Breaking: Chili signs US deal with Golden Nugget
B2B agreement sees the Landry's-owned casino become the first name added to French operator's new 'igaming platform'.
French-owned egaming operator Chiligaming has signed an exclusive online gaming partnership with US casino group Golden Nugget, eGaming Review can exclusively reveal.
The deal will see the two parties combine on a free-play site, set to go live within the next three months, with Golden Nugget believed to be keen to go live before this summer’s World Series of Poker.
Golden Nugget is one of only three casino groups to have venues in both Nevada and New Jersey, along with Caesars and MGM, with owner Landry’s having acquired and rebranded the Trump Marina in Atlantic City last February.
It will be the first partner to go live on Chiligaming’s new ‘igaming platform’, an open platform developed by Chili over the last three years which CEO Alex Dreyfus (pictured) says symbolises the operator’s growing B2B focus.
Dreyfus told eGaming Review that “It will not be branded Chilipoker, but rather a B2B deal using the Golden Nugget brand, and we’re looking to secure other casinos as well. We will refocus as more B2B than B2C as a company.
“We are one of the companies who never took a bet in the US, and will now be positioning ourselves as a boutique B2B provider – we may not be the biggest but we are more flexible than others in terms of both services and ideas,” added Dreyfus, noting that unlike some other potential partners Chili would not tie Golden Nugget to its own software but rather offer products from a variety of suppliers.
“Our idea is to give the best content that they want – this is how we have managed to convince Golden Nugget. We were one of the only ones to offer something neutral with connections to others’ products,” he explained.
Golden Nugget chairman and owner Tilman J Fertitta said of the deal: “We… looked at more than a dozen internet gaming companies and selected Alex and Chiligaming because they were experienced in online gaming in Europe and demonstrated incredible passion, talent and knowledge which our team found to far exceed their competitors.
“We believe that online gaming is inevitable in the United States and that the Golden Nugget will be well positioned to compete when US laws allow for online gaming,” added Fertitta.
Chiligaming has spent the last 18 months establishing a presence in the United States, recently launching a freeplay Facebook poker product for US (and Rest of World) players, and the company has now been incorporated in Nevada ahead of a B2B licence application in the Silver State.
Social media integration is one of the factors believed to have played into the partnership, following the launch and development of Chiligaming’s Chiliconnect social media integration last year, something which Dreyfus describes as “a great idea but so far with the wrong execution”.
“Chili is too small to use a tool like that and make it successful. We want to bring it on to a bigger scale with a bigger platform,” he explained.
Dreyfus also confirmed that the company remains in late-stage discussions with “four or five” further US land-based partners, adding: “We want to bring the fact that we already have one partner and are prepared to share poker liquidity across our own network.”
Chili’s poker product currently sits on Playtech’s iPoker network, but the operator is yet to disclose the identity of the software provider for its US network.