Soft2Bet: gamification is essential to offset rising costs and taxes

The rise of regulated markets across global sports betting and online casino has been a welcome one, ending years of uncertainty and malpractice and replacing it with a fair system for all and allowing some of the world’s biggest operators to enter new geographies. 

That’s not to say that it’s all sunshine and rainbows, however. With regulation comes compliance costs. And with legislation comes taxation. All in all, the cost of doing business in iGaming, like across many sectors throughout this decade, has risen. 

Margins in sports betting and online casino have fallen, meaning operators’ are facing profitability problems. But there are solutions out there. 

Speaking to SBC at SBC Summit Rio, Soft2Bet’s Sales Director LATAM Nicolas Campano argues that gamification tools are essential to improving margins and creating a more sustainable operation.

“We need to make operators aware that this has traditionally been an industry where margins were high and P&Ls were healthy. Now, that is not the case,” Campano says. “The case is just that everything is more expensive. Taxes have been raised, marketing restrictions are being imposed, so you need to actually engage the player in a way that you can always fulfill the local compliance requirements but still make it fun and safe.”

Enter Soft2Bet’s gamification engine, the Motivational Engineering Gaming Application. The tool aims to create a ‘retention loop’ for players by offering them virtual currency to play games outside of the casino lobby in order to increase their screen time. 

MEGA games allow players to bring more rewards that come in the form of free spins, free bets and bonus money; any component that can bring them back into playing casino games. 

Campano argues that increasing the average screen time of each player is at the crux of improving the financial health of the industry. If the screen time increases, he argues, so does all of the other financial metrics.

He adds: “As a consequence of screen time, we can then see how all the financial metrics go up. How the average revenue per user increases 45% and  NGR increases by 65% . That’s what we want to achieve here. We want to compete with other forms of entertainment then the other financial metrics will naturally follow along.”

Soft2Bet’s MEGA engine has helped to increase the screen time of players from an average of 14 minutes, to around an hour, marking a 4x increase in screen time. 

Big Business in Brazil

As aforementioned, Campano joins SBC live from SBC Summit Rio, where Soft2Bet exhibited to showcase solutions and find new partners. Brazil is one of global gambling’s hottest new markets in 2025 as the federal betting regulatory regime kicks into play. 

While operators and suppliers alike flock into the nation to find as many customers as possible, Campano notes that Soft2Bet is being rather more pernickety about which partners they want in Brazil. 

So what does an ideal partner look like for Soft2Bet in Brazil? 

“We are looking for those who are agile, who are fast and who understand players’ needs,” says the Sales Director LATAM. “We look for partners who always localise products and content. We also want to work with partners who have very good brand equity. Brazil has always been a complicated market in many areas such as bonus abuse and fraud, so we need to partner up with companies that understand how to overcome these obstacles.”

A key activation that Soft2Bet did at Rio was a workshop focusing on the world of gamification and highlighting how crucial it is to the fortunes of the industry going forward. 

While Soft2Bet’s MEGA has a big profile in European markets, Campano says that it is currently exploring the Latin America market and therefore educating operators on its benefits was a logical choice.

“What we’re doing here is trying to educate operators not only in Brazil but from across Latin America about the art of gamification and increasing retention and player loyalty. 

“What operators need if they want to succeed is to increase the return on investment and a key way of doing this is to boost the overall lifetime value of each player. CPAs are very expensive in regulated markets, but with MEGA, we can naturally engage the player and increase the overall lifetime value.”

Something that underpins Soft2Bet’s MEGA solution is that it’s tried and tested; the firm has established B2C operations in several markets, including Mexico, where it has utilised MEGA before rolling it out on a B2B basis.

“We would never offer any kind of gamification engine if it didn’t work,” says Campano.

Latin America is of huge importance to the company going forward, as it eyes success in Brazil. It is also coming off the back of a B2C launch in Mexico at the end of 2024 and is seeking further opportunities in the region, specifically picking out Peru as a particularly eye-catching prospect. 

As Campano rounds off: “Soft2Bet is a company that is always looking for the right opportunities. We are interested in every single regulated market, as long as we find the right partner. 

“With that being said, we’re specifically interested in Peru, Brazil and Mexico. That doesn’t mean that if Paraguay or Chile regulates next year, which they probably will, we might also see an opportunity, and we might also enter there.”