The SBC Leaders podcast is back for 2025 and for the year’s inaugural episode, Sue Schneider, Co-Founder of Defy the Odds Startup Launchpad, was joined by Golden Matrix Group’s CEO, Brian Goodman, who detailed his journey as a pioneer of online gaming technology.

Goodwin began his journey in gaming when he moved to Australia from his native South Africa and then bought his first casino in 1999.

What followed was a sizeable expansion in the business, and a desire to “monetise the technology that we built”, which led Goodman to take the company public in the US, despite the reservations of others and the US’ attitude to online gaming.

“I anticipated that the world would become more regulated as opposed to [prohibitive],” he recalled. 

“Everybody thought I was losing my mind and that nobody’s ever going to allow gambling in a lot of these countries and certainly not in America. But I decided that I would list the company in America and then we’d build the business. 

“Everybody thought I was crazy at that stage. There were no real online gambling operators on American exchanges because there weren’t any states that allowed it.”

Golden Matrix was originally floated on an over-the-counter (OTC) market before applying to be uplisted to NASDAQ.

When looking back at this period of time, Goodman spoke about some of the challenges the company faced, including the difficulty of balancing the cost of player acquisition with the lifetime value of that customer. 

An imbalance in this formula, according to Goodman, has led to a “graveyard of people” who tried and failed in the US as they went up against operators prepared to spend “unlimited money” in a bid for market share.

On Golden Matrix’s philosophy, Goodman said: “Our challenge was to try and get traffic at the lowest possible cost and then bring these people on board and have the right tools to keep them loyal. 

“In terms of our existing company, we are known for our loyalty tools. We might get a player [but] we need to maintain that player because they have other options.”

Towards the end of the episode, Goodman also detailed the unique challenges of developing a sportsbook product due to the need for risk control and the competition in odds setting for outcome-based events.

As a result, he believes that Golden Matrix’s edge in the vertical comes from offering in-play betting.

“That’s where the money is to be made. People in front of the TV are watching the team they like and making bets while the game is on,” he explained.

“In order to deliver those odds, you need extremely sophisticated software. We take in all feeds from different feed providers and we spit out what could be a thousand lines of bets during a football match. In order to do that in real-time, you need systems that are generating these odds in real-time.”