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The online e-gaming industry is no longer just a phenomenon, it’s now globally omnipresent and is expected to reach $257 billion dollars in revenue by 2025. In fact, There are more than 2.7 billion video gamers around the world and about 60% of North Americans play video games daily.
Real Luck Group Ltd. (
TSX-V: LUCK,
OTCMKTS: LUKEF,
Forum) – and its Luckbox online e-spots platform – is an award-winning betting company that offers legal, real-money betting, live streams, and statistics on all major esports and sports on desktop and mobile devices. In November 2020, Luckbox was named Rising Star at the EGR Operator Awards.
In this informative and entertaining investors video podcast, Stockhouse Media’s Dave Jackson was joined by company CEO Thomas Rosander to explain what Real Luck Group and its Luckbox online e-spots platform is all about.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
SH: To start off with, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the history of the company?
TR: Yeah, sure. So I'm Swedish. I live in Malta. I've been in this gaming industry since 2005. I started with online poker and then sports betting, online casino. I also worked in the video game business for a game publisher, Electronic Arts and launched all their play-for-free games. So the most common business model in the gaming industry right now but at the time we kind of started it off. And now I'm the CEO for a Real Luck Group that operates Luckbox. Luckbox was started in 2018. It had the usual struggles of a startup from the beginning and of course got a little boost by the pandemic and managed to utilize that in a good way and now we find ourselves in a very nice position with full pockets and everything ready to go, basically.
SH: Can you update our investor audience and your Real Luck shareholders on any new company developments, especially in the wake of COVID-19?
TR: Yeah, so I initially started as the Chief Customer Officer in the company and my skill, or my specialty, is to grow revenues and that's why I joined, and I think independently of COVID or not, the company now is in a position where it's kind of changing gears and it's all about revenue growth from now on. I think becoming the CEO, and when we leave the pandemic and all that behind us, we will just focus on growth from now on and, yeah, that's pretty much it.
SH: For our investor audience that might be unfamiliar with online gaming platforms, what are the industry’s overall growth metrics and what do the short & long-term investment opportunities look like?
TR: Yeah, I'm going to try to break it down a little bit. So it seems complicated for someone I assume to look into this. The first thing is that we have the video games industry. So they build video games and some of these video games are competitive, meaning that they have individuals or teams competing against each other in an organized way and that is of course esports. So that's why I'm on one side of things and the industry is absolutely massive. As you mentioned in the beginning, it's a triple-digit billion dollar business and you know, one third of the population in the world like to play video games. On the other side, you have an online gambling it's called i-gaming, we usually use that word, and that is the online sports books and the online casino and so on and that's also a billion dollar business.
So you have these two massive movements and at the same time, you have a lot of people trying to figure out how to monetize this thing that is going on and what we do at Real Luck Group with Luckbox is that we use something that has been proven to monetize things very well in the past, which is gambling. So what we're doing is we're basically offering the possibility for people to bet on video games or the outcome of video games and that's what we do, and it is the best way to monetize this whole massive movement that we're seeing. It's still just beginning. So super exciting.
SH: Can you tell us about Luckbox – your pure play esports betting company?
TR: Yeah. So our ethos is “esports betting done right”. Which means we try to really care for the target audience for esports betting, which is kind of different from the traditional sports betting. We're more focused on the Gen Zs and the Millennials who are used to playing video games, they have grown up playing video games, they watch a lot of video games and we're trying to make an experience that is tailored for them. So that's one way of doing it right and the other way of doing it right, is that we are fully licensed. We follow all the rules and regulations, and we go to great lengths to really take care of our players from a responsibility point of view and so on.
SH: The Canadian House of Commons has recently passed Bill C-218 to put Canada 'on the cusp' of legal sports betting. Can you expand on this bill for our investor audience and how it benefits your company?
TR: Yeah. So in i-gaming or online gambling in general, regulation is absolute key and maybe to the contrary of what everybody thinks, all the companies want to have good regulation, because it opens doors for the companies, and it is much better for the players and of course also it will provide tax income to the country that's providing the regulation. With this Canadian bill, I think it took the second step in the Senate, which is great. Canada is our home market, so to speak and very close to our heart and obviously, we really would like to offer our services to Canadian players, and we are kindly waiting for that regulation to happen and closing it and we are monitoring it very closely.
SH: You’ve recently announced that you’ve been shortlisted for two EGR Marketing & Innovation Awards. This may be news to many investors. Can you unpack the benefits of it?
