In August of last year Breaking Data Corp, the owners of sports news platform Givemesport, announced plans to pursue an assault on the betting and gaming verticals.
The first step of the journey was to secure the €7.5m acquisition of turnkey solutions provider Oryx Gaming, which included an initial €1.5m on the signing of the share and purchase agreement, with a further €4.125m upon closing of the transaction.
Also unveiling an intention to rename to Bragg Gaming Group upon completion, fast forward a little over seven months and the group has undertaken several steps towards expansion of its new entity, while also launching the Givemebet brand as 2018 drew to a close.
CasinoBeats has caught up with Dominic Mansour, chief executive officer of Bragg, to discuss the significance of various moves undertaken thus far, future jurisdictions of interest and its newest brand launch.
CasinoBeats: What was the significance of the purchase of Oryx by Breaking Data? And the subsequent renaming to Bragg Gaming Group?
Dominic Mansour: “Our focus was to build a new gaming company entire a genuine, next generation player in the sector. With the experience we have we felt we needed the structure and opportunity to be able to do that.
“In Breaking Data we found a vehicle, with one asset we were particularly keen on GMS – and a listed structure we wanted. Ultimately changing the name was simply a culmination of the process.”
“Everyone is talking about the US right now, and rightly so”
Why was the decision made to undergo a number of board level changes recently? And what impacts are expected to be felt as a result?
“Our ambition is to both grow organically and through M&A. To a certain extent moving away from the old board was more about focusing on the new. In Jim Ryan we have found a genuine A-list board member who shares our vision and whose experience in this sector is second to none.
“Paul Pathak has the background in M&A as well as gaming (through his board position with JPJ) that is the perfect match for our goals. It’s early days, we’ll see the fruition of this in the coming weeks and months.”
The company appears to be on something of a concerted growth effort of late, which region/s are on the radar both in the short and longer term?
“Everyone is talking about the US right now, and rightly so. It has the potential to become the largest regulated market in the world, and we have every ambition to be part of that. It’s going to be a slower game but one we don’t intend to miss out on.
“The Oryx customer base is also very well positioned in regulated Germany, which given the recent developments there looks to be a short term growth opportunity for that business.”
Bragg also launched Givemebet towards the end of last year, what were the reasons behind this and what are its targets?
“When Sky launched SkyBet, they were aware they had a captive audience to whom them could market. Givemebet is no different in that sense, since in Givemesport we have an asset that has 26m Facebook fans globally, but most importantly, over 1m monthly regular visitors who are also going to betting sites in the UK. That’s an opportunity for anyone with our experience in gaming.”
Moving forward, how are these two entities to complement each other to ensure sustained success across both brands?
“Hopefully it’s self-explanatory. We will be able to acquire and retain customers through our access to a media channel that no one else truly has.”