iGB North America magazine IGBNA Aug/Sep | Page 22

Feature

COMING TO

AMERICA
Not many CEOs decide to leave their predominantly Europe-based businesses
and set up in Vegas to run things from there, but since Matt Davey did exactly
that in 2013, NYX Gaming Group has gone from strength to strength. Following
an intense period of M&A activity, their own IPO in Toronto in late 2014 and
the closing of significant deals in the emerging US iGaming market, including
with NJ market leaders Caesars and Golden Nugget, NYX is now riding high
and looking for further growth opportunities worldwide. iGaming Business
North America section editor David Briggs caught up with Davey to discuss the
company’s rapid development over the last 18 months, and why he believes
headroom exists for the current wave of sector consolidation to continue.

have happened if I had stayed on the sidelines
hopping in and out on business trips. In terms
of why Las Vegas, we looked at lots of different
cities but Vegas was the best bet because
of its infrastructure and proximity to major
gaming operators. Once we identified Zen
Entertainment, a Vegas-based online social
poker business, in early 2013 as the perfect
vehicle to use as our beach head for the US
market, we haven’t looked back.

The NYX business was born and is
still predominantly focused in Europe.
Why did you choose to base yourself
in Vegas?
Firstly, we were already committed to
increasing our investment in Europe (and
indeed we have trebled the headcount at
our Swedish operations for example) with

Your recently announced win of the
Golden Nugget contract (to replace
Bally) will make you the iGaming
platform to three of the six operators
in New Jersey. How competitive was
that bidding process?
It was a very rigorous and competitive bid
process, as you would expect with GN being

the management team and sales pipeline
already in place to deliver the growth we were
targeting there. But with those opportunities
already covered off, the challenge for us was
to identify the best market for growth outside
of Europe. For us that was the US, where we
felt the opportunity was material enough that
we had to be a part of it, and that would not

Figure 1: Global online poker market (US$m)
Exit of PokerStars and
Full Tilt from U.S Market

Global online poker market US$M

4,956

4,617
4,063
3,395

3,281

3,765

3,712

3,595

3,434

3,427

2011

2012

2013

2014e

2015e

5,302

3,808

2,810

2,530
1,445
364
2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

Source: H2GC, March 15, 2015, which uses EUR>USD rate of 1.211023282. Note: Betting includes sports book and horse racing

22 | iGamingBusiness North America | Issue 20 | August/September 2015

2016e

2017e

2018e