Interviews
Exclusive Q&A with Munly Leong, Co-founder of Balance Gaming Network
Let’s begin with your own story. What is the story of Balance Gaming? How was the company founded?
The company was founded when Munly Leong (CEO) and Goodrich Johnson were approached by an esports organization that had floundered for several years and despite their history and money raises and hadn’t so much as put on one event or even had a casual community. This led Munly to look into the current state of esports which he had never been interested in and saw the waste and poor execution that had a common root cause i.e. the people that had access to or ability to raise funding for esports often had nothing to do with gaming and were clueless about it. Super League Gaming was a particularly egregious example where the only reason that raise even happened was that CEO had worked on Sand Hill Rd prior and game from an Oil & Gas background, what the hell is she doing in esports? They recently lost $14m on $1m revenue. We founded Balance at least to take a stab at an organization that would be led and run with gamers at the core with Munly being in a unique position of both having relationships with and an understanding of external capital unlike the average gamer or even game developer. The name Balance comes from us struggling to come up with a name for the niche we had chosen which was to cater for the other 90% of the market and gaming revenue in reality that ISN’T esports from not having enough time for it and Munly referenced an one man indie developer’s name Imba Games (common Russian/CIS region term relating to game imbalance) that he had briefly known at one point, lamenting that it was a great name wasted on something that didn’t have the potential for it and Godric suggested “What about Balance?” with the potential to allude to LAN’s as well if we ever started doing those and there really hasn’t been a name that fit since.
How does it work?
Essentially a bit unique, we started off validating the concept and bringing in early revenue via just a discord and preselling the concept along with an early partnership with Skyworth (largest TV manufacturer in China) who were also launching a VR headset at to both prove we could build and grow a grassroots gaming community first and also monetize it and validate charging for the concept. Most of this happened even by month two. We’ve now taken what was a small community fighting game event intended “for teh lulz” and are building it up with sponsors, streaming support with an invitational that is intended to potentially be small scale, interactive version of EVO that was recently cancelled. More on this later We’re working backwards actually. We’re game developers at heart and are really NOT an esports company. This is being done as a fundraiser primarily as a backup plan / substitute for angel investment post Covid. Essentially our business is to start backwards compared to a typical game developer being community first, community is really at the core. From there we start with merch sales, selling events and sponsorships and are about to offer our own game / bundle deals in the near term along with a new category we still plan on pioneering called Gamer Travel (Covid was great timing huh
Our readers would like to know more about Balance Gaming. Could you elaborate the concept since it is quite unique?
Yeah. It is quite unique where even for gamers. Essentially the concept starts from both a base and the specific type of gamer we are targeting. Specifically gamers who have been able to grow up and are now struggling from a time management standpoint of not having enough time to play, or not getting enough out of their playtime when they do have it rather than spending too much time to play from the standpoint of gaming addiction which is a common assumption with us. We start from a base that gaming is geneeerrraaaaaaally Many look down even on themselves as gamers because of long time history and stigma of the activity when we were kids or younger. Even people with great businesses or solid tech backgrounds themselves often cannot make the immediate mental jump that there may be others who fit the bill and if we just reframe our thinking and rid ourselves of these starting assumptions, we may find that the peer groups we have around gaming are more valuable than many of us are assuming Recently we’ve launched a public alpha of our members site and even some of our more interesting / useful members have only gone so far as to fill out just gamer profiles while not sharing their skills, businesses etc yet and it’s not all a privacy concern either but many either underrate themselves or don’t currently live a life where being known for particular things brings in opportunities for them. I’ll list some examples here where it has happened, but these are folks that are already active in terms of networking ,professional groups and are already pre-disposed to it. I’ll share some examples below and the last being myself. What are the ways an individual gamer will benefit from joining your platform?
