Q&A: Casumo CEO on compliance, innovation and sportsbook delays

Casumo has made quite a splash in the online casino world since its inception in 2012, and in recent years the privately-owned, Malta-headquartered operator has received a string of accolades to mark its achievements in gamifying online casino. But this year the firm has faced setbacks in launching its much-anticipated sportsbook and in not meeting strict UK Gambling Commission (GC) requirements on AML and social responsibility.

In November, the GC revealed Casumo has been handed a hefty £5.85m fine for social responsibility and AML failings. But the penalty differs from others in that Casumo CEO and co-founder Oscar Simonsson was added to the GC’s personal licence regulatory sanctions register and remains under investigation. In response, the firm said it had put into place a series of measures to ensure it exceeded all legal and regulatory requirements.

At the time, Simonsson said: “Casumo has emerged from this a wiser and stronger company, committed to good corporate governance, ethics and the highest standards of compliance.” Throughout the year several key staff appointments were made within the legal and compliance teams and Simonsson said the company had invested in automated technology to identify and assess potential risks, as well as launched dedicated gambling behaviour tracking site Casumo cares.

Despite this, the company has been pressing on with product development and sharpening its technological platform to improve speed and enable its engineers to make regular updates to its proprietary tech stack. Elsewhere, its first dabble in sports betting is anticipated for 2019. The core sportsbook engine has been provided by Kambi, however, since H1 2018 Casumo has been busy building a layer of gamification on top of the Kambi platform, and Simonsson tells EGR Intel Casumo will not fully launch the product until they entirely happy with their development work.

“The reason we haven’t released it [yet] is because it hasn’t been good enough,” Simonsson says. “We work in a very agile way at Casumo. Taking in inputs, seeing how landscapes are evolving and putting feedback from real players at the heart of our decisions means that we’re not afraid to adjust our trajectory if we believe there’s a better way.”

The sportsbook is primed to integrate the gamification features that all Casumo players and keen followers of the operator will have come to know, and probably love. But the concept has been met by some resistance from the industry. Gaming consultant Kim Lund told EGR Intel back in April that “gamified layers and functionality cannot be connected with the underlying revenue-generating gameplay that is solely connected through a one-way stream of data”. With a Q2 2019 launch on the cards, it will be interesting to see how Casumo approaches a gamified sportsbook product in a concentrated arena of fast-moving and data-heavy betting offerings.

Elsewhere on the product development front, the firm has expanded its staff count and opened a new office in Barcelona to accommodate more tech roles and push out more products. One such offering is a gamified spin-to-win live casino game dubbed Topwheel Treasures developed in conjunction with Evolution Gaming, which aims to bring a new feel to live casino. The game offers players the chance to win prizes by placing bets between 10 cents and €2,500 per round.

Casumo has undoubtedly championed the rise in popularity in gamified casinos, however in the last two or three years the likes of Dunder and SuprNation have crept onto the scene and are making waves. In that respect it is likely that 2019 will be a year of Casumo trialling new features and maintaining its market share in the online casino sphere.

EGR Intel: What are the most recent movements in the process for Casumo’s rumoured IPO?

Oscar Simonsson (OS): We understand there are a lot of rumours as the industry is in a heavy consolidation phase at the moment. The fact that we are one of the biggest operators out there that is still private doesn’t really help. Our plan is to continue to grow the business through innovation and expanding into new markets. There are no plans for an IPO in the near future, however we continue to keep all kind of tracks open depending on what Casumo may need in the future.

EGR Intel: What are Casumo’s plans for the Swedish market once it opens in January 2019? Are you planning to have a base there?

OS: We were one of the first companies to apply for a licence in the Swedish market and I’m really looking forward to seeing the levelling of the playing field in 2019. Sweden is an important market for us and has been since we started Casumo in 2012.

