About this app
What is Steamrunners?
Peter Kesitilwe, CEO of the AiA, said the industry’s growth must be matched by a stronger focus on player protection, highlighting the need for greater collaboration between regulators and operators.
“As Africa’s gambling industry continues to grow, player protection must grow with it,” he said. “Africa Safer Gambling Week brings regulators and industry together around a shared commitment to safer gambling and stronger consumer protection.
“We fully support consumers having the tools and information they need to gamble responsibly, this week, like every week, is about ensuring our customers’ safety.”
What is Steamrunners?
U.S. Patent No. 12,406,284, which lists Commerce Secretary and former Cantor CEO Howard Lutnick as its primary inventor, covers geolocation technology commonly used in sports betting.
Geolocation services, which are typically purchased through third-party vendors, are used by sportsbook operators to ensure that their clients are placing wagers from jurisdictions in which sports wagering is legal.
“During prosecution, the Examiner did not apply the material prior art or straightforward combinations presented here, which render every challenged claim obvious,” according to a DraftKings filing with the patent office.
How to play Steamrunners
For Ramiro Atucha, founder and CEO of Atucha Strategic Advisory, whether international operators can press home their scalable advantages will depend on how seriously they take localisation.
“When we talk about localisation, we’re not talking about the language or doing a game about Machu Picchu,” he tells iGB. “We’re talking about taking the effort to understand what the history of those players is, what they’re used to.
“I always found it funny when Colombia was starting, operators were saying ‘players here do not like slots’, as if they have a different DNA. Five years later, they would say, ‘well, they do like slots, but simple slots’. And five years later, they were playing all the usual [slots]. It’s not that they didn’t like slots.
