In Episode 18 of Kinectify Conversations, Sean Topchi, Quinton Singleton, and Joseph Martin explore the dynamic evolution of the gaming industry, emphasizing the pivotal role of technological innovation and regulatory compliance. Quinton Singleton shares his journey from working at Deloitte and Lewis and Roca to his entrepreneurial ventures, including founding Betworks. He highlights the significant impact of PASPA's repeal on the expansion of sports betting and the rapid technological advancements that followed. The discussion delves into the challenges of integrating new technologies into a landscape dominated by legacy systems and the importance of regulatory compliance in driving these changes. They also discuss how emerging technologies like KYC, digital payments, and geolocation are transforming the industry.

The conversation further highlights the importance of accelerator programs like Zero Labs, which Quinton co-founded, in supporting startups within the gaming sector. These programs provide essential resources and mentorship to help new ideas flourish. Joseph Martin discusses Kinectify's journey in developing AML software and the critical role of customer and investor support in bringing innovative solutions to market. Both Quinton and Joseph offer valuable advice to aspiring entrepreneurs, emphasizing the need for validation, strategic planning, and maintaining control over their vision. The podcast underscores the industry's future potential, driven by AI, machine learning, and cloud computing, and the necessity of collaboration between startups, established companies, and regulatory bodies to foster responsible innovation.

Click here to listen on Spotify.

Transcript

Sean Topchi: [00:00:00] Welcome to Kinectify Conversations. My name is Sean Topchi, and I'm the Director of Business Development at Kinectify. Our mission is to share the experience, expertise, and insights from gaming industry leaders that comes from years of navigating the complexities and impact of compliance. On this episode, I am joined by special guest:

Quinton Singleton: My name is Quinton Singleton.

Joseph Martin: My name is Joseph Martin. I'm the CEO of Kinectify.

Sean Topchi: Thanks for joining us today and remember to like and subscribe to the podcast. You can also learn more anytime at Kinectify.com. That's K I N E C T I F Y dot com.

Thank you everybody so much for joining. I'm very excited to have Quinton Singleton on our podcast here today. COO of nVenue. Quinton, you have an incredibly storied background here in the industry and we're happy to have you on here for those folks that don't know you. Maybe you can dive into that background for us.

Quinton Singleton: Yeah, sure. Great to be here, Sean, Joseph. A bit of my background is that I'm a Vegas local. So we're a pretty rare breed and in some ways, even more rare than that. We're four generations of families been here and been in the gaming industry for a long time. So as a kid, I grew up hanging out in hotels and casinos and being exposed to the land based environment, given that my family was also involved in the gaming industry.

It was just obviously natural for me to flow right into it. And being in Vegas, this was our predominant industry from a career perspective. I started off and went to business school and came back and spent some time with Deloitte, and then after Deloitte we'd spend some time in accounting and predominantly servicing the gaming industry from land based casinos to suppliers, tribal casinos, everything. All the great people at Deloitte still do.

I eventually felt like expanding my education. I went on to law school and being in the gaming industry, all things are driven by regulatory reasons in some way. And so I thought this would be a great toolbox to add. So I went to UNLV and I did Boyd gaming law there and started Boyd law school.

They're focusing on gaming because that is the preeminent center globally to learn about gaming. And then I spent roughly four years with a law firm called Lewis and Roca. Doing gaming, corporate securities and tax, all business deals mostly. And then eventually I started transitioning back to the business world and went to work for an operator in the early days of digital gaming.

So that period at Lewis and Roka, and then working on the operator and eventually the supplier side, it was like the evolution from land based into digital. We started seeing online poker, we started seeing mobile phones, the early days of geolocation, digitization of payments and KYC. And so being able to see all these things come together, I just have to be at that moment in time, working on it from the legal point of view, and then the operator side, and then eventually the B2B side as well.

And in that last corporate B2B role, I was at a company called NYX Gaming Group. We at the time owned a company that's probably more familiar to everyone called OpenBet, and we were bringing all of that tech from Europe, all the B2B tech platforms and some of the first online gaming platforms, content distribution, sports platforms into the US and then also globally.

