Hello and welcome to the latest episode of iGaming Daily where, and I feel like I start every
single podcast saying this, we're in sunny, well, Lisbon now. It was Barcelona last year,
but we're in sunny Lisbon and it is sunny, it's roasting, but we're at the SPC Summit and I'm
joined by Jessica Wellman, the editor of SPC Americas and Callum Williams, the senior journalist
at Payment Expert. How are you both doing today? Enjoying Lisbon?
Um, cause it's so massive. So I've just dabbled so far in the event and ready to see what more
there is. Yeah. I've got lost a few times already. I've only been here about two hours. So, yeah,
it's, uh, it's, uh, you say about 10 times bigger than Barcelona. 10 times. Maybe. I don't know.
10 times bigger than that. I know it, I think it's like two or three times the size. Um,
I mean, they've doubled the amount of, um, people that are expected to come here this week. Um,
which is incredible. I remember my first.
just after COVID and that was, I think there was only half the size then that there was
expected due to restrictions. I think it was like 5,000 there at the time. So to see the
growth of the year on year and what I'm seeing now, it is no under understatement that it
is massive. Yeah. And I've only managed to get to the casino halls cause I'm running left,
right and center with interviews in that section. But if it's you're doubling, you tripling that
cause I think you've got two other halls with sports betting section and then you've got
the affiliate and payment zones as well. Mm hmm. My legs already hurt and I really shouldn't
have played football yesterday. It was a rookie move. Before we delve into the aristocat, light
and wonder topic, just a quick shout out to our supporter of the iGaming Daily podcast
and that's Optimove, the number one CRM marketing solution for the iGaming market. For listeners
out there, you can still claim your first month of Optimove by visiting optimove.com forward
slash SBC. Again, I'll leave links in the description below. But no, thank you for joining us and
we're going to talk. We're not really gonna do it the usual way we would at an event where
we talk about kind of trends that are happening or what we've been up to. Because one, we've
just got here. But also there's an interesting development in America's, Jess, in America
with Light and Wonder and Aristocrat, correct? Yes. So for those keeping track, Light and
Wonder has a number of lawsuits pending. The two that really have been getting a lot of
play are one from Aristocrat and one from Evolution, both saying,
In this aristocrat one, what's happened today is that a judge has granted what's called a
preliminary injunction and the action is essentially that Light and Wonder is not allowed to offer
its Dragon Link game anymore or not anymore until the case reaches a resolution. The matter
at hand in the case is Dragon Train and this other game Dragon Link and whether or not Light
and Wonder by hiring a former aristocrat engineer has basically copycatted the game. What some
outlets are getting wrong about this, this is not a resolution in the case. The judge is
simply saying, looking at the merits of the case, it stands to reason that aristocrat could
win and that they have a claim. And since they do, until this case is done, you can't offer
this game anymore. Light and Wonder is going to appeal that injunction and then obviously
they're going to continue to go to trial with the rest of the case and Aristocrat taking
a bit of a victory lap, but perhaps in its communications overstating exactly what this means. Yeah,
I mean, just listen, we're going to talk about payments later with Callum, but this is an
interesting story and it's one that ever since I joined the industry about four and a half
years ago, I was a writer on slot beats. And my first impression when looking at slots was
like... How the hell do they get past copyright infringements anywhere due to kind of how closely
they tie stuff to films? An example, I'm not going to name the company, but they made a
slot title and it was pretty much based off, you're like, this is a cartoon. So it fits
my narrative. Of course it's a cartoon. It's always a cartoon with you. But the film surfs
up, I don't know, are you aware of it? I'm cognizant it exists and that's about it. I have watched
the film. Yeah, should I shoot up on the... Yeah, you know how they got around this? Because
you're the only person that's watched Surfed Up and even noticed. Wait, Shia LaBeouf was
in it, it was fantastic. Like Penguin Surfing. But they literally, it was a like for like,
copying of Surf's Up for that slot title. And even in my head I was like, how are they getting
around this? Because it's so close to the actual product that it has to be copyright infringement
in some way. there's no license to it because it's not the actual surf, like surf or film.
Stacey Doe Let me clarify. So do these games both involve dragons? Sure. That's not really
what the issue is. The issue is the mechanic and the random number generator, how often
and frequency of payments, what triggers those payments. That's what they're challenging.
I mean, they are like, and by the way, it's also even a dragon, but that's kind of the
tangential piece of this. And what's at play here is less that Cause I think that you know
better than I do, James. It seems like there's waves in slots where like it's gonna be barnyard
critters this year and everybody's gonna have farm animals. And then next year it's gonna
be, you know, dragons and unicorns and things like that. So you have those kind of lookalike
games and that's a bit of a different issue. This one is like the design and the mechanic
and the thing that makes this game compelling is what you are stealing. Yeah. I think my...
point was kind of... Oh, I wanted to clarify because I realised... Yeah, yeah, yeah. It
was a good thing to clarify. I think mine was because it was so closely tied to the film
that it was indistinguishable to me being a huge cartoon source up fan that it baffled
me how they get around it. But when you actually come to the mechanical side of things, that
is a lot, I think it's a lot actually easier. I mean, there's like spreadsheets in this,
in the evidence that's like, hi, this woman used to work here and now she works here and...
left with this spreadsheet, and if you look at their spreadsheet, it's set up the exact
same way. It's a bigger trail than, well, maybe I just also thought about how fun it would
be if penguins served. I guess I'll also ask a question, Jess, just jumping in. Is there
any type of trademark or copyright rules regarding those type of mechanics, or is it just, is
it a bit more vague? So that's a bit of what the evolution lawsuit is, is about a product
called Lightning Roulette, where it's a new game. The concept of the game itself is copyrighted
and patented. And then they're arguing that Lightning X, which, Roulette X is what they
call it, the Light and Wonder product. is the same idea where it's roulette, but you can
hit like a bonus essentially and get paid a bunch. So yeah, you can patent the game itself.
You can also file copyrights and stuff on names and things like that. But it's a weird one
because it's no joke that there's so many slots on so many different mechanics flooding the
market each day, let alone each week, each week, let alone each day. Sorry, I'll do it that
way. But you're always going to have some crossover. So, and I don't know what I am literally going
off my suits knowledge, the Netflix show, well it is a Netflix show to me, where it's like,
is it like a 30 to 35% kind of similarity? Then you kind of cross over to the patent thing,
you have to get it under 30% difference? I don't know, I'm- I mean this is my suits knowledge,
this is sort of a trade in to like US law. For those of you who listen to Charlie and I, at
least once an episode I have to remind everyone I am not a lawyer, so don't quote me on this
one. They didn't in this particular one, they didn't speak about a threshold of percentage,
but that might be the case. Yeah, I think again, I am going off Suits knowledge here, but it's
also kind of away from iGaming. There's a current video game lawsuit with Nintendo where they're
doing a pattern infringement on a company called... Coming with a copy, they created a game called
Power World, which was very, very similar to how Pokemon worked, but their pattern infringement
was... how they threw the Poke balls to capture these creatures. And it's kind of that patterned
infringement where it's over a certain percentage that they're claiming is very similar to their
game. And kind of the point I was getting at is there's so many games in the slot sector,
which you can't get under that 30%, I don't think. If it was a 30% margin, because everyone's
trying to create an Aztec game. Everyone's trying to create. some type of genre, if it's a fishing
game, if it's a fruits game, and then when you look at mechanics themselves, there's very
little similarity within mechanics. Like there's tweaks to make them different. You had the
big mega ways one, which broke the boundaries, but then what you've got cluster pops, pop
wins as well from Avatar UX, it's very similar. You have tumbling mechanics, which are just
avalanche mechanics. I mean, they're so different. Well, and this was kind of addressed in the
lawsuit to where Light and Wonder was saying, you know, it's not a trade secret if you can
reverse engineer something. So if you can watch a game and be like, oh, you know, these things
fall and you figure out a way to make them fall, you can't call that a trade secret. But what
aristocrat was saying was the specific payout frequency and that sort of thing, you can't
reverse engineer that. And so it does. I mean, Light and Water was trying to argue this stuff
wasn't trade secrets to begin with. And really this one's a bit different from the Evolution
one in that they're kind of claiming malfeasance that they hired this person to create this
game for them versus, you know, the Evolution one seems more like a copycat lawsuit. Yeah.
