Regulated iGaming Explained: St8's Strategy for UK, Ontario & Alberta | David Fall | St8

We want to challenge them. Why can't we, give them competition?

Regulations are getting tighter. When it comes to State, we see the opposite. What would you say makes State different that brings clients to you?

So, we trying to to give a really personalized experience for anyone. We want to be responsive. We want to be proactive, especially when it comes to

all almost say the same. We have a great product. We have a great tech. We know our life

low profile and just do our thing.

What are the current challenges that you're seeing from operators' perspective?

We're little underdogs, so like let's give it a fight. Like we're ready to We try to be very transparent and honest.

Yo, we are here at IGB Live in London. iGaming Real Talk is excited to announce the next edition of Real Road Show 2026. We're very excited to bring the insights from the expo floor. We spoke to leaders and experts from companies like Altenar, State, Endorphina, SoftSwiss, My Gaming License, Tech Wheel even bet gaming, Pay Play, as well as many more. This series is brought to you by State, a single API game aggregator for regulated markets.

Hello and welcome back to another episode of iGaming Real Talk. I'm here with David from State. Is that State? S T A T? I always try to pronounce it and I don't know how to do it.

State.

State.

S T A T. State. What do we say? Yeah, State. State of mind, state of art, state of everything. Just State. Yeah. That's the name.

And that's quite interesting because I I've heard the brand name from a quite a lot of partners, even even in previous company that I was working for. No one ever mentioned it as state.

That's because before our lovely marketing lady joined, we didn't do a lot of stuff, right? So, uh you can blame me, you can have some fun, but we never really like exposed ourselves out there. I mean, we were quite small, word-of-mouth kind of guys, right? So,

Yeah.

everyone just assumes state was STA. Fair enough.

Mhm.

Um and now that the the lovely marketing behind the camera uh is here,

She's in charge

starts of correcting us. So, everyone should be saying state, not STA. Hopefully, in the next year, everyone will know it as state.

That's great to know. Probably, this video will will make sure that it's going to be the state.

Yeah, we want the state state state.

State of what?

State of mind, state of heart, state of state of David, state of everything, right? So,

Okay. Okay.

That's how it is, yeah.

I like the energy that you're bringing to this conversation because it's all about the energy in these shows.

I love it. Listen, I can I can talk to anyone that's walking by. I can talk to I love it. I love it. From a safety thing, I like just smiling and having a good time, you know? Never hurts.

That's great. And you know what? There's a lot of aggregators in the market.

Yeah.

And state has entered a few years ago.

Correct.

Compared to other um bigger aggregators, it's still very new in the market.

Yeah.

All right. So, what would you say makes state different that brings clients to you?

Look, it's a very good question, right? So, uh without giving you the sales pitch and all this lovely It's just a bit more of a personal experience. Mhm. So, we try to really become like a tailor to what the individual. We want to be very uh I wouldn't say boutique. Like a You can have like a great big hotel and you have like a nice boutique hotel that's a bit smaller. Yeah, it's this type of thing, right?

So, we're trying to to give a really personalized experience for anyone, no matter size, like from the a very small tier three to like a giant sale. We try and keep everyone fairly treated. We want to be responsive, we want to be proactive. Um So, that's I think that's probably the biggest separation. I mean, everyone is you know, every aggregate is doing the same thing. I'm just aggregating, right? Yeah, we try to to to really like be personal, right?

We want to make sure they're friends and stuff like this, right? So, I'm not becoming friends with them to get work done. I like I actually want to become friends with these individuals, right? So, I think that's probably our biggest difference. And again, the more boring stuff is technical stuff, right? So,

Yeah. Nobody will. But, that's almost the same with everyone. Like, whoever I speak to, especially when it comes to providers, they all almost say the same, which is we have a great product, we have a great tech, and we have, you know. So, essentially the box is the same.

Yeah. It's the It is, right? It depends on how you look at it or whatever you want to do, right? So, we we know our lane, we're doing very good at it. So, people really recommend us and then work. So, like it's just how we do it, right? So, we're very proud to talk about what we're doing and how we're doing all these things. So, generally speaking, we keep low profile and we just do our thing.

Well, low profile low profile before, and now it's starting to to ramp up a little more.

Okay. That's good to know. And if we look at the markets in general, regulations are getting tighter in many regions as we see. And because of that, we see that a lot of companies move away from those markets, so to say. But, when it comes to state, we see the opposite.

Yeah.

Wherein you're trying to focus and double down more on the regulated markets because I've seen the news recently, also with the partnership with Peter & Sons, Games Global, and a few others. A lot of partnership announcements I've seen on LinkedIn recently. You're trying to focus more on UK, Ontario markets and trying to go towards regulated markets. So, what's the intention strategy behind it?

