Interview: CEO James Marshall, speaks with Casino Beats on GSI acquisition
James Marshall, CEO of Push Gaming, recently gave an interview with Casino Beats to speak more about the recent acquisition of GSI. This forms part of the plans the company has to upscale its delivery of products to operator partners.
Talk us through the deal: what do you see as the business case behind it?
We have always been a creative business and a front-end development studio, but in order to directly compete with major suppliers we needed full control in order to prioritise our product development from start to finish.
We initially licenced a copy of GSI’s RGS called Hive and their integration layer called MESH (which is an open platform) over a year ago. Whilst working together we quickly realised we had complimenting teams and skill sets. GSI were as keen on merging businesses and it made perfect sense to combine in order to become a much more competitive outlet and in turn putting us in a stronger position. The timing was perfect, and we are now ready to begin distributing our technologies.
Unsurprisingly, this is especially exciting for us given our humble beginnings as a bootstrap start-up, and we’re now at the point where we’re ready to compete with some of the industry’s best in terms of technology supply. It’s also going to be our first year at ICE that we’ll be attending as a fully licenced gaming technology supplier by both the UKGC and MGA, and we can’t wait to show off what we have to offer.
We’re seeing a few of the larger studios becoming aggregators themselves, where do you see aggregators fitting into the market going forward and how did that influence your decision to acquire your own platform?
Aggregators will always have a place in the market, however, for us, it was a case of evaluating how we would reach our target to become one of the industry’s leading B2B content and platform suppliers, and we felt having a reliance on aggregators hinders our potential.
Our aim was to take a more hands-on approach and manage the delivery of our games from start to finish. We felt that to compete at the highest level and create truly immersive games, we needed full control of our cycle – which acquiring our own RGS has given us the keys to do.
As part of our acquisition of GSI we acquired their integration layer (Mesh) and we’ll be evaluating over the next 12 months how best to use this technology.
How do you see the needs of operators developing through 2020 and beyond? Are suppliers going to have to up their game?
With more and more markets bringing in legislation, suppliers are going to be under more pressure to further support operators in their pursuit of meeting regulations in a time and cost-effective way.
Suppliers are going to need to ensure their offerings are not only exciting and engaging, but also tailorable in some way to meet these regulations, whether it’s RTP or another measurable. It won’t be easy, but if suppliers and operators have a close enough relationship, I see no reason why they can’t continue to make gambling a safer place while retaining that excitement and entertainment factor that we all love.
From our point of view, it’s also a chance for suppliers to get away from the ‘pump and dump’ approach which many, especially those using aggregators, often have when it comes to releases. We want to create smash-hit games that punch above their weight and generate a loyal following, rather than large quantities of mediocre products. The future of iGaming is all about immersive entertainment, and to be frank, the market is already awash with enough sub-par games. Operators have no shortage of games, so it’s quality entertaining games that they now need.
And lastly, with the merger now complete, what are your plans for the year ahead?
We have plenty of ambitious plans for rolling out our new platform – and we’re now certified across multiple regulated European jurisdictions , including Sweden, Denmark, Malta and the UK. We also see fantastic growth potential in Spain and LatAm, and we’ll be targeting these markets in 2020, Italy is also on our radar.
On the gaming front, we’ll be doing what we do best – with a target of up to 10 new games released over 2020. Not that I can get into too much detail just yet, but our development team are working on some gaming tech that I’m super excited by, and we can’t wait to start bringing our latest catalogue to market.
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