Cryptologic responded the the US online gaming market shutdown by simply focussing on its growth elsewhere.  Recent months have seen a flurry of activity at the company, so we spoke with Justin Thouin to find out exactly what's what.

Casino International: Cryptologic has been very busy recently – tell us about it.
Justin Thouin: We have been busy, and it’s part of our new strategy. In the past when the US was open for business with respect to online gaming, Cryptologic was very focused on having a small number of licensees and providing them with the absolute best product, be it casino Poker or business services, in the world, and what we’ve seen is since the US has closed, the European and UK marketplaces have become far more competitive. To grow at the rate our company wants to grow at, which is over 20 per cent revenue in earnings annually, we found we needed to extend the distribution of our products because our current licensees simply aren’t able to grow at that rapid a rate in the more competitive landscape. Our large strategic imperatives are now to extend the distribution of our product. Take for example the partnership with 888.com – we’ve taken some of the world's best games, leveraging the partnership we have with Marvel and casual games like Cupid and Bejewelled and proprietary games, we’ve created Millionaire's Club, that’s created the largest jackpot winner in history at over eight million.
In addition to that has been further new partners for us. We signed up OPoker which we think is going to add significantly to our Poker liquidity or our shared Poker network. We’re confident that they’re going to be a success. There’s been two other new customers that we launched: one is Maharaja Club, and we’re excited about that because we got them on board from one of our competitors. It's a site that targets South East Asian expatriates and they’ve created quite a community, and we’re very pleased to be launching casino Poker with them. Finally KhelGalli, which is our first real Asian licensee and they're going to be targeting the Indian market. They're anticipating receiving a licence from the Indian Government to legally offer online casino Poker into India, until that point they’re going to be marketing to Indians from all over the world.
Also what you’ve seen from us recently is the launch of our most recent game pack, Avenue Games, highlighted by Street Fighter II, which we licensed exclusively from Capcom. The game has done phenomenally so far, Street Fighter II really did change the way video games are played and kind of create the fighting genre within the video game space, and we think we’ve created a great slot; Capcom’s happy, our licensees are ecstatic, the players are loving it. Alongside of that we launched four games that are linked by a four-level jackpot, Cryptologic’s first four-level jackpot, called the Movie Mayhem slot. Players are loving it so far.

CI: With the closure of the US market for online gaming, how hard were you hit as a company?
JT: Extremely hard. We lost 30 per cent of our revenue, and we lost 70 per cent of our earnings so it was a very big adjustment for us but we’ve changed our strategy and we’re adding new licensees to the mix, we’re targeting more geographies and in terms of the US, I think there’s light at the end of the tunnel but we not banking on it. If the US happens that’s kind of our cherry on the top of our sundae, but we’re not expecting it.
I would suggest that in the next five years you’ll see legalised gaming again in the US, in what form you would have the licences in that is anybody’s guess. There’s a lot of pressure on the US government to regulate online gaming and to legislate it so that the US will benefit from legal online gaming taxation.

CI: Has the company's attitude changed with that?
JT: We’ve really focused on our current licensees and not adding anyone else, but we want to move forward while being flexible, being customer-centric and being able to provide the best gaming solutions to target operators' gaming needs so what if they need a full turnkey solution for our marketing, plus our games, customer service, cashier, we can offer any or all of that to customers. We’re being more active as an agency, you’ll see us advertising more, you’re going to see us at shows… Cryptologic is back but we’re not going to change, creating the most innovative and player-loved games in the industry.

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