In 2013, Inspired Gaming Group rolled out its all-new Eclipse slot cabinet, with features like a swipeable screen, enhanced interactivity and the ability to “remember” the player and thereby suggest other games based on past choices.
With four linear HD screens and a main menu that worked much like a smart phone or tablet, the Eclipse enabled players to navigate among dozens of game choices at a simple finger-stroke. Other features included the industry’s first combined touch-screen video buttons and physical buttons with video screens.
At the time, U.K.-based Inspired hailed the Eclipse as “a 360-degree product evolution” and “a world first.”
More than a year later, the company’s confidence in the Eclipse has been more than justified. Since August 2013, Inspired Gaming has deployed more than 10,000 of the terminals with major U.K. operators including William Hill, Paddy Power and Betfred.
In addition, the company has just extended its long-term partnership with William Hill for five more years—?“a testament to the quality of Inspired’s innovation, operational services and how it supports its own customer growth,” says Inspired Gaming CEO Luke Alvarez.
The new contract also includes over 4,000 additional Eclipse cabinets in William Hill’s 2,400 licensed betting offices.
Crossing Channels
Inspired was one of the first suppliers to launch content simultaneously across all gaming channels—VLT, mobile and online—in the United Kingdom. Building on this foundation, the company will exhibit its latest innovations in cross-channel entertainment at G2E, including the new mobile HTML5 games “White Knight” and “Goddess of the Amazon,” which operate on its remote game server (RGS), Virgo.
Inspired also will present its 10th virtual sport, “Virtual Basketball,” and its multi-game virtual football product, which is currently live in China.
“The power of Inspired’s leading Virtual Sports proposition can be seen in Italy,” says Alvarez, “where it has supported the development of a €1billion market, from nothing, in just six months.”
With years of experience installing and operating wide-area distributed VLTs, the company will be showing its range of networked gaming products for a number of regulated markets including the U.K., Italy and Colombia.
Inspired also will be showcasing new slot games. Company representatives will offer demonstrations of Inspired’s GSA-compliant SBG VLT technology for private or government lottery operators, including its Core CDW (Centrally Determined Wins) system.
Conquering Italy
In Italy, Inspired provides the VLT system, cabinets and games to operators such as Sisal, Betplus, Lottomatica and HBG, and will soon go live with Cogetech. It was the second company to go live with VLT machines back in 2010, and is one of the three major VLT suppliers to the market, with more than 10,000 contracted VLT server-based machines.
“We continually strive to keep our Italian content offering fresh,” Alvarez says, “and just recently released two new titles, with more to come during the course of the year.”
For Virtual Sports, Inspired has a market share of more than 90 percent in Italy and the biggest virtual games portfolio on the market. In the last two years, it has signed Virtual Sports deals in Italy with all major Italian operators including Snai, Lottomatica, SISAL, Eurobet, Cogetech, Intralot, Gamenet and Microgame, Sommettendo.it and Betflag.
Since the end of 2013, Inspired reports it has had more than 10 million bets per month on its Virtual Sports products across its combined retail, online and mobile channels. And this year, Inspired will also launch a new upgraded version of its world leading Virtual Football product for Italian players, with enhanced graphics and extra bet markets. By the end of the year it anticipates that more than 10,000 venues will be live with Inspired’s products.
Just as importantly, notes Alvarez, the company is touting its new U.K. Code of Conduct functionality for player protection and responsible gambling software.
Having launched the Code of Conduct (which proscribes responsible gambling times and spend limits) in March 2014, Inspired is working with the U.K. government and the bookmaking industry to develop additional player protection measures, which are due to be launched in 2015.
“Inspired is leading the industry response to responsible gambling,” says Alvarez. “Thanks to Inspired’s Open SBG/VLT Core technology, new responsible gaming software can be deployed quickly via the network, and operators and regulators can segment data by any criteria—for example, by game, machine, player, average stake, and time on device.”
Expansion Plans
Inspired is the leading EU supplier of next-generation SBG Video Lottery technology, and the leading supplier worldwide of Virtual Sports for lottery and sports betting across 30,000 venues and over 200 websites in 33 countries. It is rapidly expanding its Virtual Sports footprint as legislation allows.
In March, Inspired signed an exclusive agreement with R.Franco to supply its Open VLT Core technology platform and games in Spain. In June it also announced its first Virtual Sports deal in Colombia, with GENTEC (the Betancur Group). Also in June, it announced a deal with William Hill to supply premium HTML5 games to the bookmaker’s mobile gaming platform, and it will be announcing more deals throughout 2014.
With its already strong VLT presence in Colombia, Inspired will further expand into Virtual Sports and single-site VLTs. Using Colombia as the beachhead into Latin America, Inspired will choose more countries offering growth potential to the company, officials said.
In the U.S., Inspired is already live with Sabre Multi-Win Roulette, its casino electronic table game product, and 2014 will see expansion of this product, as well the launch of its cross-channel Virtual Sports suite across selected jurisdictions.
