Andreas Koeberl: bringing Twain Sport to Brazil was a logical step for us

The Brazil market has been the one to watch over the last few years. With a sports-centric population and an inherent love for football, it comes as no surprise to hear that Twain Sport has big plans in place to deliver its hybrid sports products to bettors across the country.

Andreas Koeberl, CEO of BetGames, sat down with SBC to discuss Twain Sport’s plans to deliver content to a “new generation of players” before touching upon some future plans for global expansion.

SBC: Congratulations on Twain Sport’s debut in Brazil with Betano – can you talk us through the deal? 

AK: Launching BetGames’ classic portfolio with Betano last year was a great achievement for us, and we are exceptionally proud of this. The launch has done well so far, and we are excited to see the impact expand across the 12 markets that Betano are currently live in. After this debut, we knew that releasing Twain Sport to the Brazilian market was the logical next step in our growth trajectory, especially given the nation’s passion for football! 

The focus was clear from the start for us, even though we faced previous time restrictions, with our product not being live 24/7 until April this year. Brazilian culture is centred around sport, with football of course being the most popular, which put us in prime position to launch T-Kick, and the opportunity couldn’t have been more fitting. Now, with the opportunity for sports fans to get in on the action, at any minute of the day – we’re sure it will prove to be a great success. 

SBC: Why has now been the right time to enter the Brazil market? 

AK: Our 24/7 live Twain Sport offering launched at the end of April 2023, which sees daily one-on-one challenges, with non-stop 60-second matches available every two minutes throughout the day. Given that Brazil is a sports-crazy nation, one could argue that in many ways, launching here should be long overdue for us!

Of course, plenty of groundwork has gone into our preparation for the market, and we had to adhere to guidelines from a regulatory perspective first, and make sure our 24/7 sport product offering was fully-compliance friendly ahead of bringing Twain Sport to LatAm’s most populous market. After all, this is a fantastic opportunity to deliver our one-of-a-kind proposition, every minute of the day, to millions of potential players. 

On timing, basketball is also a sport that is booming in the country, which gives us an additional opportunity to capture a growth trajectory that is really starting to take off. T-Basket, which is our basketball iteration of Twain Sport, will fit that niche perfectly, and no doubt complement our football iteration, which we’re sure will be a top performer. 

SBC: Has there been any key learnings from your presence in global markets that will shape the way you approach the Brazil market?  

AK: It’s all about learning as we go and achieving small wins along the way. A key focus for us was to improve on the UI betting experience, for example. We’ve also now doubled the frequency of our matches, meaning we’ve always got another round of betting ready for players, which fills the exact demand for short-form action that we know the new generation is looking for. 

For us to really improve though, it was imperative that we received feedback from our existing customers, as adapting and evolving is always key to success. To achieve that, we asked them three questions in 3 different surveys that we run in previous months and UX was a key part of the feedback we wanted to know more about. As a result, we’ve developed a far more intuitive mobile-first optimisation that makes Twain Sport a truly one-of-a-kind product.

The second was the ability to deliver commentary localised into languages that suit each of our jurisdictions. We will achieve this via AI, and will bring computer-generated commentary to provide an even more immersive experience to users. Again, this means we can really scale globally and deliver a tailored service to every corner of the world.  

Last but not least, a third core tenet has been taking our matches from limited slots throughout the day to 24/7. In many ways, this has been the key learning that we needed to make Twain Sport international. After all, in order to work across multiple continents, you need to be available at any time throughout the day, no matter the time zone! 

SBC: Mobile penetration within Brazil is incredibly high, with bettors tending to prefer mobile devices over handheld. Have you had to adapt your product offering at all to meet the needs of mobile bettors?

AK: In short, no. Our focus when creating Twain Sport for a new generation of players was to design a mobile optimised product, which meant we started from the ground up to ensure we produced a gaming experience that catered to mobile first, and desktop second.

Of course, emerging markets have their own challenges when it comes to mobile, so plenty of thought has gone into the challenges of data coverage. As a result, we deliver Twain Sport in multiple different UI modes to complement varied bandwidth, with our specialised “GUI” form of delivery designed to suit areas of low coverage without 4G. 

In principle, our lower data version is designed to work when streams are interrupted, ensuring we can always ensure players are able to keep enjoying matches even if the data does not allow it every second. This means players can enjoy the action as an animation rather than a paused stream, which is a great way of solving any issues around engagement. 

SBC: Brazil is somewhat synonymous with football, so obviously T-Kick will be very popular with bettors within this market! But given football’s popularity, how do you plan to get bettors just as engaged with T-Basket?  

AK: We’ve actually got a great opportunity here – as we’ve touched on above, we’ve seen in our research that the popularity of basketball is growing fast in Brazil, so this is excellent timing for us. 

Given its brilliant growth trajectory, we see this as a perfect chance for us to be delivering a fast-growing sport to an emerging audience that is really starting to expand. Of course, providing variety to bettors is another important element for us, and in the grand scheme of things, football works well as an acquisition tool, followed by T-Basket as a great method of retention to follow up and provide variety with an up-and-coming sport. 

SBC: Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen you gain multiple new international licences – what’s the next stop on your global expansion plan?  

AK: Our next goal will be to debut our sports products in Canada’s Ontario. The initial feedback there has been fantastic, and we’re confident that we’ll be announcing our first five or so operator partners there very shortly. Alongside that, we’ve also got the all-clear in the UK from the Gambling Commission, which means Twain Sport will be live across Britain within the next few months. 

Looking elsewhere, we’ve got big plans for Twain Sport in Africa, although our priority is definitely oriented towards establishing ourselves in Europe and the Americas first. I’m sure that the mix of basketball and football are going to be very popular across the world’s second-biggest continent!