Davey: Lottery monopolies a ‘sweet spot’ for SG Digital

Speaking to the press at ICE 2018, Matt Davey, former CEO of NYX and now head of SG’s new Digital division, expressed confidence in the US iGaming sector, and said targeting “heavily regulated government monopolies” presented a “sweet spot for our kind of business.”

Davey said the newly acquired NYX-OpenBet already had a series of state lottery customers such as the Singapore Pools and Danske Spil in Denmark, but would now be able to pursue more opportunities in the vast but potentially under-served sector.

“We think the WLA markets are a sweet spot for our kind of business, heavily regulated government monopolies, but what we hadn’t really built out was the lottery side of things,” said Davey.

“We provided sports betting or scratch cards or game content. Now we can actually tie it back to a true lottery system. We have 24 of the top 25 lottery customers today.”

Davey also said that in US igaming, momentum is accelerating after a sluggish roll out.

“New Jersey is the largest of the three states that have passed online gaming legislation and have live and acting participants, and we are heavily invested in that market. We control about 40 percent or so and are seeing strong growth,” he said.

“Pennsylvania is going to follow suit but it’s going to be roughly 50 percent bigger and we think there will then be four or five other states that follow closely there afterwards, so the coupling between sports betting and casino is strong.

“We have seen it in the European markets, and when you combine the two, there will be a huge pull-through effect for the other states, we think they will start to get into the business very fast.”