WHITE LABEL BUSINESS WORKS FOR ST MINVER
6 April 2007
96 clients now aboard the Gibraltar express
The Gibraltar based white label provider St Minver
received some solid business publicity this week in an
article that appeared in the UK newspaper The
Independent under the title "Producing 'white-label'
games for major websites is proving highly profitable
for St Minver."
The article paints a rosy picture of the pan-European,
multi-currency business that operates online gaming and
gambling for 96 partners including household names such
as Yahoo! Games, Telefonica, lastminute.com and Virgin
Games. Managing director Leigh Nissim is quoted at
length as he describes the full third party service that
his company provides to skins with games that carry the
brand identity of the client.
"The customer actually deposits their cash and plays the
games with St Minver, but it's all via the host brand,"
says Nissim. "We also look after issues like fraud,
security, customer service, financial risk, marketing,
payouts and chat management."
It is this potential for an effortless partnership on
behalf of the host brand that Nissim believes has
enabled St Minver to grow rapidly as a business since
its origins in 2003, and he reveals that the company now
has 110 employees and made GBP1.7 million in profits
last year.
Another major factor contributing to the firm's success
is that St Minver pools players for the various brands
it works with from right across Europe, says Nissim.
"Pooling - more commonly known as liquidity in gaming -
is a very important concept because the higher the
volume of players that you have, the more players you
attract."
St Minver was formed in September 2003. "Our chairman
Gary Shaw had a technology background and could see the
potential of internet casinos," explains Nissim. "So he
joined Victor Chandler to deliver white-label deals that
weren't a million miles away from what we now deliver.
But with Victor Chandler, it was never the core of their
business, so Gary decided to set something up on his own
and he bought out that business with another investor
who has an interest in high technology companies."
At the same time, St Minver entered into an exclusive
agreement with Boss Media, a listed and well established
Swedish gaming software developer, to operate the poker
network.
"As a company, we have a policy not to develop games
ourselves because we believe the skill-set for operating
games and writing them are very different," says Nissim,
who adds that as such they use different software
developers for each aspect of their gaming portfolio.
The biggest challenge was getting the gaming licence.
"These aren't easy things to get, but we managed to get
one of only 14 licences in Gibraltar. This was essential
to getting decent banking which in turn is essential to
getting customers." By January 2004, St Minver was
running online gaming and gambling for the likes of
lastminute.com, while also growing Gala casinos, Gala
bingo and poker.
It hasn't all been plain sailing. Bearing in mind that a
lot of the technology in place at that stage in St
Minver's development was poor and new, it was a
stressful year, Nissim admits. "Sometimes, it all fell
down and hundreds of people would be left screaming
because they were in the middle of a game. But you iron
these things out by virtue of experience."
By 2005, St Minver was building up its portfolio of
branded customers and it also proceeded to build a
pan-European bingo network. "It was that year when we
started to spread our wings into Europe and by the
following year, we'd got into areas such as Sweden and
Russia," says Nissim.
St Minver's future goal is to widen its games portfolio
further by introducing black jack tournaments and of
course, to get more big brands on board. "We are also
looking to stretch our geographical reach to areas such
as Latin America," says Nissim.
Online Casino News courtesy of InfoPowa
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