I think that whole person being involved in the whole story kind of leans towards aristocrat
in some way, which interesting to see what'll happen there. Again, I think when you say you
can't reverse engineer kind of like payments side of things, I'm like, is that not what
RTP and volatility is in general anyway? I mean, you can, is it public knowledge that the RTP
of a slot is 83%? Sure. How a machine specifically, how often it hits, you know, one bonus or the
other to get to 83% is the part that can't be. like just watching the game, you can't necessarily
reverse engineer. Does that make sense? Yeah, it does. I still think that kind of for me,
that still ties into kind of the volatility level of an actual slot itself, because the
higher volatility slots, the less frequent you're going to get an actual hit, lower volatility
you do. But I kind of get the point. You can't reverse engineer it, but they're the whole
points of volatility and RTP linking them together to kind of create the outcome of you're going
to get paid more, you're going to get paid less, but bigger wins. You might understand the brief
more than I did. Like the legal part was what I kind of followed. It's, you know, the things
about like hit frequency and stuff like that, that's in there. Um, that's a little more dense
for my knowledge. If it wasn't the Lisbon event and my morning wasn't filled so much with like,
uh, video interviews, I really wish I could just sit down and look at that brief. And it's
something I'm going to do cause I think we should probably touch on it. I get in more detail
once as I mean, these are going to be a big deal once they come to fruition. You know,
to give people kind of a timetable on this, by the way, these suits take months. And really,
a lot of what has been procedurally happening since it was filed in March was there's a motion
to dismiss and then light and wonder lost that essentially there was some technicality things
that by and large aristocrat was granted the right to move forward. Now by and large aristocrat
has won its challenge that like you can't do this while we figure Next is the process that's
called discovery, where each group has to kind of provide all of the evidence that they would
potentially use in the case. So that takes an incredibly long time. And because it's highly
sensitive material, there's a whole other level of bureaucracy to this where, um, there's a
lot of motions to seal and to keep confidential and that sort of thing. So I think we're a
very long way from a conclusion, which means for light and wonder if they lose the appeal
on the injunction, a very popular game is going to be off the books for them for potentially
a long period of time. Mason- Yeah, interesting developments. I think for me, this is going
to be interesting once it comes to a conclusion, if it goes into aristocrats way, I think it
sets a precedent then. And like I started with the show saying, from my point of view, there's
so many potential copyright infringements within slots. I'm curious if this is going to open
a gateway for a lot of other companies. We definitely will see and we'll be keeping an eye on it.
definitely in America's casino beats as a version of this as well. Yeah. Guy gaming daily. I
will be keeping an eye on this for our gaming daily because this is my bread and butter.
I love it. Um, but we're going to take a quick break and then when we come back, Callum Williams
is going to step forward more. I'm going to talk a bit about the payments. So that's happening
today. Um, yeah, today is today. Yeah. Today at the Lisbon event. So stay tuned. Welcome
back. Like I mentioned before the break, we're going to be talking payments summit. And this
is an interesting one, Callum, because we've never actually done a payment summits before.
the any events I don't think have we? Yeah, we've had payments. We've had payments tracks.
Tracks, yeah. We've had payment tracks and payments panels and stuff like that, but never really
a dedicated payments summit, which obviously is named after payment expert our site, which
is just a kind of almost a testament to the growth of the site and how well it's performed
over the past couple of years. So yeah, it's really pleasing to see that type of branding
there as well. Yeah. I mean, payments has just been something that's been growing and growing
since I joined. certainly in the casino sector as well, like it's huge and you then you involve
crypto into the scene, which I'm not going to pretend I'm going to be a crypto expert here.
