A CONCERTED PUSH INTO LOTTERY
The fact EveryMatrix ’ s two signature wins for sports and casino were lottery operators makes that vertical a natural next business unit to build up . And , reflecting the approach of building around product experts , Nikolina Gabelica joined as head of lottery in January this year .
Gabelica is an established lottery professional , with more than 20 years at Croatia ’ s national lottery Hrvatska Lutrija in diverse positions such as head of igaming , deputy director and most recently director of business development and marketing .
That B2C experience , she says , gives her a clear understanding of client needs that helps set the strategic direction for LotteryMatrix . “ When you are a pure B2B provider and you don ’ t have experience of client operations , you lack understanding of the features , the ways of working and the client needs .”
That grounding in the vertical could be key , according to Groes . He sees LotteryMatrix as a potential disruptor to the sector ’ s biggest names such as IGT and Scientific Games . “ That might be me being overconfident on the back of a very good year , but what we can see is this sector is underexposed to competition ,” he says . “ This is quite clear . The number of operators is not big enough and agile enough to incentivise newcomers in .
“[ But ] it ’ s only when we reached our current size that we can realistically say we can take on projects like this .”
BEING UNIQUE AT EVERYMATRIX
In a sector more traditional and less advanced in how products are marketed there ’ s more pressure to present something unique , exciting and modern , essentially similar to a casino operator . “[ Lotteries ] are not keeping up ,” Groes says . “ They know that very well ; they ’ re not idiots . Unfortunately for them they just don ’ t have the products that allow them to compete .”
EveryMatrix ’ s decentralised structure comes into play again here . The strong performance of the other divisions provided the financial muscle to work on the lottery project . That also brought in the lottery client wins such as Norsk Tipping and Veikkaus . “[ Then ] we said , ‘ if I can handle five or six lotteries , why not also aim for the core product itself ?’” Lottery may be the next big launch , but with a live dealer product already in development , EveryMatrix is continually expanding and evolving . What succeeds becomes a new driver of growth . What fails is shut down with little damage or disruption to the wider business .
As many big businesses row back from a flurry of M & A in pursuit of a simpler business structure , the received wisdom is an end to vertical integration due to the challenges it brings . However , EveryMatrix appears to have created a blueprint for tackling that sort of complexity .
iGB L ! VE 2024 • ISSUE 136 • 19