Kiron Interactive Virtual Sports and Number Games

Kiron Interactive creates Full HD virtual sports for the gambling industry from bases in South Africa and the UK. Its customers include online operators, land-based venues and bookmakers, and its catalogue is among the largest on the market. That breadth is Kiron’s main selling point: traditional sports sit next to creative bonus games and skill-based formats.

Kiron is licensed and regulated and does business with clients on five continents. Its games are certified by the independent testing lab GLI, which lets it serve players around the world.

Across more than 20 years in the market, Kiron has released over 20 games, designed by a team of system architects, developers, designers and animators that now numbers around 60 specialists. Content can be delivered online, on mobile and on gaming machines in retail outlets.

Kiron celebrated its 20th anniversary not long ago. The main steps along the way:

Kiron is a privately held company with its head office in Johannesburg, Gauteng, and a workforce of between 50 and 200 people. Founder Steven Spartinos serves as co-CEO.

Key people

• Steven Spartinos: founder and co-CEO
• Jason Pretorius: founder and co-CEO
• Ashalin Pounasamy: Head of Business Development, Africa

Kiron has supplied number games and virtual sports since 2001. Its catalogue is not huge in title count, but the quality has won it wide recognition, and its games run at high-profile sportsbooks and casino brands worldwide.

The 20+ games span virtual horse and greyhound racing, table tennis, badminton, archery and more. Operators can also add scheduled games such as keno, Spin & Win and Racing Roulette, and lottery games are being prepared to widen the range further.

Delivery is flexible. The same content can stream to mobile, run on television broadcasts or be rendered on screens inside gaming venues.

Everything began in 2001 with Turfmaster, a horse racing skill game that was among the most innovative of its day. Between 2003 and 2008 Kiron added a pool-based virtual race betting engine, an RNG-based fixed-odds engine and a GLI-certified retail game server, and brought virtual racing into retail betting shops.

Its flagship platforms today are BetMan and BetMan Online, which slot Kiron products into a customer’s existing environment:

• A turnkey transactional and point-of-sale system for fixed-odds bets
• Built-in reporting
• Recovery mechanisms that protect play during unexpected hardware or network failures
• BetMan Online, which delivers a strong mobile experience

The catalogue is organised into five groups: virtual sports, instant win games, keno, Spin&Win and lotto. Kiron also offers titles from partners such as Fluid Games and VIP, which operators can add in the same integration.

Virtual sports are the largest and most played group, and they mix real-world disciplines with invented ones:

• Bullseye (archery)
• Virtual boxing
• Speed skating
• Super Hoops (a take on streetball)
• Slot Cars (circuit racing)
• Drive (car racing)
• Charging Chariots (chariot racing)
• Max Car (car racing)
• Ice hockey
• Badminton Smash
• Racing Roulette (horse racing)
• Slipstream (cycling)
• Pro-Pong (table tennis)

Three Kiron favourites

Kiron combines current CGI with a physics engine to recreate real sport in compressed, highly realistic form. Rendering happens in real time, and the games are built for flexibility so they perform well on any desktop or mobile device.

Additional features

• A continuous stream of new features and products
• Extensive customisation
• In-game advertising
• Automatic commentary and live voice-over

Mobile play

Every title runs smoothly on Android and iOS, and desktop and mobile versions are released at the same time.

RaceDay is Kiron’s in-house tool for bringing players into a venue and lifting revenue. It uses virtual racing to keep customers engaged and comes in three formats:

• Sweepstakes: players enter a prize draw for a fixed prize.
• Tournaments: each player is given a virtual horse and competes in a tournament.
• Pools: players qualify to pick a horse by earning loyalty points in games other than sports betting.

Kiron follows strict responsible gaming standards. Its products are licensed by the Gambling Commission, NGB, Gaming Labs, the Responsible Gaming Trust and GameCare.

The software is tested regularly by agencies such as GLI and by the regulators that have licensed Kiron, including the UKGC and the MGA.

Kiron has expanded into 60 countries on five continents. Its games are played in markets such as the US, Brazil, Peru, Jamaica, the UK, Italy, Malta, Bulgaria, Nigeria, South Africa, China, India and Australia, and operators carrying them include:

• Ladbrokes
• At The Races
• Marathon Bet
• Surebet247
• Parimatch

Kiron’s products have earned a number of accolades:

• Best Online Content Provider, Casino Life & Business Magazine International Awards (2017)
• Best Virtual Sports Supplier, EGR B2B Awards 2021
• Best Virtual Sports Supplier, EGR B2B Awards 2022

Virtual sports fill the gaps between live events and keep bettors active around the clock. With our casino API, one integration gives you Kiron’s 20+ games, its partner titles and the rest of our games aggregation catalogue: 3,600+ games from 170+ game providers. Pair them with our sportsbook for a complete betting offer.

Choosing a virtual sports supplier means checking its licences, its range and its track record. These answers cover the basics for Kiron.