“Fortunately we are a very large group in Mexico, a benchmark in entertainment, we have had physical casinos for fifteen years and that allowed us to have a fairly detailed knowledge of what players want. Four years ago we decided to launch Strendus.com.mx and nowadays we are in third place in Mexico. Within such a competitive market and with so many companies, we are proud of our work and it shows us all that understanding that we have been getting from customers to deliver an appropriate, healthy and enjoyable product,” Strendus Online Products Manager Eduardo Peláez told Yogonet.
“Mexico is a very important market for online gambling worldwide, in many cases, it is being seen as the entry window to Latin America. It has been regulated for many years and has a lot of competition because there are many national and international players, and that turns it into a market with many benefits for players. So much competition allows highly developed products, which are what the customer is looking for,” described the representative of the company Logrand Entertainment Group, one of the main local operators of physical casinos, and the headquarters of the construction of Strendus: “This physical-online alliance is what allowed us to position ourselves and deliver a high-quality product.”
Peláez also explained what were the key points to maintaining its market share when sports competitions ceased: “We have always believed in a 360 vision of everything we do. Many platforms in Mexico had only sports bets, however, we had everything from the beginning, casino, slots, video bingo. We do not hope to replace the experience of the physical world, which is sensory and social, but which is complemented by the online platform. And that is the experience we decided to create.”
Regarding the rapid growth in terms of digitalization of society, he said: “There is a part of land-based players who had not entered the online market and we saw two reasons: fear of digital platforms, which they find confusing or difficult to handle, and also the suspicion of digital financial transactions. The pandemic causes customers to face these two situations, and many began to have come to realize that it was not so difficult, because they had to do it for other reasons. With financial transactions, the same happened, because they bought medicine and food through digital portals and so that fear was lost.”
“We are planning to open in other Latin American countries. We have Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Argentina on the radar. In some of them, we have to make an agreement with a local company, in others, we are in the process of managing provincial or national licenses,” said Peláez, who also defined Strendus as “a 150% legal company”: “We always make sure of fully following all regulations and jurisdictions in everything that we do. Therefore, we have to have a different methodology for each country we want to enter.”
“It is a region that, although very different, has certain common features. Each country has many subregions where they speak differently, they eat differently, the same is the case between countries. Mexico has many areas that make everything different, that like sports in a different way. The influence that the US has in Mexico is greater than in the rest of the world in relation to this type of entertainment. It is a very demanding market, and I think that few have the advantage that we have, because the local gambling halls are large. We have several floors and more than 1,300 machines, a methodology like Las Vegas, but without hotels. That limits who can have these operations,” the executive compared.
“We always had the eSports proposal. At this moment the industry is in its infancy. It is a very closed community, it does not move large amounts of money as it can in Nordic countries or Asia and it is a market for very young people, where there are minors, something that implies more regulation. Societies also have to change: if the son of a family has the skills to be a footballer, they will support him, and even if he does not leave school, they will try to make sure he is surrounded by that sport. If someone today tells their family, ‘I have the aptitude to play Counter Strike’, they will tell them to stop wasting time, to study, and to do that in their free time. That dynamic is going to change generation after generation. It will happen faster than we think. The average video game player today is 35 years old, and not 16 as we might think. Now, from there to playing and participating in bets, they are two very different things,” he highlighted regarding the novelty in the sports betting market.
“When there were no sports, eSports took on a lot of relevance in bettors who wanted to continue with their entertainment. However, for the most part, the majority do not know video games. Mainly because the games that are most accessible and most popular for eSports need some knowledge and have closed communities with their own language. Once sports returned, these games no longer remained,” concluded Eduardo Peláez.
Watch the full video interview in Spanish below: