As sports betting continues to boom in Latin America, one of the companies that has registered the highest growth in the sector is Betcris, which seized the opportunity at last week’s SBC Summit Latinoamérica in Miami and analysed the characteristics of the industry in the region.

JD Duarte, CEO of Betcris, was in charge of a keynote in which he highlighted the peculiarities of the Latin player and compared football to the “king of sports” in the region.

“Although we didn’t invent football, we added flavor to the sports and I like to think that the same happened with the gaming industry: we didn’t invent it ourselves, but Latin America is where the emotion is,” he said.

“Latin America is great because of its people,” said Duarte and explained that it’s a young region, in which the average age is 31 years old and where the adoption of technology and smartphones with internet access is increasing, in parallel with  rest of the world.

“Those of us who are gathered here have a great responsibility, because we have the chance to lay the foundations of our region and work to improve the conditions that allow a formal and sustainable development of the industry,” he said.

“After many years leading Betcris, I’ve made it my mission to be a positive agent of positive change through the creation of opportunities for the Latin American people,” said the executive.

He also added that he hopes the same will happen to the industry, in order to “generate opportunities for entertainment, work and personal fulfillment, to generate resources for social work with institutions, regulators and governments.” That is why he highlighted SBC for “focusing on creating opportunities.”

“When asking non-Latin friends about words that would describe Latin America, the most common was ‘passion’, ‘warmth’, ‘kindness’, ‘life’ and ‘opportunity’,” he commented.

“Although we’re a region with many similarities, we’re not a single market,” he continued: “A word that often comes up is ‘complexity’, but we have a lot in common and one of those things is definitely the passion that we put into everything we do.”

“No matter the pace, Latinos hit the track. We dance and we play: lottery, slots, cards and sports betting. Doesn’t matter which game, we hit the track,” he explained.

Moreover, Duarte said that Latin America is currently in a full development stage, driven mainly by technology digitization, and he assured that having a main role in history it’s not the only important thing, as it’s also necessary to “be the ones who help write it.”

SBC Summit Latinoamérica gathered the most important delegates from regulators, providers and operators of the region and experts in the field at the JW Marriott Marquis Miami on October 27-28.