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 welcome to CEO insights I'm Marilyn Guzman with investing news.com I'm speaking with Michael moscowitz chair and CEO of Northstar gaming it's great to have you Michael thanks it's great to be here so let's start our conversation with just you providing an overview of nordstar game and your unique value proposition for investors Northstar gaming is uh it's an online Bing company we operate in iig gaming platform called Northstar bets we offer both sports betting and hundreds

of the most popular casino games we lost our service uh back in 2022 when Ontario uh was begin licensing online betting in the province uh we're based in Toronto uh which makes us one of the few local providers competing in a very Dynamic and growing Market uh we also believe that this gives us an important advantage in understanding Canadian betting culture and consumer preferences our business has been growing rapidly I mean we've been seeing triple digit growth and increases in wagering and revenue uh over the past

year and uh and we will continue to grow that Topline business and one of the reasons for the overall successes really are are positioning in the marketplace to your question we've positioned Northstar bets as a very premium offering but also at the intersection point of both sports and entertainment and one of our key differentiators is the unique content that we call Sports insights right so that's a good segue to my next question actually you've recently launched Insight 2.0 Sports

Insight 2.0 what are some of the new features and highlights of this new version I mean yes that's correct we've uh we we're we're building insights 2.0 now and we're really excited about the enhancements that we have planned for this upcoming year I mean let me start with a a kind of a first description of what it is uh Sports insights is content that we create to help improve the betting experience for our customers or our players the centerpiece of sports Insight is the original article that are

written by our own dedicated team of writers that are inhouse they cover things like analysis and upcoming events they cover recommended beding strategies statistics and they generally give helpful hints to uh to betters and players um from the time that we found Northstar gaming we took the view that providing compelling content uh would lead to higher engagement with our customers and we're finding just that um we're planning to launch Insight 2.0 in the first half of 2024 uh with redesigned Sports and

homepages uh live scoreboards and tickers uh live odds trending topics um and just you know a greater tie in in terms of the player journey and the promotional offers that we we provide to them there will also be uh much deeper integration between sports book the actual sports book itself and the content or Sports insights it'll it'll provide much easier access to betting picks and Trends and stats uh for every player we will also have a much more Dynamic always on experience with content with live odds and widgets and

and live box scores and scoreboards and all the social media feeds will be coming into the experience you know something that you know our our our betters want and they need to make them better um and for our casino business which is actually fast is growing very quickly and rapidly and also a big portion of our business we'll have uh more casino and Novelty markets content included um these will be additional offers and announcements and a whole bunch of new game reviews that we'll have as part of this Insight section and

then we will pull that all together in a proprietary API that'll be very scalable so in other words will be able to to hook into and replicate this with other third thirdparty Media Partners or other operators to scale the business you know I I really feel that the the upgrade will give the customers the content that they want in in the way that they want to see it that's really an interesting um concept the you your unique proposition you know leveraging content could you talk about um sort of the the rationale

behind you know make H that decision to make you know content a big focus of of what you're offering yeah I think there's uh there there's really three reasons for that um but at the end of it it's really about enhancing our experience uh and engagement with our players but let me go through those I mean first um kind of as I mentioned it's a key part of our strategy and differentiation uh at Northstar bats and uh and it's part of our positioning uh as a as a premium offering in the

marketplace we are the only online gaming gaming company that integrates this content directly into our sports book so it's completely seamless to our customers uh to read sports insites and place their bets without even switching an app it's it's really a remarkable Journey so and that's first you know second of all it's very popular with a certain segment of our customers I mean if you compare sport Sports insights customers to uh to their regular cohort the sports Insight readers tend to be

much more engage and active on our platform uh we're finding that deposits are up by 40% we see much higher wagering uh much higher number of bets per player for those that are accessing insights It ultimately leads to a much more valuable player uh and will drive Revenue growth longer term because of its stickiness and third uh it it really helps to attract new customers you know and acquisition is a big part of our business uh we have agreements with several media sites including the Toronto Star and various tour star

properties to place our content directly into their sites under the sports betting header um and you know ultimately these articles and this content will help to create awareness around the Northstar bets brand and platform and ultimately Drive traffic to our site which will convert into Revenue ultimately so what's in the pipeline for 2024 any upcoming catalysts oh yeah there's there's lots I mean um you know first of all we're really excited about 2024 um we're delivering very strong

growth uh we see that in 2023 as we build on a lot of the momentum around our brand and uh and our technology um and first and foremost in 2024 we will continue to innovate you know we'll be putting the pieces in place to strengthen our platform our experience uh and that will act as a catalyst for long-term growth we've expanded our addressable Market you know last year we acquired a a company called slapshot media which provides managed services to the Northstar bets.com uh and that's an igaming site that's owned

and operated by the abanaki Council of wak and essentially what that means it will extend the Northstar brand outside of Ontario to the rest of Canada which is two-thirds of the overall market so very excited about that and we continue to strengthen our strategic Partnerships with playtech uh which is both a technology partner and also a major shareholder you know this relationship gives us access to some of the world's best gaming technology and content as well as knowledge and marketing services

to help us drive our business um and I and I would think finally we uh our stock began trading on the OTC QB and it'll make it much easier for us investors to trade in shares and we are increasing our focus on telling our stories to existing and new investors so if you're speaking to an investor today you know and talking about your company why is forstar a compelling investment opportunity at this time what do you say to that yeah I think it's uh it represents really good good value for investors

there's no question you know we we announced preliminary results in 2023 in January which were very encouraging uh and point to the strength of our business and our growth fourth quarter of 2023 was our strongest ever with Revenue expected to double from C for 2022 Wagers were up 90% gross margin was up by 127% and we see that you know incremental expansion of our business at the same time uh we saw a significant decrease in of our cost of acquisition per customer which is a a key attribute

of of uh of the success of the business and we saw much more attractive payback ratios which is uh which is which is earlier than than previously and I and I would suggest that as we grow the Top Line we will continue to realize the operating leverage that we're seeing to date I think just to summarize uh your question um you Northstar gaming is a rapidly growing company in a relatively new sector with lots of Runway ahead of it we have differentiated product uh premium offering and a unique offering

to the Canadian market and focus on the Canadian Market uh we recently expanded our addressable market across Canada opening up a huge opportunity for us to expand our brand we're Nimble enough to introduce new technologies and Innovation to our platform with a very experienced team behind us and we have full support of our committed Partners like playtech which are working behind the scenes to accelerate uh our business long term great well thanks Michael for joining me today and speaking uh talking

about your company's future pleasure Mary I appreciate your time as well and thanks everyone for watching join us again next time for another engaging conversation on CEO insights if you like this video make sure you subscribe to our Channel and turn on notifications so you don't miss future updates and interviews see you next [Music] time for