BODOGUK “All roads lead to casino…”
In a recent press release CEO of BodogUK, Patrik Selin, said that casino has seen “the least innovation and investment across the industry.” New BodogUK Head of Casino, Adam Joseph, looks to overhaul the online casino business.
F
rom a marketing perspective it is obviously much easier to attract players via sports betting and poker. With sports betting there are ever- changing angles as stories develop
and the seemingly endless amount of media space given to sport makes it the obvious driver for a multi-platform online gaming company to go after and then look at cross-sell from there. Poker, equally, lends itself to easier marketing as the players are very vocal in forums and live play so you can very quickly discover what they want and like in a poker platform and react to that.
Online casino is a much more private
customer and much more diverse in terms of personal needs so there is not a ‘one size fits all’ solution and therefore doesn’t have quick gets and simple answers and is as a result the unloved platform of the industry.
Online casinos have, understandably, concentrated their efforts on quick wins like
bonusing and constant new products, all of which have undoubted merit but especially in the instance of new products are often so patently just re-skins of existing slots. Casino has also lacked innovation as well as marketing spend and PR muscle. Sportsbetting has seen in-play wagering and mobile apps give the genre a new lease of life, and poker has seen so many changes in recent years including a total overhaul of the rakeback system and the rise of anonymous tables to protect, and therefore attract, the casual players back to the felt.
Action Stations So what are we going to do about it? The
first thing is to customise the casino to the country it serves – it is not OK just to think blackjack is blackjack. By way of example, in Asia an online Random Number Generator (RNG) Casino would be unthinkable; they simply don’t trust anything that isn’t live. This is why Bodog88, the Asian facing company of the Bodog brand, has invested heavily in its
own live dealer studio giving them the freedom to offer a whole range of different products quickly. They are the only online operator that offers Super 6 Baccarat despite it being the fastest growing game in Asia in offline casinos. Because it’s their own studio they don’t need to request Super 6 from their operator they can just start a table, it gives them control over their own product. That doesn’t mean that a company should
look to do everything in-house. For new slot games - especially branded ones - ‘off the shelf’ solutions are often the quickest and best way forward. I actually believe live dealer will slowly become part of the online casino culture over in the UK too – not to the exclusion of RNGs but certainly as an alternative. The live dealer gives so much more atmosphere and flexibility as well as making the experience feel ‘softer’ which I think will encourage the more casual casino player online. It also gives the operator the option to have more fun with the product
46 APRIL 2012
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100