I may have dabbled, but like nothing on you Callum, but just give us an idea of some of
the interesting conversations that have been happening today anyway, because I know you've
been on the panel session, but also give us an idea of a general trend that's happening
within the payment sector. Yeah. Well, I sat in the first opening Pimp Experts Summit panel
regarding mature markets It was funny because some of the panellists didn't really have an
answer to the mature markets. They kind of almost said there are no mature markets when it pertains
to regulatory requirements involving both the gambling and the payment industries, which
is in fact all fair enough. There really isn't because regulations are just so ever evolving.
Whether you want to talk about the gambling white paper in the UK in terms of affordability
checks and then payments. There's the payment service director three that's about to come
into Europe obviously following the back of PSD2 which introduced open banking regulations
and regulations to instant payments. And so, yeah, that was a really good conversation,
which was moderated by Andrew McGeech and I've seen Neosurf, I'm sure you'll... I game in
daily. We're a big fan of Neosurf and Andrea. Yeah. Shout out to Andrea. But no, yeah, there's
also representatives from Leo Vegas. Also, there was some representatives from Trustly as well.
Just kind of giving the whole operator supplier dynamic in terms of how an operator and supplier
can help one another in terms of... not only adapting to these mature markets, but also
emerging markets as well. Like Brazil, for instance, that's a market that's about to explode in
the sports betting aspect. So yeah, they're really trying to figure out that fine balance
between what can the gambling operators help for payment operators to enter these markets,
but then how can they remain compliant as well with the regulators? Yeah. I've had a few conversations
already today when I was doing interviews and the our interviews is, it baffles me because
I don't know, I felt like I was in the belief that crypto was kind of on the decline a bit.
I don't know if it's getting a second wave and what's it called, the bull run or something
like that? Mason- Well yeah, the bear market is when it's down, it's declining and the bull
market is when it's on the up. I mean yeah, it was the fair to say the crypto market was
almost seemingly dead during 2022 and 2023 because of the high profile collapses of FTX and Terraluna,
that just kind of... implemented the market, it's lost all investor confidence. But I think
what you may be hearing from some of these gambling operators now is the interesting crypto as
a payment method, because it just provides so many beneficiaries when it pertains to instant
payment, like it happens in mere seconds. It's just something that's not... There's instant
payments within Europe and within SEPA and stuff like that, but crypto is a peer-to-peer transaction
with no intermediaries involved. That is just a quick transaction that will easily just grant
player, for instance, instant gratification, whether it's deposits or whether it's payout
as well. So crypto was a payment method initially. That was what crypto was meant to be when Bitcoin
came about in 2008. It was meant to be this pure peer-to-peer transaction. Now it's just
being used for investor and stuff like that. I'm going to ask the noob question. So if you're
a payments processor, how do you make money on a peer-to-peer crypto exchange if the idea
is... that there's not an intermediary. Mason. That would be, that is a good question to be
fair, Jess. I mean, it's something that a gambling operator may have to partner with a crypto
payment merchant or a crypto payment provider and there may be some beneficiary there. I
think that's a good question because there hasn't really been a good example of that, to be honest.
But it is something that when crypto was first introduced, it was meant to be this peer-to-peer.
transaction, like no intermediaries, no banks involved. So it's interesting to see that some
of these payment service providers, I mean, I know Revolut of the UK, Fintech Revolut,
they're heavily invested into crypto in terms of trying to make it as a crypto payment method.
And it just because of the benefits it provides the users. And at the end of the day, they
want the users to be happy. They want to come back and use their type of services. So I've
seen, I had a conversation with a company, I'm not going to say who they are because You're
just all sorts of mystery and intrigue today. I'm not name dropping anyone, but yeah, I learned
a few things. Um, but we had a conversation because of the new European regulations coming
through, they've had to change their whole business model of how they adapt. So instead of being
that kind of middle person for a transaction between operators and kind of companies, they're
now becoming more crypto consultants and kind of helping operators around the new regulations.
