Turning point: A new era in tech for Stoiximan

Greece’s primary online operator Stoiximan has crept into industry headlines in the last year through its keen experimentation with new technologies that others are seemingly wary of or unconvinced by.

It captured our interest last year with the development of a mixed-reality sports betting and casino product that sought to bridge the largely untouched divide between AR, VR and online gambling technology.

Having forged a recent partnership with Greece’s largest retail betting operator OPAP, Stoiximan is in a state of transition as it establishes where the most valuable synergies between the two firms lie and it also shifts its tech onto a new cloud-based in-house platform.

Stoiximan CTO Aris Dimarakis guides EGR Technology through some of the major tech changes the company is undergoing.

EGR Technology: How has the expansion of the tech team and attracting new tech talent to the company gone since launching your tech hub last November? How many hires have you made and how has operations/tech changed?

Aris Dimarakis (AD): The tech team is growing very fast in general and so is the team in Thessaloniki. We focus on exploiting cutting-edge technology in order to deliver a fast and smooth experience to our players and doing the biggest part of the development in-house has proven a competitive advantage so far.

However, scaling can be challenging and launching remote hubs is one way to deal with this matter. We currently employ more than 60 people in Thessaloniki with approximately half of them working on the development side and the results have been very satisfying so far. Overall our tech team consists of more than 200 members and has quadrupled over the past three years.

EGR Technology: What are your long-term ambitions for growing the tech team and how will that improve product/tech efforts?

AD: Our long-term plan is to get to the point where our platform, which is based in a modern, scalable, cloud-friendly technology stack, will include all the key software components required for our operations. This will give us the ability to better support our strategic decisions via an improved quality of software that allows us to become even more innovative against the industry standards.

EGR Technology: Has there been any big changes to the tech team since starting your recruitment efforts last year? Any interesting hires or promotions in recent months?

AD: During the last 18 months we have undergone an incremental yet radical change as part of our quest to become an agile tech organisation. This journey on its own has been a very interesting one and to implement it we are constantly establishing new roles and opportunities.

I am very happy that our senior members often get the chance to advance professionally inside our organisation, but at the same time we are trying to bring in people with industry experience from abroad to work with us and contribute with their expertise and experience.

EGR Technology: Do you have a graduate scheme to entice graduates from Aristotle University? Is Greece the best place to source tech talent and maintain your HQ?

AD: Our well-developed relationship with Aristotle University allows us to be open to recruitment. We want to attract talent and we have the resources and the working environment to do so. Further to recruiting people with advanced technological knowledge, we are also aiming to attract those that are beginning their careers.

We have therefore put in action an in-house academy, providing mentoring to new graduates and we plan to continually expand the initiative. I believe Greece generates high quality tech talent and so we are also trying to reverse the trend of young people leaving the country due to the financial crisis. We are now launching a new initiative offering a relocation package and support plus three additional salaries to Greeks who decide to return home and work with us.

EGR Technology: Where else does the company have offices/tech hubs?

AD: Currently, it’s Athens and Thessaloniki but there are two more cities with technical universities that attract our attention and, under certain circumstances, we could consider the possibility to establish hubs in the near future. After all, we are strong supporters of decentralised models and practices. We are actually planning to establish a third hub right now. Hopefully we will be able to launch it in 2020.

EGR Technology: How has your job and the overall tech landscape changed since the OPAP acquisition last year? What is their vision for tech and product at the company?

AD: First of all, it’s not an acquisition but rather a strategic investment in our company by OPAP. So, it has really been business as usual for everyone in the company as the transaction has not resulted in any changes at all.

What has changed for certain is the market perception for Stoiximan which is now being acknowledged widely as one of the fastest growing companies in Greece. In addition, we are now in a very solid position when it comes to investing in both technology and expansion and this makes us feel very optimistic about the future.

EGR Technology: You’ve just launched your Betano brand in Portugal, how have you tackled the challenge of localising a product to suit differing European markets? What have you noticed are the biggest differences between markets in terms of product and preferences?

AD: We are very excited that Portugal has become part of the Betano family and our sixth country of operation in Europe. We like to think of ourselves as an international company with a local approach. We always focus on the customer experience and therefore adapt our products and services to the needs of each country, in full accordance with the local regulations. Our biggest strength is using cutting-edge technology to provide the best experience to those who trust us for their entertainment.

In addition to this, we are bringing our own successful products and services in each market as we have the capacity and expertise of opening new recreational experiences in the betting arena. For example, the betano.pt platform is built to offer a fully recreational and user-friendly experience to its customers. Our product has been specifically positioned to bring innovative features for the Portuguese market such as Μissions, a gamification loyalty element, Bet Mentor for the multiple bets fans, as well as an extensive live streaming offering, exclusively for our customers.

We are also very focused on responsible gaming, as we want to ensure a credible environment where everyone can enjoy a healthy, high-quality experience.

EGR Technology: What upcoming plans do you have for launching further products in the coming months?

AD: As we speak there are more than 10 product features and enhancements undergoing development as we are dedicating most of our capacity towards improving the overall customer experience in our brands/products.

We recently added fantasy football to our portfolio. Some of the things we are working on at the moment are a new version of our sportsbook across all channels, improving our popular Match Combo feature by adding more options for the players, increasing our portfolio of casino providers and adding automated real time offers for our players.

We are also working on two AI projects, one that aims to improve our service levels and one that is targeting recommendations to our players.

EGR Technology: How did the NetEnt integrated sports betting widget for live casino perform during the World Cup last year? Have you got any more similar innovations in mind for upcoming sports tournaments?

 AD: It was an interesting experiment, mixing these different worlds in a single view. We are always open to trying new things even when we know that they will not shock our revenue stream. Any innovation that can improve customer experience is interesting to us.

EGR Technology: Has the Stoiximan mixed reality sportsbook product been formally launched yet? How has the product advanced since its beta phase last summer?

AD: It is completed in terms of development, at least for the first version of it, and we are currently in the final stages before deploying our production environment and promotional pipeline.

EGR Technology: Do you still think there is an appetite for this technology in the betting and gaming space? How far away are we from widespread adoption of mixed/augmented reality?

AD: I think that especially in the last two years there has been a major switch happening in our industry, from the traditional operating model to the tech-first approach, where all companies are trying to take advantage of niche technologies to improve their product and customer experience.

EGR Technology: Do you look outside the industry for technology inspiration?

AD: There are several industries that we are closely monitoring and forums that we participate in, as we believe it is very important for our strategic decisions to think outside the box and enrich our experiences with findings from different markets.

EGR Technology: What do you think are the most interesting innovations coming out of Europe at the moment? How can you stand out in such an oversaturated industry as gaming?

AD: In the tech world we like to say we are citizens of the world, as in the internet era there are no borders in ideas and developments. That said, I think that unlike other industries, European gaming companies are now leading the race and have a strong advantage over their competitors.