Local expansion and ‘operational AI agents’: Playtech Services’ plans for 2026

iGB: So Elena, Playtech Services has been described as the ‘operational powerhouse’ of Playtech. What does that mean in practical terms for an operator partner?

Elena Rousseva: First of all, thanks for the opportunity. Playtech Services is indeed a powerhouse. We are able to operate A-Z on all operational activities and take responsibility for anything that an operator needs in order to manage their business and help them grow their business.

So operational activities, starting from player support, going into risk management, AML, KYC, payments, reconciliation and many other critical points that are important for the player’s eventual journey in their brand is taken care of by us, and we’re very happy to have very deep experience and expertise to help our operators grow their business. So I do believe we are a powerhouse.

iGB: And what’s new at Playtech services? How has the scope of the offering changed recently?

The state of the offering has actually expanded quite significantly. We have experience in a lot of areas that we did not offer to all of our customers for many, many years, but we’ve been very active on this with big partners in the past, and now we’re able to offer those services to the wider customer base at Playtech.

These include CRM, product management, B to CBI, we have created an amazing platform that really gives a comprehensive view of players activities to our partners, but also what we call a monitoring system, which is amazing in catching pain points of players (in) real time and being able to react to them instantly and solve their problems.

So these are the key new things that we offer, and I’m sure our operators will benefit from them hugely.

iGB: And have there been any changes in your global footprint or your market presence?

Yes, I’m happy to say. We were traditionally very focused on Europe and the UK for many, many years. But recently, we have expanded into Latin America, the US, Canada, and as of last year, we have a presence in the Asia Pacific region.

We are setting up different operational hubs across the globe, so we’re able to serve our customers from the right location for them, but still benefiting from the internal, centralised Playtech services team, which has experience of over 15 years on the Playtech platform too. And everyone can benefit from still having the local presence of our teams across the globe.

iGB: And is there any new tech that you’re excited about incorporating into the Playtech Services offering?
Definitely, we’ve been working a lot in the last few years to get ready to be able to offer what we call operational AI agents to our operators, to our businesses.

These are going to include all the services that we are traditionally offering to them, but in a very, very optimised, effective and smart way.

So actually, our people are able to focus on player experience and retention and sustainable gambling, which is extremely important to us, while the AI agent is using our expertise in a very, very smart way and delivering the work to the end player efficiently. And this is what you can expect from us in 2026.

iGB: It sounds like it’s going to be a brilliant year. Elena, thank you.