Inside Booming Games’ Vision For iGaming Growth

Booming Games has been busy expanding its reach, entering new markets, and adapting its games to very different player audiences. But what does that growth look like from inside the company? In an exclusive interview with LCB, COO Dani Paleu talks about the milestones shaping Booming Games, from its proprietary RGS and growing presence in Brazil to localisation, partnerships, and plans for further expansion. He also shares his take on changing player preferences and what the studio is focusing on next. 

• Booming Games has experienced significant growth in recent years, expanding its portfolio, partnerships, and international presence. What have been the biggest milestones in this journey, and what are the key priorities shaping the company's next phase of growth?

The milestones people notice are outputs. The ones that mattered internally were foundations.

The biggest was building our own RGS. Most content studios distribute through someone else's platform, which means someone else owns the integration, the release schedule, and a large part of the operator relationship. Owning ours changed our speed to market, our economics, and what we can offer a partner beyond games.

The second was expanding certified coverage across regulated markets, including Italy, Brazil, Greece, Spain, and Peru. That opened doors to operators who can only work with licensed suppliers, and it forced a level of operational discipline that has made the whole business better.

The third was building genuine internal depth in maths, art, engineering, platform, and compliance rather than a thin coordination layer over outsourcing. We are now 210 people, headquartered in Malta, and we release a new game every week.

The next phase is depth rather than breadth. Deeper penetration in the markets we have already entered, more performance from each release rather than a faster release count, and a platform layer (promotional tools, reporting, integration quality) that makes the partnership valuable well beyond the content itself.

• Brazil has become one of the most important regulated iGaming markets globally. What opportunities does Booming Games see in this market, and how has the company adapted its approach to partnerships and content development to meet local player expectations?

Brazil is the most significant regulated market to open in years, and it is not simply a scale story. It has a large, engaged, and already sophisticated player base, which means expectations were formed before we arrived. You cannot approach it as a blank page.

Our approach has been operator-led. We prioritised depth with partners who genuinely understand Brazilian players, and built commercial models around exclusivity windows and joint campaigns rather than pushing the full catalogue and hoping something lands. On content, Brazil is a first-class input into the roadmap at concept stage, not a localisation pass applied at the end.

Regulation also raised the operational bar, which suits us. We built a dedicated Brazilian certification workflow rather than adapting a European one, because the local documentation and reporting requirements are specific and getting them wrong stalls a launch. That is a cost for every supplier, and a proportionally larger one for anyone without in-house platform capability.

• Player preferences can vary significantly between markets. What elements of localisation, whether themes, mechanics, or engagement strategies, have proven most important when creating experiences for Brazilian audiences?

Localisation is often reduced to translation plus a flag. The elements that actually affect performance are narrower and more technical:

• Maths profile. Format and volatility preferences differ meaningfully by market. A title that performs well in Europe can underperform in Brazil on maths profile alone, with everything else unchanged.
• Theme authenticity. Cultural references work only when they are genuinely native. A superficial nod reads as a foreign studio guessing, and players spot it instantly.
• Device and connectivity reality. Mobile-first, mid-range Android, variable bandwidth. Load time and stability affect retention more than any art decision.
• Language. Brazilian Portuguese throughout the interface and the promotional layer, not European Portuguese.
• Promotional calendar. Campaign mechanics timed to local events consistently outperform generic always-on activity.

• Booming Games has identified South Africa as a key growth market and has emphasised the importance of local partnerships. What have been the biggest lessons learned from operating in the South African market so far?

Four, roughly in order of how much they cost us to learn.

The market is genuinely operator-concentrated. A small number of established brands hold the relationship with the player, so scale comes from the depth of those partnerships rather than the number of them.

Technical realities set the ceiling. Device mix, connectivity, and data cost are real constraints. Optimisation work that would be a nice-to-have elsewhere is a commercial requirement there.

Player behaviour shapes configuration. Stake patterns differ, so bet steps and format selection need deliberate local tuning rather than a global default.

And presence matters more than any individual title. Being available in local hours, responding quickly when an operator has an issue, and treating the account as a partnership rather than a distribution channel has been worth more to us than any single release.

• As Booming Games continues expanding in South Africa, how does the company balance leveraging successful global game concepts while ensuring content feels relevant to the local audience?

We think of it as a proven core with a local surface.

The maths model, the mechanic, and the underlying engine are where global learning is reused, because a validated mechanic is an asset and reinventing it is expensive risk. Theme, art direction, sound, language, and the promotional wrapper are where local relevance is earned.

In practice, we take a mechanic with a strong track record, Hold and Win being the obvious example, and build around themes and cultural cues that resonate locally, with configuration tuned to local stake behaviour.

