Fun, fast and fair
BITCOIN, BRAZIL AND THE BOMBAY CLUB: TIM HEATH ON ALL THINGS COINGAMING TIM HEATH RECENTLY STEPPED DOWN AS CEO OF THE COINGAMING GROUP to focus on its fast-growing VC
fund. He explains how Christmas musings brought lift off for the group and how its VC fund opens doors for Bitcasino.io and Sportsbet.io, before discussing his ‘baby’ and first of its kind for the industry - the Bombay Club SBC: How did it all start for the Coingaming Group? TH: It was back at Christmas dinner 2013, I said two things. Firstly, we’re an extremely smart bunch of people doing really great stuff. We can do many things we dream of if only we can control the money. And we wouldn’t be reliant on third parties. And then the second thing was, why don’t we use bitcoin? We can be our own bank. So, we furiously went and investigated, then within a month we had a bitcoin poker network up and running. We put some casino games up on the side of that, and people started playing those games. Within three months we’d turned the poker off and launched Bitcasino. From there, the rest is history. We’ve pushed forward the whole way through in terms of running the two B2C brands - in 2016 we launched the sportsbook (Sportsbet. io). In March 2016, I woke up one day and thought ‘we need a sportsbook for the Euros’. So I said ‘guys you’ve got three months’, and they got it done. We took our first bet at 5:30 on 10 June 2016, half an hour before kick off. I think that really epitomises how we go about things; we work out what we need to do, and take a very agile approach to doing so. We know things might not be launched at 100% perfection, so be it, but if the concept
44 SBC MAGAZINE • OCTOBER 2020
is proved right we can go and further improve it. SBC: What are your key target markets for Bitcasino and Sportsbet.io? TH: Look, it’s crypto, it crosses the world. It’s very much gone from a jurisdictional basis to a horizontal basis in terms of what parts of the world enjoy using crypto. Obviously there’s lots of Asian countries who’ve taken a mass adoption approach to it, specifically Japan and South Korea. Not as much China as we initially thought, interestingly enough, although that is changing now with the hardship people have had with moving money out of China.
WE KNOW THINGS MIGHT NOT BE LAUNCHED AT 100% PERFECTION, BUT IF THE CONCEPT IS PROVED RIGHT WE CAN GO AND FURTHER IMPROVE IT Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and Indonesia, India is going extremely well ever since the decision to withdraw all those Rupee notes. Then we’ve got African nations too. So you have all these subsets of jurisdictions; we’ve got a lot of action in Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina because their trading crossborder in bitcoin has become their benefacto, go-to currency.
South America is growing rapidly for us, Central America too, Canada is doing very nicely. Then Germany, Finland, Norway. It’s not like you’re going after a single big market like, for example, Sky Bet goes after England, Parimatch for Russia. We’re not like that at all, we’re sporadically looking for that half percent in many different jurisdictions where people are very crypto-focused with what they’re doing. SBC: So it’s just about marketing to crypto popular areas? TH: If you look at the sponsorship deals we’ve done with Flamengo, and with Southampton and Watford too, they were done because of the global appeal of football. And it was a way for us to really get our name out. Interestingly, we had Chinese characters on the Watford one, but as soon as we did that there was a copycat site in China just 30 days after. We’ve actually taken the characters off this year, because we’re not looking for it just to be a vehicle into Asia specifically, but more for that global reputation, trust and understanding from these deals. SBC: How important was the timing of the Flamengo deal? TH: Absolutely. We will be getting a licence there (Brazil) as soon as the tender becomes available. From what we’ve heard, it will be Q1 or Q2 next year, and it’s one of the markets we believe very strongly in. We want to be fully licensed and ‘white’ for when it opens up. SBC: What have you seen in terms of relative growth of Bitcasino and Sportsbet.io? TH: Exponential. One of the things about Bitcasino is we have a lot of high