To be very like simple and like straight to the point. It's just um a lot of aggregators in the regulated markets. Again, no disrespect, amazing people. They are old. I mean, it's just a fact. They're They're They're old aggregators, right? They've been like 10, 15, 20 years, right? So

They have their limits of what they can do and these sort of things, right? So we want to challenge, right? So myself or mainly Vlad, our owner, really wants to to like challenge status quo, right? He wants to challenge the big guys, right? So

Uh why are they there?

That's the word in there, right? So they have clients, so like why can't we like, you know, join them? Why can't we give them competition? Why can't we make them, you know, want to to work a little bit more aggressive, right? So Um that's the focus. It's It's just It's just regulated. It's nicer. It's uh it's a hard challenge, like you said. A lot of people leave. A lot of people A lot of people will still join regulated again. It will still be there.

That operators will still want to to join the regulated market. And we want to be there. We want to say, "Okay, like Yeah, you have your big giants, but, you know, we're little underdogs, so like let's give it a fight. Like we're ready to to have some fun and show what we can do in these things, right? So Okay. And and especially when you see these regulated markets, UK, Sweden, Ontario, what what are the current challenges that you're seeing from operators' perspective?

Well, a lot of things, right? So uh I think the biggest thing is just bureaucracy and these sort of these sort of things and sometimes technical as well. We have some of our operators that have previous aggregators or previous platforms etc. like this.

Yeah.

And they've struggled from a technical point or from a legal perspective as well, right? Sometimes they're slow getting

And does state help them in in advising or giving them the necessary guidance needed in those markets?

So so obviously we can't like advise them 100% right. We do our thing. Um but we we have like like I told you in the beginning like we want to work with them and we'll sure that if they need any help or recommendations or who to speak to. We're more than happy to say to them, you know, we spoke to these guys, that's how we did our thing. We did this route or that route and it worked very well or that didn't work.

So, it's about telling them about how we did things and maybe it helps and maybe it doesn't, right? So, again, giving a nice personal experience to them to be able to like trust like trust is very important thing. So, we try to be very transparent and honest and help and then again it's the trust and again it's the uh the nicely, right? So, they want us to they want to be working with they want to work with us.

And uh how many operators do you have live at the moment?

Oh, it's all right. I can't remember. But, a good amount. We have a good amount of

Can we say more than like 200?

Uh I don't know. I don't know. Oh, we have around uh we have it's hard because we have uh several in the UK, several in Ontario, in Romania, and in Nigeria. So, we have a lot. But, I don't know. I can't tell you exactly how many we have. A very good number, let's say.

Okay. We do good. Okay, that's good. That's good. And and I also see uh recently I saw the news that, you know, you you've got the pre-approval for Alberta.

Yeah.

So, can we talk a little bit about that and what's the strategy for that region?

Sure. So, we have a very nice partner um that works in Ontario as well and they are like, "Listen, we're going to Alberta. Uh we need someone." And we said, "Listen, speak no more. Uh we are here. So, we applied for everything for Alberta. We got the pre-approval. Fingers crossed uh the approval comes very soon. But, yeah, we want to again there's not many aggregators in uh Alberta that will be ready and and live, right? So, we're wanting to be like there.

We just want to say, "Listen, we're there, you know? We have a chance." So, that's why we did it. But, mainly we are going with our clients, right? So, if our client says to me tomorrow, uh "By the way, I'm uh going for Brazilian license, you know?" Yeah. If it makes sense and it works, then, you know? We want to apply for the Brazilian license, right? So, everything obviously comes hand in hand.

Um, but we're super flexible with what we want to do and how we work and stuff like that.

Okay, that's great. And uh when it comes to the plans for 2026 second half, what are we looking at?

We'll provide We have a lot of providers, so more and more and more providers. Yeah, hopefully more regulated markets and hopefully a lot more regulated clients that we want to to We are speaking to a lot. Some say no, which is fine. Some say maybe and then a few hopefully will say soon, very very soon. And then yeah, we'll be happy to to announce it, but the goal is UK, Ontario, Alberta, like to grind these out and uh let people know that we're there and just have fun.

Right? That's what we want to do. We smile, right? So, but yeah, that's the main things for us. It's just more regulation.

Yeah, I mean, after all, we are in entertainment industry. We should have fun and and it's essential to everything that we do. Otherwise, we can't do it for a long time, you know?

Could you imagine being on a pharmaceutical business and coming to a show and everyone's very polite? Fair enough for them, but for me, this is Yeah, not for me. I want to have fun. I want to have a beer, cold beer, and uh just enjoy people's company and nice smiles, all right? So, that's what we like.

Well, thank you so much, David, for coming on board and uh sharing uh your thoughts, insights, as well as plans for State. And uh I'm going to I'm going to start telling everyone that this is State.

There you go. And now, hopefully I'm going to write in all the comments State. I'm going to make a Google definition for it so I can just copy paste the link to everyone. So, um no, but I really appreciate uh the time that you had uh and giving me time. We do appreciate it. And from State, we really appreciate it. So, thank you very much.

So, that's it, guys. Uh thank you for watching. Uh do let us know your thoughts in the comments below and I will see you on the next one. Thank you for watching.