Q&A: Playtech’s product VP talks real-time engagement and responsible gambling innovation

Playtech is looking to build for the future after 20 years as a trusted industry supplier. In an ever-changing egaming environment, innovation in tech can help businesses stand out from a crowd.

The launch of Marketplace, a continued investment in its learning Academy and the growing influence of BetBuddy are all examples of how Playtech has changed heading into a new decade.

Anthony Evans, VP of product strategy, sat down with EGR Technology at Playtech’s new London office to discuss how the firm is always looking to stay that one step ahead of the chasing pack.

EGR Technology: What is Playtech’s product development strategy?

Anthony Evans (AE): There are multiple strands to this. We have a lot of customers, so we respond and develop products in relation to demand. We have been established for 20 years so we will take a lot of inputs from our customers and they will help build out our roadmap.

We also establish our own core objectives around products which are informed by various forums throughout the year. These will bring in new innovations, new ideas and then they will be coordinated by myself and others and can be translated back out to the business in terms of saying – ‘these are our core objectives for 2020 and beyond’.

As a point of reference, we hosted a summit about three years ago in Vienna where all of the product teams came together. Here, we established all the core objectives which built out a lot of product which we have showcased to customers in the last 18 months.

We also identify the problems that the wider industry is facing and try to solve those.

EGR Technology: Is Playtech’s in-game messaging feature aimed at engaging or retaining players?

AE: The messaging service can be used in many ways. It can be used from a marketing standpoint or it can be used just for signposting.

It can also be used for responsible gambling. It is connected to our CRM and this can be triggered by a model. For example, we could trigger an intervention message based on a player’s likelihood to be playing in a harmful way.

EGR Technology: How important is personalisation in your products?

AE: One of the benefits of working with Playtech is we can offer all of the different solutions for our customers. We have all of the gaming products, we have the technology and the IMS, and we offer products online and in retail.

Personalisation and how a brand interacts with a customer can be handled across all of these entities in the same way. With IMS being the hub, if you identify a player as a new customer, all of our services can be based off a single user journey.

You can set a goal for the player journey and end-to-end the communications can be based off the same experience. Whether you intervene in-game to provide an offer or the player closes the game and goes offline – you can send the same promotion to them offline later. It is all intertwined and connected.

EGR Technology: With Apple’s deadline for native apps kicking in this week, have you had to make any changes or updates to ensure your products are compliant with the guidelines?

AE: We have been developing native content for the last five or six years. We have a pure native offering, both lobby and content, for several years and have offered it to customers.

The fact that it is built as native is less of an issue with regards to Apple’s stance. The app itself is leveraging all of the native features and the games are built purely as native.

EGR Technology: What is the biggest technical challenge Playtech faces right now?

AE: There are always technical hurdles to overcome. I’ve alluded to the fragmentation of technology. The fragmentation in how content is being served from multiple different providers and how we are looking to solve that via the Marketplace.

Regulation change and the pace of that change is something that everyone is experiencing. We are very well placed to be able to meet that challenge due to the level of R&D we can invest. Make no bones about it, it is a lot of work, especially with the rate of change in the UK.

It also comes with benefits in learning. We have a scalable technology insomuch as we have a single code base and when we develop it once we can then roll it out in other regulated markets. It benefits the core infrastructure to take those learnings and leverage it elsewhere.

There is always going to be something around the corner, and I think one of the things we have always been good at is being agile in our work. If something comes from leftfield we will try and move very quickly knowing the importance it has for our customer base.

EGR Technology: Responsible gambling is obviously hugely important in the current climate – what does BetBuddy offer to users?

AE: I think it is a vital piece of the pie now. We acquired BetBuddy in 2016 and we knew the direction of travel and what was going to come so we were trying to anticipate these changes.

BetBuddy as an entity within the business is invaluable. Not only from a product perspective as we are working with various bodies to come up with new ideas about Playtech Protect.

This is a wider, compliance offering that helps safeguard our customers and therefore their players. Identifying harmful behaviours is one part of that. It is the ability to identify and then intervene. The capabilities are there, obviously it is up to the operators to utilise that.

We are working on ideas around building safer content and the concept of game labelling. This is signposting for the user to make more informed decisions about the games they were playing.

We have a chili icon that we present on the games and the icon refers to the volatility of the game. It is a rudimentary addition but the BetBuddy team were working hand-in-hand with our customers to test and learn these concepts.

Without something like BetBuddy leading these initiatives it would have been far more difficult.

EGR Technology: Playtech Academy – how important is it to constantly strive to learn and improve for every position in the firm?

AE: We launched our internal knowledge base about two years ago. We partnered with Litmos to provide that. It is now embedded into our day-to-day activities – from when we bring in a new member of staff and they go through their onboarding courses directly on the platform and then throughout the employee journey we are building training materials.

We also have the Academy room at the Playtech London office which is used to host sessions that are recorded and uploaded to the platform.

The key deliverable this year will be our external Playtech Academy. We have hosted many events in the past, but we haven’t had a platform for our customers to access all of our learning materials in their day-to-day practice.

EGR Technology: What is your product roadmap for the next 12 months?

AE: Real-time engagement is a key part of our strategy. What that looks like really depends on the project. It is a fundamental part of our product development moving forward.

We believe that real-time engagement is a key part of our Playtech Protect strategy. Real-time interventions and communications from a player protection standpoint.

We want to layer the foundation of our Marketplace and add studios and contextual information to make it the most engaging platform for our customers.

Playtech One underlines the whole roadmap for me. It centres around leveraging as many of the tools we have available to us across as many platforms as possible.

Academy is going to be a big part of how we engage with our customer base. It will be a continual effort around education and it will help Playtech in terms of being a thought leader.

We want to use success stories and thought leadership to build a community of knowledge for our partners.

Anthony Evans has spent a decade at Playtech, joining the company as an account manager and progressing rapidly to become Vice President of Product Strategy in 2015. His current role includes full strategic responsibility for product innovation and research, in-house and external training and consultancy services.