Aside from the networking opportunities once we scale further (or even now), we’ll have things like courses, partnerships and hell even gigs down the line in addition to more typical gaming giveaways, discounts and bundles. Instead of only selling this stuff, we’ll tie it to gaming and perhaps networking activity too with the overall theme that the gaming people would do naturally anyway would pay off in real life in ways other than money. At the very base level, we hope that this will be the most “productive” place for anyone to spend their gaming time as getting to know many of us may also open doors outside of gaming for you or at least give you a resource to tap in a lot of things outside of gaming, an analogy to things like country clubs, cigar clubs where you’re more like to meet either independently wealthy or at least time free and lifestyle designer types that one can meet through aviation we hope we end up being a similar space like that but on a broader larger scale too. It’ll be the only place in the world maybe where you can play video games where we also encourage you to ask for intros or open them yourself For “Pros vs Joes” we’re currently offering FREE ENTRY for Members, Financial Services industry (e.g. fintech, crypto, real estate, traders, brokers) , startup founders and game developers and the same/similar benefits package that players get are also available for event viewers that meet this criteria. Startup founders and game developers are just love for us
We also have something that both your better/casino audience as well as crypto guys would want to look at. One of our partners / sponsors is Gold Rush Token / Clean Mining. We’ll be offering a chance to buy CLEAN gold (more on this later) at a double digit discount exclusive to Balance, direct from some of the oldest and historically proven mines in Western Australia. That’s nothing terribly new and there are other tokens that have done it. Those coming from a financial services background will be familiar with the concept of due diligence, things like KYC (Know your Customer) and be a bit better equipped to both perform it for an opportunity like this and ultimately potentially buy-in as well. However, another layer that we’ll offer FREEBIES at a later date on is a world-first tokenization of actual gold ORE. Essentially this will be gold prospecting in a separate video game/digital form and can dramatically lower the cost of entry into the gold market. For those who don’t know, gold actually comes from gold ore which has to be processed and refined which ultimately means that only a fraction of gold can come from overall gold ore. The percent amount can between 10 to 95% before processing and so yes, someone could get very lucky but understandably many others outside of your readership here may not like to gamble. Gamblers or not however, we can offer some of these ore tokens essentially for free as both participants and viewers of our upcoming “Pros vs Joes” fighting game event that was recently postponed until both we and our partners got things more ready. We can now say that we’ll start things off officially by Sep 12th at the latest with official entry deadline by Sep 5th at the latest with trial runs starting as early as this week of the 26th. Depending on how things go and speed of re-registration we may go even earlier but this is so we don’t have to postpone again.
I should mention that not only is the ore special but the gold as well. Those that take advantage of the gold discount will also be pioneers in helping to establish a new category of gold in the global market that isn’t processed/purified via the traditional method of cyanide and mercury leaving no environmental impact that may take decades if not longer to biodegrade, hence CLEAN gold. While the mines themselves old and proven with deeper reserves still left to unlock, the process itself is new and was created by the Australian CSIRO, something like a more generally academic version of NASA that among other things, helped invent Wi-Fi. Regardless of whether anyone in our community pays anything more than an entry fee or not, through gaming, our players will have a chance in both playing a small role in the transformation of gold mining from something that is expensive and hazardous into something that is sustainable and environmentally friendly.
More info on CSIRO and Clean Mining How has been the customer response so far? Could you offer some year on year statistics?
What’s really interesting is that when we started out within the first month or two we had more paid members than free ones on concept alone. 46% conversion rate. By paid members meaning we asked people to pay $10 as a one off to validate that this is something we would pay for once we both had a system to offer digital codes in an automated or at least reliable fashion and enough value lined up where we felt we were ready to start charging monthly. Since when we’ve realized that we needed to make this tier optional as a network only has as much value as it’s members and we are still far from having an interesting enough critical mass yet. We’re not even one year old yet but in the last 2-3 months our Discord community has grown from 100 to 150 ish members now that we have someone who can spend time on it, Oliver/Sundeath who was formerly director level at Razer Europe. A big downside that hampers our growth is that we’re not something that people normally think to search for so doing media, offers and other things that can help get us exposure but we haven’t figured out or own organic traffic yet so growth only happens when we can work on it. Has the recent lock down had any effect on Balance Gaming’s growth? Could your offer details?
