In this interview with Inside Gaming Africa’s Mickaella at the ICE London 2022, the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Honore Gaming, Cyril Casanova gives insights about challenges and company’s future plans.
Honoré Gaming offers to regulated iGaming operators a high-performance software, an innovative turnkey platform and customized services for the online iGaming and sports betting industry. Honoré Gaming has a talented team of engineers, researchers and technicians specialized in IT and Big Data. A research office dedicated to innovation and constant technological monitoring allows Honoré Gaming to be at the forefront of technologies developed in the iGaming industry.
Mickaella: Hello, and welcome back to Inside Gaming Africa. Today we’re here with Cyril. He’s from Honore Gaming. So, I’m just gonna allow him to introduce himself.
Cyril Casanova: Hello, I’m Cyril Casanova, CEO and Founder of Honore Gaming. Honore Gaming is a B2B, leading provider in West Africa, especially in French. We are serving 25 countries, and 28 different clients, and enabling more than 3 million betslip a day.
Mickaella: Wow, that’s impressive. That’s really good. So, can you tell us a bit more about your company Honore gaming? And why did you choose Africa?
Cyril Casanova: Especially because Africa, you have many challenges to address and we’ve understood in 2013, when we’ve founded the company that you need to build a platform designed for Africa, and that will meet the challenges of this continent in terms of cost of data, in terms of the number of people that get access to banks. So, you need to integrate local payment solutions, and you need to be local and that’s why we have created two different offices in Africa, especially in Senegal, to be very close to our clients and to understand the challenges and the particularities of this very big continent.
Mickaella: Wow, that’s impressive. That’s great to know. So, have you got any specific dedicated products with your African markets?
Cyril Casanova: Sure, we are very strong on sports betting. So, we are one of the leading betting providers in Africa and with a strong focus in French speaking ones and also racing, we have a very strong partnership with PMU, where we provide PMU with their technology for emerging markets.
Mickaella: That’s amazing. That’s really good to know. So, what are the challenges that you’ve been facing with your markets in Africa.
Cyril Casanova: So, it’s all about the cost of data. So, you need to create some very lightweight applications. You need to integrate all local payment solutions, and you have many local payment solutions to address and on top of that, you need to be local, so to translate your fight with local languages. So, basically, if I need to understand, you need to adapt the solution to the for the, for different African countries, because Africa is not one continent, it’s many, many different countries with all this. Everyone has its own specificity.
Mickaella: That’s really good to know. So, in terms of the future of gaming in Africa, is there anything else you would like to add with Honore gaming?
Cyril Casanova: Yeah, we are now targeting English speaking countries, and where we consider that those countries have the more advanced in terms of regulations, and so many people will enter will from Europe from the US will enter those markets and for all those players, you need to have local adapted solutions for addressing this market. That’s why Honore gaming can be the very good answer for it.
Mickaella: That’s really nice to know. So, Honore gaming, why should operators choose you?
Cyril Casanova: Especially because we are one of the few platforms that has completely adapted the platform to the challenges of Africa. So, we’re all based in Paris, but we are completely African and only focusing on African markets where a lot of players wants to penetrate the US or Europe. We are completely focused on Africa.
Mickaella: That’s really good to know. So, what are the advices maybe that you might want to share or anything else you’d like to share with us?
Cyril Casanova: Yeah, so I think the main mid age for all operators that that would like to tackle those markets would be to choose and the most important choose that those guys will make is the choice of the platform. So, this choice is absolutely crucial and critical for them. So, that’s why it’s absolutely key because it’s probably the number one factor or key factor of success for operators that will launch an operation there.
Mickaella: So, really good advice that. Thank you so much for taking your time to speak to us and hope you enjoy the rest of the show.
