Inspired CPO: No better place to show our passion than at ICE Totally Gaming

Why is ICE Totally Gaming an ideal opportunity to unveil your next generation solutions? What can you tell us about the products you're planning to unleash at the trade show?

ICE Totally Gaming is one of the most important shows in the industry calendar, making it the ideal forum for Inspired to introduce its newest products and innovations to customers and peers.

This year we’re hugely excited to be introducing our latest Virtuals Sports brand collaboration, Rush Basketball, featuring NBA Hall of Fame star, Shaquille O’Neal. Launching in 2017 across both land-based and digital platforms, Inspired’s award-winning virtuals team, together with Shaq, will deliver the most realistic virtual basketball product on the market.

Alongside premium Rush sports, we’ll be previewing the Aintree Grand National Race of Champions, which has been developed in collaboration with Carm Productions and The Jockey Club. Featuring the declared runners and riders in any given year, Inspired will use current form and odds to create a full 3D representation of the upcoming race which will run just hours before the live event. We’ll be using our most sophisticated technology and motion capture techniques to deliver a race with jumps, falls, and drama – just like the real thing.

Alongside an unrivalled Virtual Sports offering, we’ll be showcasing top-performing mobile slots games in our designated mobile area along with our Rush Go! and Rush Live products, which have been specifically designed with mobile customers in mind. As always, we’ll be bringing our latest SBG VLT cabinets to the show, which have been designed to suit a variety of regulated land-based markets and we’ll also be co-launching our new jointly developed Virtual Sports casino table product with LT Game.

How do you feel the European gambling markets will evolve in terms of player trends and technology impacts?

Every year we see new technology and gaming trends emerge at ICE, and I have no doubt that this year will be no exception. As products become more sophisticated, so do the expectations of players, and we have a challenge as a business to not only meet but these standards, but also to exceed them.

Of course, there is nothing quite comparable to betting in a dedicated venue alongside fellow punters, and the industry is working to modernize these more traditional environments to appeal to a new generation of players. For example, in recent years we have witnessed an evolution in the ways in which players interact in venues, with self-serve opportunities to bet through WiFi and personal digital devices becoming ever more popular. Cabinets are becoming more advanced with high definition screens and customizable features, all of which add to the immersive customer experience.

Outside of retail venues, the mobile gaming market will inevitably continue to expand, as more people than ever before have access to smartphones and digital devices. Expanding our mobile business is a key strategic priority for Inspired, and to reflect this we have launched the Rush Virtuals Live suite of on-demand and in-play products, which have been specifically developed for mobile platforms and are completely aligned with the evolution in sports betting over the past 2-3 years. In terms of technology, razor sharp HD graphics and 4k resolution add to the quality of the player experience both on mobile, desktop, and on screens in venues, ever more blurring the lines between the virtual and reality. Our Virtual Grand National products combine both real life motion capture footage with sophisticated graphics, delivering a Virtual Sports experience which could easily be mistaken for the live event itself. This combination of real life footage, interwoven with cutting edge graphics is something we anticipate seeing more of in the future as technology enables us to deliver our most realistic and compelling Virtual Sports products ever.

Which jurisdictions do you feel currently offer the most potential for gaming growth?

North America is an area of strategic focus for Inspired, and we are proud to have been the first company in the world to deploy Virtual Sports products into Nevada in 2016, with New Jersey imminently going live. Following this success, we will look to both broaden our product offering in these states, while also seeking regulatory approval in further jurisdictions to increase our footprint in North American in 2017.

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We continue to look at opportunities in Asian markets, and we’re delighted to be introducing our Virtual Sports casino table game for the Macau market, developed in collaboration with LT Game, at ICE this year

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We are about to commence rollout of over 4,000 VLT cabinets in Greece with OPAP, and this is an exciting market with huge growth potential in both VLT and Virtual Sports. As regulations change both in European and international markets, we are continually looking at opportunities to bring our products and technologies to new customers and players across the globe. Inspired is a truly international business, reflected by the fact that we operate more than 25,000 digital gaming terminals and supply Virtual Sports products to more than 30,000 venues and 200 websites in 30 different countries. As we enter 2017 as Inspired Entertainment, Inc. we’re looking forward to increasing these numbers still further.

What discussions should drive the 2017 agenda? Where will the focus be?

Reaching a new generation of ‘millennial’ players, be that online, in Virtual Reality, or elsewhere, is bound to be a key discussion driver for 2017.

What is going to be your strategy this year to out-perform competitors and grow your market share?

At Inspired we always aim to deliver Entertainment with an Edge, and we’re proud to be bringing some of our most cutting-edge and innovative games and products ever to the market in 2017. Delivering content which excites and captivates players is an integral and crucial part of our business, and this, combined with seamless deployment, will enable us to remain competitive on the global stage.

Looking strategically at new market opportunities is an important element of growing our business, and one which we will continue in 2017. Combined with this is the need to develop the right products and technologies to suit these new markets, for example, our low cost Virtuals Connect platform offers the ideal solution for both UK and international operators wishing to deploy Inspired’s best in class Virtual Sports products with a minimal capital outlay. Our Rush Basketball product has been developed in response to customer demand, particularly in North America, and our new casino table game, developed in collaboration with LT Game, is specifically designed for the Macau and Asian markets.

Delivering cool games, sports and technologies to players across the world is primarily what Inspired is here to do – and what better place to communicate our enthusiasm and passion for this than at ICE 2017?