In April of this year, Aristocrat completed the acquisition of NeoGames, a transaction that was viewed favorably by the operator and Wall Street alike.
The acquisition was seen as a way for Aristocrat to enter the ilottery market and give Anaxi, its online gaming venture, more access and visibility.
During the recent Global Gaming Expo, Aristocat Managing Director Adrian Bailey called it “a match made in heaven for both sides.”
“The challenge was, if they had to integrate 100 different operators, that’s generally a three-to-five-year journey if not more than that,” Bailey said. “So, from Aristocrat’s view, plugging in a very basic aggregator couldn’t have been more strategically beneficial now, having direct access to the distributors.”
Bailey noted the deal would strengthen Aristocrat’s presence in Europe, which was already boosted by the purchase of Roxor, a B2B online real money gaming supplier, in February 2023. But the surety of the European market has been tougher for Aristocrat and other companies to duplicate in the United States, where the market is limited.
Currently, igaming is legal in seven states: New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Michigan, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
Bailey points to Aristocrat’s market share in New Jersey (an estimated 3-5% despite limited time in the state), as an example of the company’s prospects.
“We have a good three-to-five years of growth, bringing content to new markets even in the limited amount of states that are legal before we need to worry on how to grow our revenue in the short term,” Bailey said. “I think the challenge we face as a business is a little bit different than our competition. I think we’re in a pretty good position because we only have to grow at the moment.”
Aristocrat’s strength lies in its expansive library of games, notably the popular Buffalo series. Plans are to use the success of brick-and-mortar casino games for igaming ventures.
“I think our job and our journey in igaming is, how do we take this and leverage all of this knowledge and content that Aristocrat has, and bring it online,” Bailey said, adding that “We just need to bring it in the right way to operators as quickly as possible.”
An issue Aristocrat faces is bringing content to market through relationships with operators. Content must be generated, and Bailey surmises that at least 50 new games per year must be created to keep pace with demand.
Bailey is confident that demand will be met because all segments of Aristocrat’s businesses are now working in concert.
“We’re beginning to work much, much better in synergy together with Aristocrat land-based,” Bailey said. “We’re now looking to see how we can team up with the studios themselves, and they can deliver the content from a digital perspective, directing themselves and having to really scale the content delivery through leveraging the entire portfolio that we have.”