Yeah actually our first major growth drive that I headed up brought in many of our first 100 users, lol. That happened a month into the pandemic around Epic’s free release of WWZ. Unfortunately it was both a pretty short game content wise and people really focused on doing nothing but gaming that initial month of lockdowns. No one wanted to hear about “Balancing” and once they were done, many moved on. We did have an interesting story even ahead of time back then where when I was able to play, I encouraged two regulars at the time to talk about their lives and our mutual ASEAN region and those two ended up both doing client projects together and playing other free games together as well. One was a graphic designer and another was a music producer/student. At the time we didn’t have enough of us engaging people so eventually they left since they were largely only playing with each other by that point. Lesson learned not just for Balance and in life for me that I just need to ride waves while they are around instead of what I actually during that period which was working on some contract gamedev work at the time or building the Balance business while everyone else was gaming and would have preferred if I’d either led things or at least joined them for it.
What are the more popular games and tournaments on your platform? Could you describe the games a bit?
Our most popular is Rainbow 6 Siege and that’s a game that should be well known to you guys since it’s gone from underdog cult game to having one of t he better prize pools in eSports with strong Ubisoft support in recent years. Rainbow 6 is a series that is based on terrorist/counterterrorism originally that prided itself on realism being the first “one shot and you get killed usually” game on the market. I can still remember the LAN party where I played the original game in the series for the first time, it was quite refreshing and hilarious compared to the run and gun shooters like Doom and Quake of the day. These days the game is more similar to LoL or DOTA that is based around Heroes having different powers and abilities, some of which are deliberately designed to be counterpicks. They are perpetually “training”/fighting each other given the multiplayer only PVP context and there are generic terrorists only as AI NPC’s to beat on in generic It used to be World War Z as I mentioned which is a co-op class based zombie killing gaming that’s spiritual sequel to Left 4 Dead 2 that I actually like a lot more than it’s original inspiration and in addition to that we have some fighting game players i.e. Street Fighter, Tekken etc but that’s almost a niche within itself in gaming these days that doesnt play other stuff or interact with the broader gaming community. We’re a bit sad about this and even within fighting games themselves, the competitive level has gotten to the point where people not only just focus on one game, but even just on training one particular character and mastering all the various matchups instead. This means that they dont even play the rest of the genre or even necessarily the rest of the characters in the game! This overcompetitiveness isnt necessarily good for the fighting game industry if they focus purely on tournament type players. Happy Medicine (our resident fighting game pro, former CPT/Capcom cup, world class Bison main) and I talk about this separately in this video here – g66FBCzv_mg . We’re still done with World War Z btw, despite how the whole game can be beat in less than 4-5 hours currently and a bit more if you are doing horde mode as well, if you’re deliberately going to slow-play it and make it last, please come and join us! We’re the place for that lol.
Tell us more about the platform and gaming partners of Balance? For our “platform”, we have a few key pillars. The first is the always free Discord community where people can only just join as regular gamer and that’s fine. The next level is the membership site which is intended for people to try and look up / surface people that should try to get to know on Discord for either gaming or things outside of gaming. Maybe find out that someone you’ve been gaming with all along can also be a collaborator of some kind in real life too. We also haev an ecom store for all kinds of stuff i.e. offering our own game codes and digital goodies for sale , physical products like geek toys including “gamereats” where we’ll start with snacks and more. Lastly we want to offer “gamer travel” again as soon as we can, starting out with introducing the concept of geo-arbitrage to gamers that’s already well known to location independent and digital nomad types but is probably brand new to gamers. Essentially this means save money on gaming time (plus get more time) in a cheap locale but we can expand this to travel to places that are significant to gaming history as well given a lot of us have deep knowledge and connections with the industry. This is all going somewhere and your next question will naturally segue into that Finally, how do you see the future developing? Are there going to be any immediate developments in Balance Gaming in the near future?
