Supplier plans Stand A08 meetings on May 4-6 as it targets further growth across African iGaming markets.

TaDa Gaming will attend the inaugural iGaming AFRIKA Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, on May 4-6, where it plans to meet partners and operators at Stand A08 as it targets further expansion across African markets.

The supplier said it is live in more than 16 countries and is preparing to launch in South Africa through new partnerships and collaborations. TaDa described its approach as a “glocalisation strategy” built around global core mechanics and localised content.

TaDa highlighted its Fortune Gems and Fortune Coins series—specifically Fortune Gems 500 and Fortune Coins 2—as key titles, alongside its market-tailored X Hot slots, including X7 Hot. The company also pointed to its mobile-first focus, citing “fast loading and lightweight deployment” to support local infrastructure and devices.

The company said its Africa footprint includes partnerships with betPawa, Hollywoodbets, World Sports Betting and Betway, as well as distribution via 1XBET and BetConstruct. TaDa previously won SiGMA Africa Slot Newcomer of the Year.

Ray Lee, Director of Business Development, TaDa Gaming, said: ‘We are consistently growing our brand awareness through new partnerships across multiple markets, increasing our know-how and positively impacting our ability to keep delivering the experiences players want. We welcome everyone to drop by Stand A08 to meet our dedicated team and find out more about what we can do for your African success.’

The post TaDa Gaming joins inaugural iGaming AFRIKA Summit in Nairobi appeared first on Eastern European Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.

Supplier is shortlisted in Slot Supplier – Under 5 years and Casino Software Supplier – Under 5 years ahead of the 3 June ceremony in London.

ELA Games has been shortlisted in two categories for the EGR B2B Awards 2026: Slot Supplier – Under 5 years and Casino Software Supplier – Under 5 years.

The EGR B2B Awards recognise service providers and software developers across iGaming. Winners will be announced at a ceremony at City Central at the HAC in London on 3 June 2026.

In its announcement, ELA Games pointed to recent product development and partner-focused delivery, including work to expand across regulated territories and a focus on “technical reliability and smooth integration.”

The supplier also highlighted product features it says differentiate its content, including the Winpot mechanic and a shooter format. It cited the release of Shoot Happens as an example, describing it as using a bespoke game engine to combine narrative progression with betting systems.

The post ELA Games lands two nominations on EGR B2B Awards 2026 shortlist appeared first on Eastern European Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.

As legacy sportsbooks struggle with ‘search and click’ fatigue, Josh Swerdlow, Founder and CEO of ChatBet, says the next industry titan will win by owning the conversational intent layer where billions of users already live.

Why is the current sportsbook UX struggling to keep up with modern tech?

It comes down to legacy debt. Current sportsbook apps are just digital spreadsheets – grids from the 1990s that have been optimised for desktop and not mobile-first intuition. With the majority of sportsbooks, users are forced through deep menus and endless scrolling, creating a “hurdle race” for every transaction. This leads to cognitive overload – while hardcore bettors might tolerate the clutter, casual punters encounter analysis paralysis and this usually leads to betslip abandonment. As user behaviour shifts from “search and click” to “intent and fulfilment”, and against a backdrop of spiraling acquisition costs and high levels of churn, this is really putting the squeeze on operator profitability and ultimately long-term sustainability.

What do you mean when you say we are moving from “search and click” to “intent and fulfilment” and what does this mean for online sportsbooks?

In a “search and click” world, the user does the heavy lifting – navigating deep menus and grids just to find a single market. “Intent and fulfillment” flips that script. It’s the shift from a user searching for a bet to simply commanding it. If a consumer can book a five-star hotel in Rome by sending a single text, they naturally expect to back their favorite team with the same level of ease. For the operator, this means the sportsbook evolves into a high-powered back-end utility – the engine – while the messaging interface becomes the front-of-mind “steering wheel”. By moving away from the friction of standalone apps and capturing intent directly within WhatsApp or Telegram, operators stop being a destination the user has to find and start being a conversation the user is already having.

How does conversational betting actually chance user behaviour and crush the conversion funnel?

Traditional betting can take between 10 to 12 steps and up to 60 seconds – a solution like ChatBet reduces that to a single text or voice note and ten seconds or less. It also shifts the player from architect to director – instead of manually building complex parlays by scrolling through 50+ toggles, the user simply asks the AI to “Build a safe 3-leg parlay for the United game” and then confirms the wager. The result? Data from a ChatBet pilot shows an 82% drop in time-to-bet and a 28% increase in conversion rates.

From an operator’s perspective, is this a rip and replace of the current technology or is it much easier to implement than that?

Conversational betting solutions such as ChatBet are an orchestration layer, not a replacement. Our solution literally plugs into existing APIs. This also helps from a regulatory and compliance perspective, with core functions such as KYC, wallet management and responsible gambling triggers remaining securely within the operator’s existing stack. This allows for overnight modernisation – operators can update their UX for the “TikTok generation” without the multi-year cost of rebuilding their entire core tech.

Why is intent data now considered the ultimate competitive moat?

It’s about context over clicks. Traditional trackers show where the user clicked but conversational data reveals exactly what they want in their own words. Then there’s the network effect – every interaction trains the AI on local slang, fan sentiment and individual patterns and preferences. This provides operators with an insurmountable defence. A competitor can copy your odds, but they cannot easily clone a refined, high-context relationship with millions of users.

Why is this a billion-dollar venture-scale opportunity right now?

Viral distribution. Conversation betting piggybacks on billions of WhatsApp and Telegram users to allow operators to solve the skyrocketing customer acquisition cost crisis they face. There’s also the retention advantage, with messaging-native users showing a 35% higher day-30 retention rate because the interface is “always on”. What’s more, chat-based betting allows for “nudge” technology and lower-friction, smaller-stake engagement, which aligns with 2026 global regulatory shifts toward safer play.

Predictions markets are throwing the sports betting industry into chaos. How does conversational betting help traditional operators get in on the action?

Prediction markets are exploding because they tap into the “stock market of everything” but for traditional operators, these markets are often too complex to display in a standard grid and too intimidating for the average punter to navigate. Conversational betting bridges this gap by acting as a natural language translator for complex binary contracts. Instead of forcing a user to decipher order books or probability curves, a chat interface allows them to simply trade on their opinions, like the weather or political shifts, as easily as sending a text. Because chat has “unlimited shelf space”, operators can offer an infinite array of niche markets without clogging their app’s UI. Ultimately, it turns prediction markets from a niche financial product into a social, real-time experience, capturing “hot takes” in WhatsApp or Telegram and instantly converting them into priced, compliant transactions.

If this shift is as inevitable as you say, what is the one thing legacy operators need to do right now to avoid becoming the ‘Blockbuster’ of the betting industry?

They need to stop thinking about their “app” and start thinking about their “API”. The battle for the customer has moved off the home screen and into the chat thread. Right now, the opportunity is to be the first mover in the conversational space – to own the “intent layer” before it becomes the industry standard. The winners of 2026 won’t be the ones with the loudest marketing, but the ones who make placing a bet as easy as telling a friend who you think will win.

The post Betting at the Speed of Chat appeared first on Eastern European Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.