iGaming
Player thanks Lucky Stars
Online casino Slotland has paid out a $148,711 (£96,500) pro- gressive jackpot on one of its oldest games, Lucky Stars. All slots at Slotland are tied to the same jackpot with any max bets contributing to the shared progressive jackpot pool.
PKR getting set for French liberation
Poker operator PKR is the holder of one of the ARJEL licences allowing it to operate in France. Malcolm Graham hopes his firm’s innovative approach will help it become a market leader.
PKR I
nnovative poker operator PKR is hotly anticipating being part of
the new gambling regula- tory regime in France, even if the current struc- ture has been maligned by some as unworkable. PKR chief executive Malcolm Graham, whose firm was given the green light by ARJEL earlier this summer, is upbeat about the situation. “We’re very excited by the prospect of operating within a fully licensed and regulated French market,” he said. “While it remains to be seen how the tax regime will affect revenues in the mid- to long-term, the early signs appear posi- tive. We have a very large and loyal French player base, and we’re confident we can gain sufficient market share to ensure that France remains a key market for PKR.”
An already existing cus- tomer base will get PKR off to a good start under the new regime, but as with any other market affiliates will play a big role in customer acquisi- tion. Graham suspects affiliates will play a strong role in any gaming company’s acquisition plans for a good while yet, in France and beyond.
He explained: “At PKR we feel we have a good balance - we are by no means reliant on affili- ates, but we have a number of strong affiliate relationships that are very valuable to us as a busi- ness. I am also not con- vinced that this is necessarily a situation that relates to the size and maturity of the gaming industry - after all, some affiliates in the financial services industry are practically household names.
“Relying on any one channel for customer acquisition carries risk, particularly in an industry such as ours that can experience wild changes in regulation overnight. I would strongly advise any operator that ‘relies’ on affiliates to diversify their customer acquisition across channels, just as I would an operator who relied on paid-search or TV advertising.”
Next month sees Graham speaking at the 9th annual European iGaming Congress and Expo which is taking place at Copenhagen’s Bella Center, and he will be tackling the issue of the importance of innova- tion in the gambling indus- try.
“Innovation is central
to the PKR story,” he com- mented. “We came to market offering some- thing new and different, and this allowed us to grab market share and achieve significant growth. Inno- vation is still sometimes viewed with skepticism within the gaming indus- try. When we launched, many expected us to fail citing a range of reasons such as our download size and our operating outside of an existing network. But I think we are now a good example of how innovation - especially innovation that benefits the customer - can drive a business forward.” As for the future, Grahan believes his firm’s ongoing challenge is to keep innovating and to keep pushing the bound- aries of what an online gaming operator can be. “We don’t really feel any pressure to ‘keep ahead of the pack’ per se - after all, no one has success- fully mirrored our approach so we do, to some extent, exist in iso- lation. We do, however, feel driven to keep devel- oping our offering to keep our customers happy.”
Malcolm Graham: ‘relying on any one channel for customer acquisition carries risk’
Purple Lounge hits
O
100,000 CUSTOMER ACQUISITION
nline casino and poker operator Purple Lounge is celebrating
hitting 100,000 registered users - representing a 29 per cent increase in less than a year. Since being purchased by Media Corporation in October 2009, the website has seen a sharp increase in customer acquisition in the ten month period, growing from 77,475 registered users at the time of the deal to now break the six figure barrier. Media Corp said that its online advertising and mar- keting expertise saw cus- tomer numbers increase by over 29 per cent for the period when customer numbers had only increased by 13 per cent in the 10 months prior to the acquisition.
The firm is also pleased
to report that the conver- sion to cash depositors on the day of registration is currently running at approx- imately 32 per cent, which is significantly higher than the industry average.
ANALYSIS
DESPITE PKR’S UNIQUE AND INNOVATIVE POKER OFFERING SETTING ITSELF ASIDE FROM THE PACK, THE FIRM ALSO SEES THE VALUE IN PROVIDING ITS CUSTOMERS WITH THE FULL GAMUT OF ONLINE GAMBLING OPPORTUNITIES. AS MALCOLM GRAHAM EXPLAINED: “OUR VIEW IS THAT WE SHOULD AIM TO OFFER OUR CUSTOMERS A FULL SUITE OF GAMING PRODUCTS THAT ARE AVAILABLE FROM A SINGLE WALLET. WE ARE CURRENTLY WORKING ON ADDITIONAL 3D CASINO GAMES INCLUDING BLACKJACK, AND ALSO PLAN TO LAUNCH A SUITE OF WEB-BASED GAMES VIA THE ORBIS PLATFORM.”
Media Corporation CEO Justin Drummond com- mented: “100,000 registered customers is a very significant milestone for Purple Lounge. As a result of Media Corp’s online marketing strength, Purple Lounge is adding new customers and affiliates at an accelerated rate and we look forward to providing further updates on the busi- ness in the near future.” Purple Lounge usually signs up 20 affiliates a month, but revealed that it had signed up double that number in June after an affiliate confer- ence after which ‘daily cus- tomer registrations and player activity escalated rapidly’.
Palatial Leisure to launch real live casino P
LIVE CASINO
alatial Leisure, the UK operator of a series of bingo halls and the Palace Casino in Great Yarmouth, is to launch a new style live casino product on its revamped website
palaceslive.com. The new unique set up sees the operator offering a live casino table to its online players not from a studio but from the same tables as the actual players in the casino at Great Yarmouth. Palatial has badged the innovation as a ‘world first’
which has been made pos- sible through its UK Gam- bling Commission Licence which covers both the land- based and the online casino. The firm said that no other UK casino can broad- cast the same games to their internet players at the moment because they do not operate their online casinos from Mainland UK but overseas. The firm said that most current ‘live casino’ offerings were not with not real casinos, but studios in Eastern Europe
10 BettingBusinessInteractive • SEPTEMBER 2010
and with poor streaming ‘compared to this ground- breaking technology’. Palatial Leisure manag-
Palatial Leisure operates successful bingo and casino operations both on and offline
ing director Patrick Duffy, who has over 30 years experience in the UK land- based bingo industry, is very proud of his achieve- ment and has used Hermes- Softlab, part of the Comtrade Group, to create this new technology with its cutting-edge accuracy and streaming to achieve the real casino feel. He said: “This is no life-like game
but the real deal with a person can play at the table in the casino whilst a family member can play the same game on their laptop or computer at home and then the player can leave the casino and continue to pick up this same game at home. Not only are people assured of being UK controlled and regulated but the fact that other members in the casino are playing those same games puts clear water between this and any other online operation.”
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