Forward motion: Red Tiger Gaming's managing director

Having scooped the EGR award for Innovation in Slots Provision at the June B2B awards Red Tiger gaming has proved itself as a leading player in the egaming development sphere.

In April it was revealed former Paddy Power Betfair gaming head Gavin Hamilton was taking on the role of managing director at Red Tiger and would lead the supplier’s expansion into new regulated markets.

Five months into his role, Hamilton discusses product roadmaps, innovation and PPB’s commitment to player engagement.

EGR Technology: Having only been with Red Tiger for a few months, what are the main areas of focus for you?

Gavin Hamilton (GH): Paddy Power Betfair, where I was previously director of gaming, was Red Tiger’s first client. Having known the team here very well since the company was founded, I was lucky to know precisely what I was walking into when I joined. My mandate has been very clear from the outset. New markets have been high on my agenda. Both in Europe and beyond, we see an increasing number of governments issuing licenses. We are very actively pursuing the regulated path of supplying ‘dot country’ wherever that’s an option.  Another priority for me has been boosting the commercial team. Red Tiger’s staff base is still under 1% commercial and over 99% technical. We’ve signed most major European operators now and as we continue the roll out we are building a solid client care infrastructure. I’ve also been working closely with the product teams to prioritise roadmap items. We have a lot of staff with senior experience from top tier operators, and this really helps us to determine where we can add the most value fastest. Inevitably we have literally thousands of ideas, so part of my work has been to determine which will have the maximum impact for our clients.
EGR Technology: Red Tiger recently won the Innovation in Slots Provision award at the EGR B2B Awards, how do you stay ahead in terms of innovation?

GH: We are very proud to have won that award as there are several other strong companies in the sector. As innovation in player engagement is our primary focus, we really value this recognition. Our innovations are all initiated in our product teams and then filtered through a senior management committee that determines which we invest in. We also consult our clients to ask them where they would like us to focus. It’s a true partnership with the clients because the relationships are inevitably codependent.  As the company has grown we’ve matured our approach to investing in innovation. It’s all about gathering and ranking ideas.

EGR Technology: How difficult is it to lead in innovation in this industry?

GH: We have undoubtedly become the innovation leader in the sector, but the challenge is always to stay there. Smaller niche companies can pop up at any time to disrupt a sector, just as we did. As new entrants come to market and existing participants up their game, we need to be constantly vigilant to ensure that we remain ahead.  Fortunately, we’ve a very strong innovation culture at Red Tiger and plenty of cash on the balance sheet for acquisitions should we decide to go down that route.  To truly feel like we are leading in innovation though, we feel like we need a few more years to prove ourselves. Ask me in three years’ time.

EGR Technology: What does a product roadmap at Red Tiger look like? What is the traditional time scale for a new product from concept to development and then going live?

GH: Inevitably that depends on what we are developing. Perhaps our finest moment in this regard was the delivery of our unique Daily Progressive Jackpots feature to Betfair. From the conception of the idea to go-live was under three weeks. We pride ourselves on getting stuff done fast and efficiently. Our roadmap is in three parts. We have the highly-structured plan for the next twelve months. This is always around 90% of what we are doing. Then we have the waiting list of stuff that we’d like to do when some extra capacity becomes available. Finally, we have the items marked as urgent. These are always things that our founder has jumped in to request at short notice. He is very product driven.
EGR Technology: What are the main differences you’ve found in working for a supplier versus an operator?

GH: It’s both very similar and very different. The main similarity is of course that Paddy Power Betfair and Red Tiger are both really committed to player engagement. When I was working there, just as I do here, I was always thinking about how to give the player more. How best to entertain them. I’m very lucky because these are two of the best places to work in the industry. Red Tiger is undoubtedly the fastest growing casino games company and has a motivational culture. Paddy Power Betfair has also always been a fantastic place to work and has enjoyed phenomenal growth. The biggest difference for me working at Red Tiger is the size of the place. Going from having a few thousand colleagues to a couple of hundred is very manageable. I know most of the clients and staff personally. Also, Red Tiger didn’t exist three years ago, so from the source code base to the furniture, everything still feels new.
EGR Technology: What’s the next big thing in online casino?

GH: Augmented reality. I prefer not to expound on that for now, but this is undoubtedly a game changer.
EGR Technology: What’s next for Red Tiger Gaming? Any plans for further geographical expansion?

GH: Yes. Where we can, we will. There is a lot in the pipeline for new licenses. We are always pleased to enter new markets with clients. To invest in game localisation, locating hardware infrastructure in the territory, getting certified and acquiring licenses where necessary. Our philosophy is to acquire licenses irrespective of their ROI. We understand that some jurisdictions are more competitively regulated than others, but that we are in a global business and must supply our operators wherever they want to go.
EGR Technology: Adobe recently revealed it was killing off Flash, fortunately for most suppliers, HTML5 has taken over as the language of choice for casino games – How have you seen the industry evolve since Flash?

GH: It’s been a long time already. I remember Cayetano Gaming making that switch after we (at Paddy Power) acquired it. They did a great job of rebuilding each game and we were very proud of the results. At Red Tiger, it hasn’t featured as we’ve made every game in HTML5 from the outset. This means that all our games are fully responsive to all sizes and shapes of device. They also scale down to work as mini games. We have young developers at Red Tiger that only know Flash from the history books. It was a worry when it first started to become obsolete as suppliers were doing some strong animations with it, but we’ve certainly surpassed that in HTML5 now.

EGR Technology: In what ways do Red Tiger games boost customer engagement? Is this a specific area of focus for you?

GH: We work hard to maximise certain player KPIs such as average number of spins per session, frequency of return, average stake and player longevity. The most important thing to us is that the players come back for the long term. We have done a lot of research on making games for the most sustainable cohorts of player. This is the long-term value for our operators and therefore for us. Check out our recent game Three Musketeers. I think that’s about the most engaging game we’ve made yet. That and Arcade Bomb.

Gavin Hamilton, Red Tiger Gaming MD