Michael Baker-Mosley, Chief Marketing Officer at iGP, has the staunch belief that the word innovation is significantly overused in iGaming. Yet, when it comes to aggregation in the sector, he concedes that it’s often more about progress than true innovation but there are exceptions.
Aggregation is a cornerstone of the industry, allowing operators to fill their lobbies with thousands of games in a single integration. It is viewed as a necessity for success. But Baker-Mosley and iGP believe that the model has become tired, weary and is in need of dragging into the 2020s.
“The traditional aggregator is mainly about being the middleman,” Baker-Mosley told iGaming Expert when meeting at SBC Summit Malta. “These guys are like estate agents, really. It’s hard to pinpoint what value they bring. Obviously, they do bring value, and so do aggregators, but what we’re doing, and I assume that would be copied at some point, is that we’re enhancing that aggregator.”
Image: iGP
The enhancements that iGP’s CMO spoke about are evidenced in the company’s iGaming Deck – an aggregator product brought to market at the backend of 2023.
Cloud-based and “super fast” – it can deliver games in around 13 microseconds – iGaming Deck aims to be more than just an aggregator and introduces new aspects to the model that iGP expects to be industry standard in years to come.
“Where we’ve added the value is the granularity of reporting across individual rounds, players, games, and providers,” Baker-Mosley explained. “It’s multi-brand as well. With other aggregators out there, you’ll be lucky to get an Excel sheet, or you’re going to the different game providers themselves and trying to get data from there. It’s a nightmare.”
It isn’t just about enhanced reporting capabilities, but expanding the player experience too. iGP aims to weave promotional tools into the aggregator, supported by its platform.
“A lot of APIs in the aggregation industry don’t support that granularity of data, so all these promotions you miss out on if you’re using certain outcomes, we’ve enabled them in the APIs. We can take content and promos from whichever provider and deliver them through the API.”
So with iGaming Deck, operators get the games, elevated reports and promotional tools.
iGP argues that this is the ‘Aggregator 2.0’ model that will ‘crash the traditional model’
As Baker-Mosley elaborates: “Operators don’t know how much better or how much more value an aggregator can bring to their business. They all provide a good service, but we think there can be something better.
“We are trying to move beyond the tradition to this aggregator plus model, where you have aggregator plus response, aggregator plus reports, fast aggregator plus profile where you almost call it the 2.0 / 3.0 of aggregation. We think it is incredibly powerful.”
The benefits to the operator seem clear: they get the thousands of games as usual, plus extra retention tools to keep players on screen.
But Baker-Mosley outlined that iGP is in a unique position to deliver this, owing to its lack of technical debt and “exceptional” product team.
“Not only would you have an aggregator deal with a single API that wasn’t up to scratch, you would then have to plug in loads of other tools. But we’ve got our own fortune wheel builder – Twist of Luck – you can do free bets campaigns, free spin campaigns. There’s a new Jackpot tool that we’re about to launch. It all comes through the aggregator.
“The reason for that is, again, it reduces the amount of integrations. We are able to create these tools because we’re already building them into the platform anyway. Other platforms aren’t good enough to have the integration for things like jackpots, so by us putting it through the aggregator built into that, it bypasses the need.”
The importance of retention and promo tools cannot be overstated enough and it is something that iGaming Expert has covered extensively. As operators compete not just with each other but also with other forms of entertainment for screen time, having tools to entice users to remain within the casino lobby is essential moving forward.
Baker-Mosley agreed, and amplified this notion by pointing towards intense competition in global markets.
“Operators are increasingly targeting a smaller pool of players, even though the market has grown into different regions,” he said. “It is a dwindling pool, especially in established markets and developed markets.
“This is why everyone’s chasing new markets so aggressively, because the competition is so fierce in other places. A lot of markets are struggling for growth, so you need the right tools. People talk about doing platform deals every five to 10 years. Well, if you know some people who did platform deals two years ago, they wait 10 years, they aren’t going to be in business very long, because it’s so tight out there.”
This challenge is particularly relevant to small and mid-sized operators, who are more reliant on third party providers for their tech stacks and platforms.
The future, Baker-Mosley noted, lies in AI personalisation and operators simply cannot be left behind technologically, otherwise they risk failure.
Aggregators, he said, will need to provide personalised experiences as well as promotional tools. This is what iGP is aiming to deliver through iGaming Deck throughout the coming months and years.
As Baker-Mosley closed his chat with iGaming Expert, he prophesied about the future of aggregation.
“It is a personalised solution. I don’t know if this is in the aggregator or the platform or a combination of both, but it is all about gamification. It is the ability for the players to have a truly immersive experience. You don’t want them just tapping on their phone; you want them in it, feeling the thing. Every single time somebody loads the page, the experience needs to be amazing, everything from load speed to look to feel.”
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