Need to know: Mor Weizer is not dyslexic
This week's Need to Know concerns the topic of government-backed gaming following Playtech's landmark joint venture with Scientific Games, and explains why Playtech chief exec Mor Weizer's spelling is actually just fine...
THIS WEEK’S NEED to Know concerns the topic of government-backed gaming, following Playtech’s landmark joint venture with Scientific Games yesterday to target state lottery operators.
The deal, which gives Playtech access to Scientific’s monster client list that includes “ get this “ the Chinese State Government, marks a push on what Playtech describes as the ‘B2G’ market.
No, that’s not a typo, and Playtech chief exec Mor Weizer isn’t dyslexic: the ‘G’ stands for government.
The term refers to Playtech’s emphasis on providing back-end B2B egaming solutions not to the leisure chains and land-based casinos moving into egaming that make up one half of many B2B marriages, but to supplying government-backed providers such as the Chinese State Lottery; Camelot, provider of Britain’s National Lottery, and France’s Francaise des Jeux (FDJ) and Pari-Mutuel Urbain (PMU).
Playtech is hardly the first egaming business to have realised that these are nice clients to have, of course. Even operators are in on the action. Among other ‘B2G’ contract wins recently, PartyGaming signed with Danske Spil only last week to supply the Danish monopoly with online poker and casino and Paddy Power signed a deal to supply PMU with an online sportsbook in November. California’s CyberArts tied with FDJ for online poker back in May, and Intralot bought into CyberArts last month in anticipation of lucrative supply deals with state governments created by moves to regulate intrastate gaming in the US.
But the Sciplay JV that Playtech has landed remains, well”¦ special.
New York-based Scientific Games is connected. The client list it boasts is 120 names long, and includes not only the Chinese State Government, for which Scientific produces eight billion State Sports Lottery scratch cards a year (yes, eight billion), but the aforementioned Camelot; a tie with the German state of Saxony signed only last week, and new clients in 2009 alone including state-backed gaming businesses in eight US states, Australia, Italy, Germany, Israel, the Phillipines and Puerto Rico.
See what we mean?
Anyway, Sciplay has hired Fun Technologies president Richard Weil as its managing director – just one of a number of executive moves recently that included Francaise Des Jeux (FDJ) and Svenska Spel software provider Nyx Interactive hiring David Flynn, head of operations at rival software company Microgaming, Irish bookie Boylesports hiring Chartwell Games chief exec Lee Richardson yesterday and Ladbrokes chief exec Chris Bell revealing last week that he is to leave this year after almost 20 years at the British bookmaker “ on which more here.