We ultimately sold that company to Scientific Games, which formed their SG digital division. And then that company has gone through a couple of iterations of itself as well. After we sold, most of us stuck around for about a year and this was pre PASPA. It was a very entrepreneurial organization and I've been fortunate enough to have been exposed to a lot of environments where it was, consistently trying to come up with new ideas. And a lot of times things fill into my lap inside of companies to launch new businesses, launch new divisions, build new products, go into a new country. And so you have to just figure out these complexities across the gaming industry, regardless of what it was.

And so things that we take probably for granted today, like digital payments, putting an app through the Apple store, getting onto Google play mobile, KYC, all of those things that we do today, if you look back six years ago, a lot of these weren't even in existence at the level they are now.

And so when most of us left to go launch new things, I went and launched my first company as a founder called Betworks, which we eventually sold to Bally's and created Bally's interactive, and that just kicked off this entrepreneurial and kind of investor journey that I've been on for the last four or five years.

So that was kind of like the short, short version there. And then the last four or five years, I've probably been involved with either founding, building or funding. I think I did a count and it's like close to 70, 75 companies.

Sean Topchi: Goodness gracious.

Quinton Singleton: Yeah, it's way too many.

Sean Topchi: I mean it has to have given you such a great perspective on the state of the industry, especially, post PASPA, but this explosion of software, obviously explosion of sports betting and igaming.

So with that lens, if you can [tell] us, how you see a broader state of software in the gaming industry right now, as it stands and where you think it's going.

Quinton Singleton: Well, it's interesting. For a second, going back to PASPA, and we were talking about this briefly earlier, is that one of the linchpins I saw that unlocked the market for innovation around software and also on the investing side and some of the specific VCs in this space, the broader gaming space was PASPA going away.

And it opened up this big window of opportunity for people saying, well, wait a minute, this is going to be huge. And it is huge. And it's going to go fast. And so you saw a lot of companies launching [and] a lot of ideas coming. And ultimately, if we talk about sports specifically, Nevada, way back in the day, forced sports books to develop software systems to track all the sports betting activity.

And that was one of the first sports book systems back in the day called CBS. I think it was. And so I called that out because software is [and] continues to be the linchpin across the broader global gaming industry. And so almost no matter what you want to do, if you want a new product or you want to enter a new market, it almost always starts with software. And five years ago, and even still today, massive legacy systems that in our industry, one of the worst things we could do is ever is go down so losing a dollar of revenue, not being able to do compliance, accounting, reporting, tax.

And so what ends up happening is those systems become solidified, or if you will, just encrusted into the ecosystem. And it also becomes the barrier to do anything new. And anyways, yeah, there really are the linchpins. Whether you're talking about a CMS, a KYC, AML platform, a sports betting platform, an online gaming platform, digital content distribution, payment systems, software is the linchpin and that whole ecosystem has just grown exponentially in the last five, six, seven years...

Listen to the full episode on Spotify.

ABOUT QUINTON SINGLETON

Quinton Singleton is President and COO of nVenue, Inc., a machine-learning and artificial intelligence technology company focused on sports data for media, betting and entertainment.

Singleton is a globally recognized authority in the gaming industry with a diverse background across executive leadership, corporate development, M&A and technology and innovation for public and private companies.

Notable accomplishments as executive and founder/investor include the successful sale of NYX Gaming Group to Scientific Games and Bet.Works to Bally’s Corporation, showcasing his proficiency in driving business growth and achieving successful exits.

In addition to his professional endeavors, Quinton is committed to knowledge sharing and education and contributes back to the industry at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as an Adjunct Faculty on racing, sports, fantasy, and digital gambling/gaming, as a lecturer at International Center for Gaming Regulation and founder of Zero Labs.

ABOUT KINECTIFY

Kinectify is an intelligence and risk management technology company serving gaming operators in the US and Canada. Kinectify's modern AML and Responsible Gaming platform empowers clients to efficiently manage risk with real-time intelligence so they can focus on growing their businesses instead of being bogged down by compliance. In addition, Kinectify's advisory services enhance gaming operators' capacity with industry experts who can design and test programs, meet compliance deadlines, and even provide outsource services for the day-to-day administration of compliance.

To learn more about Kinectify and book a demo, click here.