Yeah we have some angel money hopefully finally coming in within the month and from that we can actually offer some more benefits that hopefully help pull in more users as well and pay for the help in community building Ultimately in the LONG TERM future, despite how all this is already quite the going concern business-wise, the whole goal is to use this cashflow to then fund game development. Both internal and external third party to us. Game development is the unique DNA that I bring to Balance personally and I’m sure you guys know especially looking at companies like Tencent how valuable things can be when you have your own IP to sell and we’ve already learned the hard way that frankly its much easier to build up communities around having your own game vs using others’ games in this new Discord age.
https://network.balancegaming.network/members/hexrays/
https://network.balancegaming.network/members/mono/
https://network.balancegaming.network/members/fathamburger/
https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2018-08-30/csiro-pours-first-australian-green-gold/10180014
https://www.csiro.au/en/Research/MRF/Areas/Resourceful-magazine/Issue-13/Golden-alternative
One of our gaming partners BRK / Gen2 Technologies where you picked this up from
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Fast Track, the leading SaaS technology company and CRM provider in the iGaming industry, has unveiled the second instalment of its Inside Out video series.
Titled “Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked” the interview features CEO and Co-founder Simon Lidzén in a candid, behind-the-scenes discussion about the company’s growth, challenges, and vision for the future.
In the 30-minute video, Simon reflects on Fast Track’s nearly ten-year journey: “Success to me is about setting goals and achieving them. This year has been intense, but incredibly rewarding. From scaling Fast Track to launching groundbreaking products like Rewards, we’re just getting started.”
The conversation explores the launch of Rewards, Fast Track’s promotional ecosystem that integrates CRM with gamification to deliver engaging and personalised player experiences. Simon also discusses the company’s rapid global expansion and the challenges of scaling leadership within a fast-growing organisation. Looking ahead to 2025, he highlights Fast Track’s focus on leveraging AI to redefine CRM and customer engagement.
Simon’s reflections also touch on the company’s culture: “Fast Track is built on relentless innovation and a team that thrives on solving challenges. Seeing how much we’ve grown and how far we’ve come makes this journey so exciting.”
For those unfamiliar with Fast Track, the company is a high-growth SaaS leader, known for pioneering the use of AI to deliver personalised experiences to customers. Its software empowers companies to automate marketing and operational workflows, enabling teams to focus on strategy and innovation. Fast Track is reshaping CRM for iGaming, setting a new standard for customer engagement.
Watch the interview here: https://2ly.link/23JyZ
The post Fast Track CEO Shares Honest Reflections in New Interview: Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.
As we enter 2025, what unique opportunities do you see for WA.Technology in the LatAm iGaming market?
The iGaming market in Latin America is experiencing rapid transformation, and this dynamic shift presents considerable opportunities for companies with the right strategy and adaptability.
We are witnessing a shift from informal, semi-professional operations to a growing demand for a formal, structured, and professional gaming industry that can meet the higher expectations emerging from both regulators and consumers.
At WA.Technology, we are perfectly positioned to leverage our extensive local knowledge to achieve just that. Our team has been working across the region for years, from Mexico to Brazil, Colombia, and beyond, which gives us a unique edge in navigating the regulatory complexities and unique behavioural dynamics of this evolving landscape.
This authentic regional understanding not only allows us to stay ahead of market trends but also empowers us to innovate in a way that aligns with global best practices while being sensitive to local cultures, customs, and regulations. As the LatAm gaming market continues to mature, we are ready to support operators in a more structured, regulated, and growth-oriented environment.
How does WA.Technology plan to maintain its progress across the region in 2025?
Our approach to sustained growth in Latin America is driven by the expertise of our team, who bring years of experience from across the region. The team at WA.Technology has collectively worked across a variety of LatAm gaming markets, gaining firsthand knowledge of local regulations and consumer preferences. This wealth of experience enables us to navigate the ever-changing landscape with agility and precision.
As the region continues to evolve, we will continue to integrate global best practices while remaining flexible enough to address the unique needs of each local market. Our strategy at WA.Technology largely focuses on building close relationships with various local stakeholders, refining our offerings based on real-time feedback and ensuring our presence continues to make a long-lasting difference in the region.
We are committed to driving long-term growth, building strong partnerships and providing the best possible value to our clients across Latin America.
For operators looking to enter Latin America in 2025, what are some of the key trends/nuances they need to be aware of? And how is WA.Technology helping them to navigate these?
