Amid an assertion of never being better positioned for long-term success, Bragg Gaming has closed a pair of key acquisitions this year as the group seeks to enter new markets and to develop more content in-house.
The transaction to secure Spin Games and Wild Streak Gaming, each for $30m, and followed by the hire of Chris Looney to advance its position in the North American B2B igaming space, comes as Bragg looks to set the foundation for the company’s growth strategy.
“It’s clearly showing strategically how we’re looking to pivot away from what we did previously and can move towards a full turnkey fully integrated company that owns its own content,” Richard Carter, CEO of Bragg Gaming, told CasinoBeats of Bragg’s M&A moves within the region.
Despite long holding aspirations of entering the North American market, Carter says that “we didn’t necessarily have all of that infrastructure in place” to be able to do so, before offering a deep dive into the positives gained via each in a bid to drive forward Bragg’s vision.
However, upon completion of the two, Bragg has previously said that it will have successfully executed on a strategy of acquiring “the essential resources and technology assets required to become a tier one vertically integrated B2B gaming business operating in the US and Canadian market”.
Carter begins by looking at the earlier of the two purchases, and therefore starts off by examining Spin Games: “So it, from a strategic perspective, ticked all of the right boxes. It brings in a management team that has been working in North America for 20+ years,” he says.
“I think they are very very strategic for us”
“So, it sort of de-risked our market entry strategy, and it also gave us all of the major customers, and it also helped from a regulatory perspective because it should enable us to get other licenses in all of those markets quicker.
“It’s very very important on many different levels, and what I really liked about the Spin acquisition was the culture, the management team, and it shared the same sort of vision that we had, which was to create this tier one modular technology, virtually integrated company.”
Much like the strategy currently occupied by Bragg, Spin too have been pivoting away from just being a reseller of third party content, and have been investing into creating their own slot and table game content.
“That’s very similar to the vision and strategy that we are undergoing at Oryx, which is that we recently launched our first in-house slot game, and we’re investing significantly in our own in-house casino content business. That is obviously going to incorporate part of our future growth,” he adds.
Attention then turns to Wild Streak Gaming, a Las Vegas-based content creation studio that has a portfolio slot titles supported across online and land-based applications.
“Now, what Wild Streak brings us is something slightly different, it basically brings us a very US centric, and it brings us, I think, one of North America’s leading game development studios,” Carter explains.
“A team which has had tremendous success with developing games for some of the leading casino manufacturers in the US, and has a very good track record on the land-based market.
“It’s clearly showing strategically how we’re looking to pivot away from what we did previously”
“And over the last 12 months it has been building games for the online market, and has had considerable success at that. Dragon Power for example is a top performing game in the New Jersey market, and they’ve also had several top performing games in the European market.”
Lauding a “very profitable business,” the know-how gained in terms of casino slot development is further praised as helping both Oryx and Spin, as well accelerating and also derisking the overall group investment into the ecosystem.
Carter continues: “More importantly, Doug Fallon, who is the founder and CEO, is a very well renowned slot designer and developer, has over 20 years of experience, and was with Aristocrat for roughly over 11 years, so is well schooled and well trained and I’m very pleased that he’ll be joining us as group content director, and will oversee the company’s future casino slot development program.”
Before concluding: “So I think that’s very important, specifically I think from the Spin acquisition, but also from a global perspective, because we have distribution now globally, and that’s very attractive to games studios out there.
“I’m very happy that we managed to close these deals, I think they are very very strategic for us, and I’m really looking forward to working with Doug and his team.”