As seen on Gambling Insider's Company Focus.
In an industry that is as highly competitive as igaming, making your content stand out is no easy task. True invention is often hard to come by, but Relax Gaming's rapid rise to becoming one of the market's leading aggregators and B2B suppliers hasn't occurred by chance, rather, says the company's CEO, Tommi Maijala:"It has been born of creating unique content, on a technically sound integration platform and with business simplicity at its core."
Maijala explained: "Providing our growing number of operator partners with an award-winning portfolio of more than 1,500 online casino games is the tip of a spear that has allowed us to increase our market expansion at a pace largely unmatched and as a result, we're enjoying our 11th year of continued growth and commercial success, despite the challenging past 12 months."
These achievements have been exemplified most recently in the vibrant Romanian market. Relax has gone live with a host of prominent operators, including Magic Jackpot, MaxBet, Platinum Casino and Princess Casino. "We're proud that they have all chosen our platform," said Maijala, "It offers customers the highest quality, varied content via a seamless, one-time integration process that sets us apart from the competition - all delivered at a speed that few can rival." Relax aims to enter the Netherlands, Spain, Italy, Germany and the US markets by the end of 2021, and with sights set so firmly on rapid market expansion it's no wonder its diversity of localised content grows at such speed.
The content diversity alluded to is driven not only by Relax's award-winning suite of proprietary games but also its Powered By Relax and Silver Bullet programmes. Through these, they hand-pick studios to work with based on skill, talent and target market so that its operator partners are provided with a variety of choice from both big-name casino games and local rising stars. "In the past 12 months, we have added the talents of 13 new studios, which makes providing regionalised content for clients across a wide variety of markets much simpler," said the CEO.
He explained that differentiation is at the heart of what Relax seeks to achieve and by providing an avenue for these studios to thrive, the company is able not only to meet that goal but also to help the online casino industry progress. "This also allows us to remain true to our ethos of quality rather than quantity in our in-house game creation. Resisting the pressures of high production targets results in phenomenally successful titles like Money Train 2, Snake Arena and Temple Tumble."
The regular release of Relax's own carefully curated games has continued in earnest this year with the likes of Multiplier Odyssey, Emerald's Infinity Reels and most recently the fourth in its popular Tumble series, Templar Tumble.
"But it isn't just our slots delivering outstanding quality that our partners can rely on" Maijala continued, "our poker and bingo products each consistently break the mould with innovations that challenge the status quo."Relax's poker offering clocked up seven years of success recently, having been involved in over 23 million tournaments and being the recipient of 10 awards.
Of the remarkable awards success Relax has achieved in recent years, Maijala said: "We're humbled to have been selected for such accolades on a regular basis, which are a much-appreciated endorsement of the hard work and dedication our teams invest into our products and services. Last month saw us pick up the Casino Content Supplier crown in the EGR Nordics Awards 2021, which is the culmination of our drive to provide operators in the region with the tailored offering that they require. Part of a wider focus on market growth, our diverse content portfolio enables us to comfortably meet client needs, benefiting not only Relax but our studio partners too."
Such growth across global markets has driven the need for Relax to be able to match its ambition with the necessary scalabilityin its infrastructure, which is why it recently hired an entire new development team in Stockholm, moved into a larger head office in Malta and is recruiting for staff across the board every month, taking its team to well over 200 employees across eight European hubs.
"The ever-increasing number of staff, studio and operator partners and titles in our content library have taken us into the top tier of aggregators and our continued market expansion cements that - each of our successes lay the foundations for the next - but they're built on the key tenets of technical excellence, speed to market and business simplicity," revealed Maijala.
As the rest of the year opens up ahead of us all and a return to some kind of global normality is within reach, Relax is understandably optimistic about its roadmap. "We're excited at the prospect of seeing our many industry friends again and continuing to drive differentiation."