As Casumo is focused on growing its business in regulated markets, we’ve been channelling our efforts into building strong foundations that will allow us to enter and scale in newly regulating markets with speed and efficiency. I believe one of the biggest game changers with this regulation is in relation to marketing. New channels will open up and we’ll be able to reach our current and new players in more ways.

EGR Intel: How will your product change to meet the regulator’s new standards? Also, how is the company performing in Sweden?

OS: This will help us to generate new levels of loyalty in the market. Being able to provide a unique and superior product and service experience will make brands more competitive, [with less focus on] the value of the bonuses. This direction is not only fairer and healthier for operators in the long run, but also for players. Plus, it fits Casumo well as we have and continue to develop a product that allows us to differentiate in a crowded market.

The Casumo brand awareness is incredibly strong in Sweden. In fact, we recently received the results of our latest round of brand tracking in the market. Essentially, nine out of 10 gamblers know of Casumo in Sweden. So the opportunity for us lies in being able to reach this audience via new channels and keeping them up to speed on all of the exciting developments happening in the Casumo product portfolio.

EGR Intel: What has Casumo’s latest technology platform entailed? How has it improved the tech stack and your operational processes?

OS: Since the very start, innovation has been at the core of Casumo’s strategy. So we’ve neither started nor finished a process of updating our platform, instead we continue to build on it all of the time. One of the benefits that we have is that when we started in 2012, we used micro-service technology from the start. That means we never had to scrap a whole monolith and start over. Instead we make constant and incremental improvements [to the stack].

For the past couple of years, our development has been focused around the process of building a more jurisdiction-agnostic tech stack which can help us to be quick in this rapidly evolving and regulating landscape. In addition, we’ve recently started to overhaul and rebuild our front-end stack. We are doing this iteratively as well by introducing a component architecture across the product. We are not only doing this to update the product, but also to enable us to develop, ship and iterate faster.

Casumo CEO Oscar Simmonson

EGR Intel: How has Casumo stayed ahead in the face of new gamification-orientated casino start-ups?

OS: Since early on, we have been looked at as the market leaders in this space. We have had great success in building a gamification layer into our product and saw the competition follow suit. However, gamification is much more than points, badges and leaderboards. The biggest risk is in not understanding the depth that exists behind it. Gamification continues to be part of our DNA and it plays an important role in our product. Since we first entered this space, we have evolved our understanding of what gamification means and how it should be executed. Stay tuned.

EGR Intel: How is the sportsbook development coming along? What has caused the delays in launching?

OS: When is it getting released? When it’s done. That’s something we believe in here. The reason we haven’t released it [yet] is because it hasn’t been good enough. We work in a very agile way at Casumo. Taking in inputs, seeing how landscapes are evolving and putting feedback from real players at the heart of our decisions means that we’re not afraid to adjust our trajectory if we believe there’s a better way. That’s something we’ve done with the development of our sportsbook. Clearly the sports market provides huge potential for us. With the good progress we have had, I’m really looking forward to seeing our sportsbook product rolled out early next year.

EGR Intel: Casumo recently moved into a new office in Barcelona, so what was the reason behind this?

OS: We have opened an office in Barcelona as part of our strategy for pan-European growth. Barcelona is a fantastic city with a buzzing tech and design community. That’s something that we wanted to tap into and be a part of.

We employ technology roles in our Barcelona office, including developers, designers and project managers.

Also, its proximity and easy connections to Malta, where we have our headquarters, was also important to us. With the continuous influx of gaming companies in Malta and the growing cost of living, it is becoming harder and harder to recruit top talent into Malta. We knew we’d need another hub in which we could recruit and grow some of our core teams.

EGR Intel: How has Casumo grown from an operational standpoint in recent months?

OS: The momentum of the business continues to gain pace, especially as we enter new markets and invest in further developing our product and platforms. We are approaching 300 employees now. From an operational standpoint, it’s not that we’re rapidly increasing headcount, but instead we’re constantly reflecting on the way that we have been organised and the way we work to ensure that we’re all driving in the right direction and focused on the right things.