Would that be in Mika? Is that? That's the European framework that's coming in December. It's basically
the first type of comprehensive crypto regulatory framework where it requires listings and it
requires you need licenses now to operate in some of these markets. I do believe there was
one, it was Tether, which is the largest stablecoin issue in the world. They're European stablecoin,
which is picked to the European fiat currency, the Euro. I'm going to nod and say yeah, like
I know what you're talking about right now. It's basically, it's a crypto, a stablecoin
is basically a crypto currency that's tethered to a real life currency like the Euro, so it
maintains its stability. Okay, yeah. They're being more pushed as a payment method for instance,
because there's no volatility involved. That's for the altcoins kind of thing. So like the
doges, the... No, they're just meme coins, they're just... They're quite volatile though, they're
the altcoins. Oh yeah, they're extremely volatile. Is that the official term, meme coin? The glorified.
get rich quick schemes really. But yeah, Mika is very, very important to how crypto in the
future, in Europe especially, is going to be viewed as a type of payment product because
they have to be regulated now, these tokens. Well, and I can see the ancillary effects too,
that if it is successful then operators in other markets like the US that are very resistant
to crypto will be like, okay, well here's one way that you could do it. And I know... For
me at least, when I speak with smaller operators, the number one thing they say is the biggest
reason we can't be profitable is because our payment processing charges are just through
the roof. Yeah. What is it in the US? Is it different to the European ones, isn't it? PayPal
is a big one. Is it the interchange fees with MasterCard and Visa? Yeah, and then credit
card fees and that sort of thing. But you get a payment processing company to handle all
those. PayPal gets very expensive and it's one of those like, you can get reduced rates if
you're going in bulk, but small operators that are in two states, three states is just very
difficult. So, the opportunity to get a peer to peer fee, fun method without that kind of
fee. It's just very difficult for small operators. I mean, licensing and all the other things
on top of payments fees, but they say payments fees are the worst. Mason. We recently did
a report from Capgemini as well, telling of their payments review of 2025, and they highlighted
account-to-account payments, A2A payments, as this surging favourable payment method among
users, which completely takes out those interchange fees from Visa and Mastercard. pretty much
established that this could represent a billions upon billions and billions upon billions of
losses in interchange fees for the lights of visa and mastercard. So there's something to
watch out if, um, if operators are starting to get a bit, a bit, um, a bit worried about
some of these attached fees. I'll leave the link to that article in the description for
this podcast via, um, we are going to round up though and finish off. But before we do,
Callum, give us a rundown of what listeners who are attending the event can expect from
the payment expert summit. Yeah, we, uh, will the team, me, Ted, I'm Clay and Kieran O'Connor.
We're pretty much covering most of the panels here at the SPC Summit, Payment Expert Summit.
Yeah, there's, and then maybe moving away from Payment Expert as well, we're also covering
some of this stuff on the Superstage, you know. Luis Figo and the new UFC Bantamweight Champion
Mirab. I can't remember his last name. Oh, I was like, oh, are you one of the MMA people
in the team too? I do like me UFC, but I think Joe's, I think Joe's are. Yeah, I'm more of
a boxing man then. Yeah, true. Yeah. And then just, yeah, keeping, uh, keep an eye out for,
on a payment expert for some of the, uh, the good panels and good interviews you might have
on the way. I brought my Tony Hawk on the ground too. So hopefully Tony Hawk can sign that for
me. You want to try and get an autograph? Yeah. And then sell it anyway. Big fan of Tony Hawk.
Big fan of him when I was younger. Um, but we're going to round up today. So Callum, Jess, thank
you for joining us today and have a good rest of your week in Lisbon and to listen out there,
tuning to, and to the listeners out there tuning tomorrow where I'll be back. on the conference
room floor at SBC Summit. Until then, thank you.