still got loads of room you know to to take up that market share but um i don't know if you have any final thoughts on that um i mean i i imagine there'll be positive thoughts in that regard for sure it will grow as we see the forecast of different companies not on the consulting companies public companies yeah they all uh speaking about the growing of market of uh european market of markets which um established regulations markets who ready to meet new players so from different perspectives the market the gambling market will grow many many years for sure and uh it's uh it's like it's really good news for us for you for all participants uh but also it will be more competitive more uh [Music] modern from my tea side because i think in [Music] several years or maybe earlier we will uh we have a possibility to play in vr games we'll see we are casino just imagine so we will finish interviews and put some glasses and and in the casino you like absolutely yeah it could all change couldn't then you've got metaverse and things like this but but yuri once again thanks very much for your time and a real pleasure speaking with you about about atmosphere and about the industry it was pleasure for me too thank you for inviting me