The discipline is knowing which layer you are changing. The surface is fast and relatively inexpensive to adapt. The maths is slow, costly, and requires recertification. Respecting that boundary is what allows us to be locally relevant without fragmenting the roadmap.

• The partnership with Ronaldinho has become one of Booming Games' most recognisable collaborations. What made him the right fit for the brand, and what opportunities has this partnership created from a product and player engagement perspective?

The fit is genuine rather than transactional. He carries real recognition in the markets central to our growth, and his brand is associated with flair and enjoyment rather than pure competitive edge. That maps closely to how we want our games to feel.

Commercially it has done three things. It has opened operator conversations that would otherwise have taken longer, because a recognisable partnership gives an operator a reason to give a title premium positioning. It has given our account teams a campaign asset that operators can build real activity around, rather than another entry in a content list. And it raised our own production standard, because a branded title carries reputational weight for both parties.

The lesson we took from it: recognition earns the first session. The game has to earn the second.

• Branded games are becoming increasingly popular across the iGaming industry. How does Booming Games ensure that a branded title delivers a strong gaming experience while also maximising the value of the brand partnership?

Our rule is straightforward. The game has to stand up as a game with the brand removed. If it does not, the brand is decorating a weak product.

That means the maths model and the core mechanic are designed and validated on their own merits first. Brand integration then happens where it genuinely adds value: theme, characters, audio, symbol design, and the bonus round, where recognition creates real anticipation.

The second half is commercial discipline. A branded title works when the licence cost, the customisation effort, and the certification overhead are matched by promotional support from both the brand and the operator. In our experience the partnerships that succeed are the ones where everyone has a plan for the launch, not just for the build.

• Looking at recent releases, successful mechanics such as Hold and Win and recognisable themes have become part of the portfolio. How does Booming Games decide when to expand on proven concepts and when to take creative risks with something completely new?

We release a game every week, so this is a portfolio decision rather than a philosophical one. At that cadence you cannot treat every title as an experiment, and you cannot treat none of them as one either.

Most of the roadmap builds on validated mechanics and recognisable theme families, because operators plan their lobbies around predictability and players navigate by familiarity. With a proven format such as Hold and Win, the risk sits in execution rather than in whether players will understand what they are looking at.

A protected part of the roadmap is reserved for genuinely new concepts. It has to be ring-fenced, because otherwise short-term pressure consumes it every quarter. The weekly cadence is what makes those bets affordable: the proven titles carry the commercial load, which buys the room to try things that might not work.

The inputs are reasonably objective: performance data across our own portfolio and the wider market, demand signals from our account teams, and how saturated a market's competitive set already is. When a mechanic is everywhere and undifferentiated, the conservative choice stops being the safe one. That is usually the moment to take the risk.

• Beyond game content, Booming Games also provides promotional tools such as tournaments, leaderboards, and personalised bonuses. How have these engagement features evolved, and what role do they play in helping operators create stronger player experiences?

Promotional tooling has moved from a supplier add-on to a core part of the product, and that shift is permanent.

It went through three stages for us. First, free rounds as a fairly blunt acquisition tool. Second, in-game campaign mechanics such as prize drops and tournaments, which create shared moments across a player base rather than isolated rewards. Third, and where we are now, targeting and control: operators run mechanics on defined segments, in defined windows, with clear cost ceilings and real-time visibility of what is being spent.

That last point is what operators actually buy. A promotional tool without budget controls and reporting is a liability to a risk function, however attractive it looks to a marketing one. The same architecture that gives an operator cost control also gives them the ability to exclude segments and apply their own player protection rules, which is not optional in regulated markets and should not be presented as a premium feature.

Content gets a player into a game. The engagement layer, used responsibly, is often what differentiates one operator's lobby from another running largely the same titles.

• Booming Games places strong emphasis on ownership, collaboration, and continuous improvement. How does that culture help the company maintain creativity and momentum while scaling internationally?

Scaling internationally tends to erode the two things that made a studio good in the first place: speed and ownership. Our defence is practical rather than aspirational.

Ownership means a named person is accountable for an outcome, not a committee for a process, and that the person closest to the work makes the call. In a regulated business there is a constant pull toward escalating every decision upward, and that is how organisations slow down without noticing.

Collaboration matters because our releases genuinely require it. A single title touches maths, art, engineering, compliance, certification, and account management. Run as separate departments with handovers, you get delay and finger-pointing. Run as one delivery chain, you get predictability, which at a weekly release cadence is not optional.

Continuous improvement is the least glamorous and the most valuable: honest post-release reviews, real performance data, and a willingness to stop things that are not working. Creativity survives scale when people believe an idea will actually get built and fairly assessed, rather than quietly absorbed into process.