One of the main bookmakers focused on eSports, Rivalry is keeping an eye on the Brazilian market and has already filled out the Ministry of Finance form of interest in the federal license.

In an interview with Aposta Legal Brasil during the SBC Summit Rio, the company’s regional director in Brazil, Luis Guilherme Costa, spoke about the brand’s differentials and the Brazilian public.

Focused on reaching a younger audience, Generation Z, the company has responsible gaming as its principle and uses strategies to block the entry of underage players.

In Brazil, the brand invests in communicating with the public on social media and in partnerships with gaming influencers, and expects growth in the coming years. Check out the interview.

Rivalry is one of the few companies that offer eSports betting in Brazil and I saw that you have already expressed interest in the Brazilian license. I would like to understand a little about Rivalry’s plans for our country.

So, we started operations here at the end of 2019 and from the beginning, we had the idea of ​​being a house focused on eSports. That was the website’s approach since the beginning and I had been working with eSports for about fifteen years.

Regarding regulation, yes, we are even working together with one of the lawyers who is there on the Ministry’s side to do this and, as soon as it comes out, we will certainly buy the license, we will operate legally , that is the objective for sure.

What is it like to operate eSports in Brazil? Why is this an attractive market for Rivalry?

We wanted to do things differently, we didn’t want to do more of the same thing that everyone else was doing. Rivalry is a Canadian startup. When I joined, we had thirty employees, and today we have over two hundred.

So, it was a way for us to be able to do what we like, because the owners had already worked with this before too, and it was a way we found to do things differently, to focus on Gen Z, which is a big differentiator for us.

We don’t focus on the same type of customer as Bet365 or EstrelaBet, which is to acquire and serve the person who has always watched football. So, we wanted to first think about a different audience and then how we could talk to this audience and we started to build our team around eSports.

Obviously we have plans to grow and everything, but just as we did things differently for eSports, we have different strategies for traditional sports. I don’t want to invest a lot of money in football, I want to go into basketball, for example, where no one is doing a good job yet.

I don’t want to compete with these giants, it doesn’t make sense for us now, since there is another niche that no one is exploring, where we can spend less money and get better results.

What makes the Brazilian market different for you?

This eSports and GenZ audience is very passionate, so their bar is very high when it comes to content, what they consume, how they consume it.

We are talking to an audience that spends more than twelve hours a day on the internet, whether on their cell phones or computers, or playing with their friends. This is an audience that we have been trying to attract new gamblers to and trying to sell the idea of ​​entertainment.

It’s about bringing these people together and bringing them closer to their favorite influencers. We have the biggest League of Legends influencers working with us, from CSGO.

This is how we managed to establish a connection between the public, the influencers and the company. Today, our brand is the most engaged brand on social media in Brazil, in terms of betting. We have real engagement, with the public joking with us when they win the bet. It has become a kind of competition, between our brand’s persona and our customers. When they win, they joke, and when we win, we say, oh, today we won.

In other countries, there is no such integration. Brazilians are much more passionate, it’s different. The Brazilian public is different from anywhere else in the world, so learning how to speak to this public is what they want. Because Brazilians are bombarded with advertising from betting houses everywhere, so we really need to convey credibility. We don’t want to be just another one.

You talked about sponsorships in football. Do you also work with sponsorships in eSports?

We’ve already done it, and we intend to do it again this year. We’re very strong in League of Legends, but we still have restrictions from Riot [the game’s developer] regarding this, but we’re strengthening our relationship with them and we believe that in the near future we’ll be able to do it.

In CS, we were Fúria’s first betting sponsor, and today they are huge and we have supported their project since the beginning. We have also sponsored 006 in CS, Red Canids, which is very strong in LOL, but we tried to make a deal focusing on CS to be able to attract the lower-end audience.

Working with eSports teams is complicated, because they have a legal reach, but the teams haven’t yet learned how to create content that converts for bookmakers.

Baiano is the biggest LOL streamer in the world and he’s been with us for three years now, and I really like to offer a deal that isn’t just about money. We build everything together and work with their projects.

Your audience is largely made up of Generation Z, as you said, and there are also minors. How does the ban on underage gambling affect your business?

We work very seriously on this with influencers, and I think this is the way forward. Some websites publish a weekly post about responsible gambling, saying that gambling is only for those over 18, but that and nothing else is the same thing.

We have influencers who broadcast on Twitch and always say that minors are not allowed, and that betting is not an extra source of income. But all of this is done in a more fun way. We have a catchphrase that goes like “bet the money you make for booze, not the money you make for bread,” for example, because we have to understand how to talk to our audience.

This should be basic: minors should not be involved in gambling. If you are of legal age, that’s fine. On Twitch, we can’t separate and only speak to audiences over eighteen. We have a lot of minors, especially because we work with LOL, but they come and are blocked.

We do awareness work so that they don’t create an account before they are 18, because if they don’t they will be banned forever. If someone tries to create an account at 16, when they turn 18 they will still be banned, because the regulations require it.

Are you already making adjustments to obtain a Brazilian license?

We are already participating in the first phase of testing with the government API. Once that is done, all the next steps are ready. We already have a company opened in Brazil, and we already have a Brazilian responsible, which is me, in this case. We have Luiz Felipe, who, in my opinion, is the best lawyer to do this today. He has been trying to act as a middleman with the government since the beginning, because there were some absurd things in the regulatory process.

So, there’s this whole discussion of “let’s improve things a little bit here, okay. The government needs money, but so do we, so let’s make a deal that’s good for both of us.”

We are well aware of the entire process and, as I said before, we will definitely be involved as soon as the regulations are released. Because Brazil, for Rivalry, we look at it very fondly, it is one of the company’s largest markets, so we will definitely continue here for many years to come.