Entering the Latin American market in 2025 presents a variety of opportunities for growth. However, operators looking to make the most of what this region has to offer must carefully consider local regulations, consumer behaviour, and cultural differences in each country. After all, LatAm is not one homogenous region – each country has its own unique dynamics at play.
Regulatory frameworks continue to evolve rapidly, with each individual regulator in the region setting its own rules, meaning that operators must be highly adaptable and well-prepared for any future legislative changes. But regulations aren’t the only challenge.
Understanding local consumer habits, preferences, and cultural nuances is equally critical to building a successful operation. For example, the products players enjoy in Brazil are likely to be completely different to those favoured by Mexican bettors.
At WA.Technology, we help operators navigate these complexities by offering solutions that are fully compliant with local laws and tailored to meet the diverse needs of Latin American consumers.
We don’t see ourselves as just a technology provider; we want to be a trusted partner, supporting operators in their journey to understand the regulatory environment and local market dynamics, ensuring they’re well-positioned for long-term success.
With Brazil now live, how does WA.Technology plan to gain an edge in what is likely to be a highly competitive market?
Brazil is undoubtedly the flagship market in Latin America, and we’ve been preparing for this moment for some time. With a market of such size and potential, competition is bound to be hard. However, we are confident that our extensive local presence and tailored approach will give us a distinct edge unmatched by any other provider on the market.
We’ve made significant investments in Brazil, building a team that is highly knowledgeable about the local market and deeply embedded in the regulatory landscape. I am proud to say our team has worked extremely hard to ensure we were ready in time for the new regulations in Brazil and that we are in a position now to grow even further in this market as a result. With dedicated local offices, a strong team of regulatory experts and seasoned professionals with operational expertise, we are well-equipped to navigate the complexities of Brazil’s rapidly growing iGaming market.
Our extensive knowledge of the local market and commitment to delivering innovative, market-specific solutions allows us to provide licensed operators with the tools they need to succeed in this competitive space.
How will your approach to Brazil differ from that of the wider LatAm market?
While Brazil is undeniably one of the largest and most significant markets in Latin America, our approach to the region as a whole is both comprehensive and tailored to the unique characteristics of each country.
We recognise that Latin America is a highly diverse and dynamic market where each country presents distinct opportunities, challenges, and regulatory landscapes.
At WA.Technology, we adopt a market-specific strategy across our entire business, ensuring that we provide localised solutions that meet the unique needs of each country while maintaining a strong, responsive presence in all key markets.
Our team brings extensive experience from working in countries such as Argentina, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, and Mexico. In fact, we recently expanded our footprint by opening offices in Mexico City, which allows us to stay closely connected to local developments and offer even more tailored support to our partners in this market.
Mexico is particularly important to us in terms of future growth, and we view it as a key focus for WA.Technology alongside Brazil. Our integrated, flexible approach ensures we can remain agile across the entire region, responding effectively to each market’s specific demands while maintaining a cohesive regional strategy.
What are your goals for expanding WA.Technology’s footprint in LatAm over the next 12 months? And how do you plan to achieve these?
Looking ahead to the rest of 2025, our key goals for expanding WA.Technology’s footprint in Latin America is rooted in two fundamental pillars: extensive market knowledge and strong local presence.
As the region evolves at a rapid pace, staying ahead of market shifts requires constant attention. Our strategy is to maintain a physical presence in every major market, fostering relationships with local stakeholders, regulators, and operators. By doing this, we are able to anticipate changes in the wider market and position ourselves as a proactive, solutions-driven partner, ensuring that our partners can retain their competitive edge.
We aim to further solidify our relationships with key players across the region and remain highly engaged in local markets, adapting our solutions in real-time to meet emerging needs.
Our focus on continuous engagement ensures that we’re always in tune with the evolving landscape, positioning WA.Technology to lead the way in driving innovation and delivering value in Latin America.
The post Patricio Molloy: WA.Technology is ready to raise the bar for LatAm in 2025 appeared first on Gaming and Gambling Industry in the Americas.
