The Supreme Ventures Group (SVG), through its Prime Sport subsidiary, last Thursday debuted the airing of its popular cash pot game in South Africa.

Speaking at a Mayberry Investor’s briefing this week, Xesus Johnston, chief executive officer (CEO) of Prime Sports Jamaica Limited, said the ground-breaking move forms part of the company’s plans to take advantage of technology and leverage growth across the business.

“As of today (October 1) we began to export our cash pot signal live to South Africa— a market with over 50 million people in gaming. What we have done as a Jamaican business is take our core product, export the signal live and it’s now going to be accessed through 16 betting operators. These 16 operators give reach to over 5,000 betting operations and terminals and the gaming market in South Africa,” he said.

“This is a significant move in our business, a significant move for the region but more importantly it is the tip of the spear in terms of how we intend to continue to grow and expand with our core product. As we have realised, our core product of gaming has a cultural demand in markets as far away as the African continent.

“We are really proud of what we are doing, we are proud of the cash pot product and now we can go out there, sell it and expose the rest of the world to what Supreme Ventures and Jamaica has to offer,” he added.

The group, which is no stranger to acquisitions and expansions, also commented on the company’s foray into the fast-growing, underpenetrated Guyanese market. Johnston said that while there has been a slowdown in activities in Guyana as a result of the recent elections along with the lockdown measures brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, the market represents a good fit and the group will maintain its business in that country.

He said that while the challenges have limited their ability to scale and operate in the market, the recent reopening of activities there will allow the business to continue with its rollout of locations and a restarting of the games.

“We continue to pivot looking at what our strengths are and then seeing how we can fit those into a commercial model that can work, not just for our customers locally but allow us to expand regionally,” he said in outlining the company’s strategic response.

A company, which prides itself as one of the largest in terms of transactions in the Caribbean by processing up to 20 million transactions weekly, Supreme Ventures has a distribution network of approximately 1,500 locations, catering to some 300,000 – 320,000 people daily and creating over 1200 entrepreneurs who work as retailers.

“When you look at Supreme Ventures it is one of the core touch points for Jamaicans every single day. There are a few things they buy and two of the things they buy are in our locations: phone cards and also their entertainment and gaming products. When you have a reach like that, the next logical step is to determine how to scale it, how to grow and to find out what other services can be offered. We have specialised skill in handling high volume locations, transactions and cash; not many organisations are structured and scaled to manage an operation like that,” Johnston shared.

COVID-19 RESPONSE

Like many other businesses affected by the pandemic, SVG has also had to endure reduction in revenues and also the temporary closure of some of its operations.

“The biggest impact for our business is that we have eight product/revenue lines and during the COVID lockdown period at least six of those were closed. That impacted us not only in terms of revenues but also in terms of our customers,” Johnston said while noting that revenues fell by some 19 per cent in the second quarter as a result of the impact of the pandemic..

He, however, pointed to a rebound in activities following the easing of restrictions and the reopening of much of its outlets.

“With COVID-19 overall, the negative for SVG is that it limits access of our patrons to our locations and products. We have, however, continued to work to see how we can give access online and how we can innovate and continue to bring customers in.

In purporting the strategic response engaged, Johnston cited digitalisation as the prime short-term measure. Through this, he said that the company has aimed to develop an online presence via mobile applications which will allow customers to continue gaming, provide cutting-edge software to facilitate work from home for staff and overall use technology to drive greater efficiency and profitability for the business.

“In the medium term we are going to continue that process of digitalisation, bringing new games to the market to ensure that people can play from the comfort of their homes,” he said.