Beyond aggregation

Games aggregation has existed for many years allowing game studios and developers to integrate with multiple providers with the promise of rapid access to numerous territories and operators. Aggregation suppliers have also seen the breadth of their portfolios explode in recent years with thousands of titles for operators to select from.

Many talented and innovative studios and developers, however, have realised that integration timeframes, and opportunities to scale their business using traditional aggregation platforms have been slow and ineffective. Equally, differentiation between many traditional aggregators and their offerings today is almost non-existent and, combined with their limited global network reach, it is difficult for studios and developers to realise their full potential.

Aggregation as we know it has been extremely beneficial for many, but it is time for us to realise we can do much more with modern technology, and drive operational scale to new heights with customers’ real needs in mind rather than simply plugging into a platform that offers volumes of unused, untargeted and unmeasured content.

We have experienced a positive behavioural change relating to our partners, for example, who want more from their third-party collaborations, one that goes beyond a traditional platform aggregation distribution model. They have become more integrated in our go-to-market strategy, and how together we can optimise success in existing and new local and global markets.

It is therefore time to go beyond aggregation, to standardise the technology we use to develop, adapt and distribute content to multiple markets and languages to make it easier for any game studio, developer or operator, no matter where they are in the world, to create, deliver and offer games tailored specifically to their audiences.

The message is clear: The industry needs a faster, highly scalable and efficient path to realise business strategies, ignite global collaborations, and unlock revenue growth potential.

Our answer to this is called the GATI (Games Adaptation Tools and Interfaces), a disruptive framework that we are confident will increase the distance between our established global YG Masters partner programme, and traditional content platform aggregators. GATI technology empowers our global game studios and developers to unlock opportunities that are not possible through traditional aggregation distribution models.

GATI is a preconfigured, regulation-ready content development toolkit that powers our global YG Masters partner programme, enabling studios and game developers to use a standardised technology solution to develop and distribute games anywhere in the world. This means partners can source, build and distribute content and crucially accelerate global reach, finding new ways to increase revenues, all using one standardised interface.

Using this technology, they will be free to build game engines in any way, any language, access our promotional tools, take control of their roadmap and retain their IP, in the most secure and reliable manner.

Decentralised Aggregation Network

This value proposition to the market is unique. The industry-first white label franchise provides an opportunity for studios, developers, operators and any others to license all and any elements of our technology. We call this the YG Franchise. This allows partners to cost effectively set up, launch and operate their own B2B egaming operations.

Partnering with franchise, then licensing our entire end-to-end games creation, platform integration, games promotion platform, including GATI and access to all YG customers, its nationally and remote regulated markets, all gamification tools, and other YG Franchisees and their markets, is already happening, and the Decentralised Aggregation Network (DAN) has already started to expand.

GATI is the enabler of the next generation DAN that goes beyond traditional aggregation. Any of our global YG Franchise partners can cross collaborate with each other through GATI and share their respective games roadmaps in an effective manner.

All our partners, being tightly integrated to GATI, will be able to cross-sell their games to any of our global YG Franchisees. This is a unique way to rapidly scale distribution and revenue opportunities, at the same time as enabling completely new ways of working and collaborating.

Franchisees will take many forms: from land-based operators or land-based game developers which may lack a high performing online operation and want to cost effectively expand into B2B online and mobile gaming solutions; existing online operators who wants to capitalise on their own productions and make their portfolio accessible to global GATI users, earning incremental royalties; or suppliers which lack access to global content and who can license our technology to immediately tap into best performing games in target markets.

The days of aggregation as we know it are numbered. It is time to look beyond aggregation to unlock new, highly scalable business models that fully realise business strategy potential, and to take revenue growth opportunities to new levels.

Bjorn Krantz is head of Yggdrasil Publishing joining the innovative casino games and technology supplier in January 2020. He is a highly experienced executive and has worked in several senior positions in the gaming industry for over a decade.