Tom Walton, Director at technology consultancy, Burendo, shares how operators can achieve sustainable profitability with learnings from other sectors
Operators who are merging and acquiring other businesses, launching new products or even integrating third-party technologies, can find themselves navigating complex internal processes. It is a complex large-scale challenge. Where M&As are commonplace, brand consolidation can be critical when securing sustainable profitability while planning for higher returns in the future. Within the emerging LatAm and US markets, acquisition remains a key focus. A common issue, regardless of geography, is the challenges presented by outdated or fragmented platforms and systems, a major obstacle in the growth trajectory.
In many cases, fundamental changes in how the organisation functions: its people, processes and technology holds the key to better value, higher profits, operational efficiency and reduced risk. By addressing these complexities with proven experience, technology consultants can support operators to be successful in their strategic initiatives.
Agility in competitive markets
To remain competitive in an ever-changing market, operators must move fast and with agility to refine their offering. A constant eye on retention, acquisition and regulatory changes is paramount to avoid financial impact. Despite this risk, research conducted by Accenture in 2022 found that 95% of B2B and B2C C-level executives believe their customers are changing faster than they can change their business, indicating most operators risk falling behind. This poses the question of how this can be supported.
The value of technology consultancies is in enabling businesses to extract greater value from existing resources through a confident understanding of what good looks like. Bringing external ideas gathered through experience, exemplary resources from process to people, can demonstrate what good looks like. More importantly, it shortens the timeline to achieving real goals in the organisation. Being under resourced or lacking the skills needed across these challenges makes it difficult to gain an overarching perspective particularly within a siloed approach.
At Burendo, we leverage more than 40 years of cross-sector experience. We are not only working with some of the biggest operators in betting and gaming, but partner with other highly regulated industries including finance and healthcare. We have helped operators across many initiatives helping them to realise cost savings or increased revenue in a matter of weeks. We pride ourselves in ensuring we leave a lasting positive impact on the culture, enabling our partners to be empowered to carry on our work.
The retention battle
Many operators are too busy with day-to-day tasks or overwhelmed with where to start when it comes to transformation and building a cutting-edge user experience. An example of the gap between capacity and demand is the rising popularity of in-play betting. During live sports, the speed in which players can find and place their bet is critical. Here, streamlined processes that allow for quick innovation will correlate with customer satisfaction, resulting in higher retention rates.
A fresh perspective for lasting change
A successful approach to optimisation requires taking the challenge and viewing it from an experienced and innovative angle. Our partners truly benefit from best practice and valuable lessons derived from other sectors. Through experience we have found that these challenges are not exclusive to betting & gaming and so the ability to apply these learnings drive success.
Managing complex systems and large volumes of data is a common obstacle. By applying these cross-sector principles through working with technology consultants, operators can gain valuable insight into re-engineering platforms and the skills needed, to meet both current and future demands.
Building exceptional, scalable and adaptable architectures ensures that businesses can continue to grow and evolve as the industry changes. This forward-thinking approach positions operators ahead of the curve, meaning they are poised for success in the years to come and have the agility to address any challenges or opportunities that arise.
Creating lasting change requires more than just solving immediate problems. Our goal for our clients is to maintain high levels of efficiency long after an initial transformation is complete. By empowering teams to implement and sustain improvements, operators can maintain continuous growth and unlock growth worth tens of millions of pounds, far outweighing their cost of delivery.
The focus must now shift to building stronger, more Agile organisations that can adapt to changing market conditions. Sustainable efficiency enables operators to optimise time-to-market, improve platform performance, and manage resources more effectively, creating a foundation for long-term growth.
About Burendo
Founded in 2018 and with offices in Leeds and London, Burendo is an award-winning, consultancy delivering stand-out products and services through technology. We partner with organisations to accelerate organisational value delivery and transform customer experiences.
We are pragmatic thinkers and doers who understand the operational world of organisations and customer demands. We work as a partner to give our clients the latest ideas, tools and techniques to deliver effective results that build long-term value.
For more information, you can visit the Burendo website: www.burendo.com
If you have any questions, please contact Kate Smith, Senior Digital Marketing Executive by email: [email protected]
The post Consolidating brands efficiently to achieve high growth appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.
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