Exclusive Q&A with Steven Tabone, Commercial Director at Avanti Studios

Avanti Studios has taken the Spanish market by storm thanks to its software featuring digital life-like clones that act as live casino dealers. Its Commercial Director Steven Tabone explains the importance of opening up new areas for revenue, why being localised really matters, and how Avanti’s partners get extra value from its products.

You joined Avanti back in July, so you've had a few months to get stuck in. What's stood out to you as the biggest opportunity for the business?

There are markets that have been underserved and they tend to become that way for various reasons – I’ll mention three. 

The first is regulation, where traditional live casino has historically been limited in supply.

The second is economics; there are players who’ve effectively been priced out because traditional live casino just isn’t feasible to operate at certain stake levels.

The third is localisation, where truly localised live content simply doesn’t exist. Because our games run on a provably fair RNG rather than a camera feed from a physical studio, and without the cost of a physical studio, we can serve all three.

Spain is the clearest example, where operators could essentially offer only roulette in a live format. We’ve now brought blackjack, baccarat and Dragon Tiger to online players for the first time, along with our Avanti Originals and one-tap games.

These are genuinely new and innovative products for the Spanish market, and that model travels.

Coming from the traditional live side, I can see how big the white space is. It’s not about taking a slice of an existing pie. It’s about opening up revenue that operators simply couldn’t access before.

It's a pretty crowded supplier market right now. What do you think makes Avanti stand out, and how can you build on that?

Traditional live casino is built on a generic offering that gets supplied around the world. But we do it differently.

Avanti brings a truly localised offering to each market: dealer language, games, themes, and so much more.

Players still get genuine live, multiplayer action, but without the constraints of physical studios. It also means we can launch new games far faster and keep improving them continuously.

To build on that, we need to keep proving it market by market with strong partners, which is what some of our previously announced deals have been giving us: reach, credibility and real-world performance data.

From there, it's about using our speed to keep shipping content that feels like it was made for each market - because it was.

Now you've had time to get under the skin of the business, have any of your initial priorities changed? Where are you putting your focus?

One thing that's become clear since I joined Avanti is how closely the commercial side and the product side need to work together.

Because we can build and adapt games so quickly, every operator conversation is a chance to learn what players in that market actually want, whether that's a particular game, a theme or a local twist on a classic.

So a big part of my focus now is making sure those insights feed straight back into our roadmap, so we're not just selling what we have but shaping what we build next.

The second shift has been around product launches. A great product only lands if the go-live is done well, so I'm spending more time with operators on how our games are positioned in their lobbies, as well as how they’re promoted and supported in the first few weeks.

The third is building the commercial function for scale. The Malta office gives us a base in the heart of the industry, and growing the team there is a big part of my focus heading into next year.

Operators are under more pressure than ever to see real returns. How is Avanti helping its partners get more value from what you offer?

Returns in live casino are usually squeezed by cost and by sameness, because every operator is running similar tables from the same few suppliers. We tackle both.

Our model doesn't carry the overhead of physical studios and staffing, and it gives operators content they can't get elsewhere.

Branded and localised tables help them differentiate rather than compete on bonuses. In markets like Spain, we're unlocking verticals that weren't available at all, which is incremental revenue, not cannibalisation.

And because we can iterate fast, we can work alongside partners on features and formats based on how their players actually behave.

With Avanti launching in January, you're coming towards the end of your first year of trading. How do you feel things have gone so far, and what are you most excited about as you head into year two?

It's been a remarkable first year. The co-founders Gustaf Hagman and Jonas Delin, and the rest of the team, had already done a huge amount before I arrived.

They brought Avanti out of stealth mode at ICE in January, closed an oversubscribed seed round, and signed a number of strong tier-one deals, setting a really solid foundation for the company.

Since I joined, we've rolled out our first operators, proved the product with real players, opened our Malta office and kept building out the team.

For a business that's still under twelve months old, that's real momentum.

Of course, not everything goes in a straight line. Regulated markets can shift, and you have to adapt quickly, which we've shown we can do.

What excites me about year two is scale. We know the product works and that operators want it. Now it's about taking it into more markets, deepening our existing partnerships and building out the game roadmap.

Next year is when the industry really starts to see what this approach - and Avanti’s products - can do.