The latest edition of the CasinoBeats100 Club saw the firm speak to Adam Noble, Co-Founder and Chief Business Development Officer of PlayStar, whose journey has various “twists and turns” before entry into the industry was even contemplated.

This journey commenced after leaving school and a home state of Tasmania as a 17-year-old to join the Australian Air Force to work on fighter aircraft, that is, as Noble noted, “until I got itchy feet”.

With the backpacker life embraced during a stay in Dublin, a stint in Australia followed before a further move, this time to London where “the rail industry in the UK was screaming out for skilled people,” followed.

Eventual entry into the industry came after a further pair of moves, first back to the motherland before Scandinavia came calling, where a first large exposure to online casino and entry into igaming reared its head.

However, all roads eventually led to PlayStar, a project that was kicked off during a COVID ravaged August 2020, and which has moved at a “rapid pace” to now bring a mixture of nerves and excitement ahead of a New Jersey launch.

“We’re on track for achieving our transactional waiver in New Jersey any day now [at the time of recording], which means we’ll go into soft launch and then full launch, in the approximate coming month or so,” Noble noted. 

Before proceeding to touch upon what the path beyond the Garden State could deliver: “So, Pennsylvania, we have market access there through Caesars. And we plan to launch there in the latter part of this year, somewhere around November, December.  

“We’re currently deep in the licensing process there with the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board. So that will be the next sort of cab off the rank. 

“We’ve secured additional market access, or future market access, in many of the markets across the US right now where sportsbooks are operating, roughly half of the US, but there’s only half a dozen markets that have regulated online casino.

“Now in markets where companies like Caesars have a presence, they are doing market access agreements for future igaming, which is on the cusp of regulating. So, we have secured Indiana there so that that is looking like it might be the next market to regulate. 

“And then we have a pipeline of several other states that we are deep in the process of securing market access. So, we certainly have plans further afield in New Jersey, and we’ll be announcing many of those in the coming weeks and months. 

“You mentioned there north of the border in Ontario, we’re certainly keeping a very close eye on Ontario, and watch how that pans out over the next you know, several months. 

“It’s certainly something on our radar, you’ve obviously got a market there that has historically had dozens and dozens of brands in there without any sort of restriction of access into that market. 

“So, it’s a bit of a different landscape to the US where the market access is essentially restricting the number of brands, and whilst that’s a big barrier to entry, once you’re inside of that market you’re not looking over your shoulder at the next 50, 100 brands that are going to come in.

“So, slightly different dynamics between those markets that we’re continually assessing. And we’ll decide whether we enter or not.”