TR: Yes. Sure. So the EGR awards are like the Oscars in our industry, basically, and last year we won the Rising Star award, which basically put us on the map as the number one company to for in the space. This year we are shortlisted for Innovation in Esports and Most Innovative company, and I think these two nominations, of course, we've already won Rising Star last year, but these two nominations really fit the company, I would say. So, we're super excited about that and the awards are coming up now in June, so we're very excited to see how that goes.
SH: The Company looks set for strong growth in 2021. How are you positioned to expand operations to meet consumer demand?
TR: As I said, we have a great team already in place. The platform we have is great and we have an established plan for how we're going to grow during the year that I implemented already when I started in another role, and it's basically built up of four parts which the first one is agile marketing to grow our player base and the other one is to keep expanding our platform. When I say expanding our platform, it means that we're going to add. In this business, the platform is kind of the glue in the middle, and you need to be able to have lots of providers with different odds and different functionalities connected to it. So the key with the platform is to always have the best ones and that's something that we continuously build on. We're going to have some real exciting announcements on that during the year as well. We’re an esports-focused company, but we're also adding online casino towards the end of the year. So that would be super interesting and online casino that breathes esports, that's kind of a stick out and I think that's going to be amazing and the fourth pillar in our growth strategies is M&A. So we might see some of that during the year as well.
SH: For company shareholders and potential investors, what kind of future development and progress can we expect from the Real Luck Group?
TR: So the main focus for the whole company is to grow revenue and acquire players in a profitable way. I think this is what we are focused on, and this is what should be expected by the shareholders and the new investors as well. As I said, we have a great plan and we are in a great position, and this is growing revenue in this way. This is something that I've done before, so we even know what we should do and as I said in the beginning, we're entering a new phase here where we're kind of, if I use that analogy from gaming, we're kind of leveling up to a new phase where it's all about healthy, steady revenue growth from here.
SH: I have to mention your stock has been on a bit of a roller coaster ride the past 12 months. What can you tell our investor audience regarding the current valuation of your stock and why you think it’s a good buy right now?
TR: Yeah, I agree the stock lives its own life sometimes. I mean, the markets have been tough on everyone, and we benchmark towards our peers and the drop we have experienced is on par with them. So we're not worried about that and reiterating what I just said, like, we are in a position now where we have full pockets and we have the plans, you know, ready and everything is in place. So, we know what we're going to do, and that's what we're going to focus on. We have time, there's no stress at all. Of course we're going to try to make money as fast as possible anyway. It's the share price in itself is something that I cannot directly affect, but the trend that we are going to see from now on is steady, healthy growth and the revenue is going to come as a function of that.
SH: What’s the long-term strategy for the company moving into 2021 and beyond, and what should retail and institutional investors be looking out for?
TR: Yeah, as I said, it's going to be healthy growth during this year. We're finding our ways with the agile marketing and applying the right providers to our platform which there will be announcements for. Maybe sometimes it seems like these additions do not make much of a difference, but I can tell you that they really make a difference. So that's something to look out for. Another thing is absolutely when casino comes it's going to make a huge difference and otherwise, as I said it's the steady growth of course, towards 2022 and in 2022 we are going to accelerate the marketing spend and the revenue growth is going to follow that as well.
SH: Can you tell our audience a little bit about your corporate management and board teams, along with the experience and innovative ideas they bring to the online betting space?
TR: Yes. So we have we have a fantastic board. Drew Green is our chairman. He was entrepreneur of the year, I think, 2018 or something like that and he's on the board for a lot of listed companies and really good at startups and it’s really nice to have him as a chairman. We have Maruf Raza, who is an expert in how to take companies public and how to behave in that sense, which have been of course, super important for us up to this point and we'll be going forward as well and then we have Lloyd Melnick, who is a legend and he worked for Disney and Zynga and PokerStars and his brain is just absolutely amazing. If we look at the management team besides myself, we have Lee Hills who is an expert in regulation and helped over 40 companies to get regulated and get their licenses and so on.
Of course, we're speaking about the Canadian license here, and there are lots of licenses that are interesting for us going forward. So it's super important to have him on the team and I can also mention Metodi who is a legend in his field, which is sports betting. He was part of building up the live sportsbook for Entain back when that was a new thing. So now he's doing new stuff again but for us building up our sports trading team and new, interesting odds for our players.
SH: And finally, Thomas, if there’s anything I’ve overlooked please feel free to elaborate.
TR: No, I think we've pretty much covered it. I can just reiterate to the investors to keep an eye on us. During the year we have a lot of interesting stuff coming and we're looking forward to showing some good numbers going forward and as I said, we have full pockets, and the market cap is where it is. So I think the investors can do their math themselves.
For regular updates, visit
www.realluckgroup.com.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.