corporateprofile
Amaya Gaming Group
Photo credit: Riccardo Cellere (www.riccardocellere.com)
CEO David Baazov talks Amaya's past, present, and future
This spring, CGB sat down with Amaya's David Baazov for an in-depth look at this global gaming company, its recent successes, and its goals for the future of gaming.
What offerings does Amaya currently bring to the industry? Amaya provides a full suite of gaming solutions including gaming platforms and game content for casino, poker, sportsbook, lotteries, and slot machines. Some of the world’s largest and best known gaming operators and casinos are powered by our online, mobile, and land-based solutions. We are proudly Canadian with our head off ice in Montreal, publicly traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and Venture Exchange, and have offices in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. Our vision is to leverage our technology for the rapid convergence in the gaming industry in order to enable our customers to acquire players regardless of the medium of acquisition; whether through physical, virtual, or mobile channels. Our goal is to execute on this vision in order to enable our customers to increase the yield generated from players to further drive the revenue base. What have been some of Amaya's most significant recent developments? The past 24 months have been pivotal for the g row th of our compa ny, whereby we’ve grown from a medium sized company to now having over 800 employees globally. Our first two big acquisitions were Chartwell and Cryptologic which were pioneers in the online casino gaming space. The next two came in the second half of 2012 with the purchase of Ongame Poker Network from bwin.party. Shortly after we closed the Ongame transaction, we 30 | Spring 2013
made our largest business acquisition to date, picking up American landbased slot manufacturer Cadillac Jack for $177 million. How has Cadillac Jack enhanced Amaya's approach as a full-service supplier? We are looking to lead in both the landbased and interactive regulating gaming spaces, and our acquisition of Cadillac Jack is instrumental in providing us the capability of extending our offering to land-based operators. This acquisition gave us top-tier slot product, and allows for signif icant cross-selling opportunities to land-based operators to extend their offering to customers beyond the confines of their physical casino. How will the Ongame acquisition strengthen Amaya presence in the online space? We’re ver y excited about Ongame because it is a leading online poker network in Europe. The company has great people and one of the best poker products in the market that can truly compete with the likes of PokerStars and PartyPoker’s products. The combination of the existing Amaya Casino games with the Ongame Poker network provides a complete gaming solution for operators. We are also rolling out a new electronic gaming platform where Ongame has a solid track record in being first to market in regulated jurisdictions. We feel poised to broaden our US footprint with both the poker network and gaming platform. We have already signed one of the largest casinos in the US with Mohegan Sun for our poker platform, and we have also recently signed an agreement with
Las Vegas based American Casino & Entertainment Properties (aceplaypoker. com), which is monumental now that online gaming has been legalized in Nevada. Our exclusive interactive poker distribution deals with Bally and SHFL also increases our reach to land based casinos wanting to 'flip the switch' and go online. One trend right now is for online operators to be platform-independent. Given that Amaya has a full product suite, are you still allowing this integration? Absolutely, we still allow integration. We want our customers to make as much money as possible. The more money they make, the more money we make; it has to be a competitive landscape. We do not believe in ever putting the customer’s back against the wall. The product and content has to speak for itself. If you take the competition out of it, you’re taking innovation out of the equation as well. With these new businesses in the mix, what are Amaya's biggest challenges and what is it doing to overcome them? The integration of the businesses is the biggest challenge in terms of products, platforms, brands, people and processes. This will receive our biggest focus as it creates significant opportunities to create efficiencies that will strengthen the company’s position in the market. Other key challenges and opportunities include further penetration of the US gaming market and the deployment of signif icant projects in Europe. 2013 is going to be an even bigger year for us, and as a company we continue to recruit top talent that will give us the bandwidth to scale our operations sensibly.