NYX positions OpenBet for PokerStars sportsbook
CEO Matt Davey says he's hopeful of switching operator to its soon-to-be acquired sportsbook platform
NYX Gaming believes its acquisition of Openbet will lead to an extension of its relationship with Amaya Gaming if it can successfully pull-off a deal to power the firm’s BetStars sportsbook.
The supplier is currently in the process of completing its ?270m takeover of OpenBet and NYX chief executive Matt Davey said he planned to convince Amaya to move across to the sportsbook supplier.
“We have a six-year agreement with them [Amaya] on the casino side and clearly we have an interest in convincing them to come across on to our sportsbook,” Davey told EGR shortly after the firm posted a near doubling of 2015 revenues.
“If you look at the three Amaya businesses; the poker business, the casino and the sportsbook, probably the one that has underwhelmed the market a little is on the sportsbook side so we think there is a good opportunity to have a conversation there.
“There can be no promises of course, but you would have to imagine they would consider our product favourably,” he added.
BetStars, which was launched late last year, has been built on a mix of in-house and third-party technology through a deal with supplier Amelco. Amaya has yet to break out its sportsbook revenue numbers.
Davey said NYX would also be targeting UK market once the OpenBet deal was complete. He estimated the supplier currently held a less than 1% market share in the UK due to the stiff competition of Playtech and OpenBet.
“We’ve had difficulty getting content into the UK market as it is effectively controlled by OpenBet and Playtech, but now we control one of those distribution channels we can push own content,” Davey said.
“OpenBet gives us more scale and more importantly it gives us 16 customers that NYX were under represented with. Our focus has been on continental Europe and historically we haven’t had a lot of traction in the UK so through OpenBet we achieve that overnight,” he added.
The firm has already integrated its NYX OGS system into the OpenBet platform and Davey said the firm would now begin to build an interface for each of the OpenBet customers, with the majority expected to be completed within the next 12 months.