The next best thing
Even where regulators won’t allow e-gaming, casinos can still take advantage of the Net with play-for-fun Websites or good old-fashioned marketing, writes Barnaby Page
M
ost products and services started life in the real world and later migrated to the Internet. But Maryland Live!, the $500m casino development due to
open near Hanover, Maryland in June, is doing things the other way round. The casino has launched a play-for-fun Website
weeks ahead of its ribbon-cutting, to promote the brand and develop a customer database. “The launch of
Myliveonlinecasino.com enables
us to pre-enroll customers into our Live! Rewards players’ club database and begin tailoring rewards to members before they even visit Maryland Live! Casino,” said Robert J. Norton, President and General Manager of the casino. It is using Aristocrat’s nLive e-gaming system
to drive the online version, and the nLiveLink module to connect that to the same vendor’s Oasis 360 casino management system – enabling the “single view” of customers that is (rightly) so sought-after by all consumer-facing businesses at the moment. Aristocrat says it’s the first casino to have done so. Among the benefits of this link are that management will be able to create individual offers based on players’ combined virtual and land-based activity; and, though Maryland Live! hasn’t come out and said this, that it will be perfectly positioned to quickly start providing pay-for-play gaming online if, or when, that is legalised in the state. Meanwhile, Wynn Las Vegas is taking another –
more conventional but potentially no less effective – approach to the question of how operators should exploit the Internet in territories where they’re not permitted to offer e-gaming. It is putting the emphasis on the non-gaming offer of rooms, restaurants and shows, and on illustrating rather than just describing them. “One of the most important elements in
making a decision on travel, particularly hotel accommodations, is a photograph of what you are purchasing,” said Marilyn Spiegel, President of Wynn Las Vegas and Encore. “The new Website was specifically designed to visually display details instead of forcing the user to read extensive text. Our philosophy has been to offer information we know guests want and not confuse the guest with useless clutter.” The Website also includes other content not
directly connected to Wynn’s consumer offer but giving a flavour of its luxurious associations, such as interviews with fashion designers like Manolo Blahnik and Laurence Graff, whose creations can be bought at Wynn retail outlets.
Socially inadequate Social casinos are attracting revenue per
player that is 40 percent higher than other social games, according to Kontagent. But the firm cautions that it’s not so easy to build a successful social casino – whether you’re an existing operator, or a games developer. “Social casino gaming is a hot space right
now and everyone is looking to get in on the action,” said CEO and Co-founder Jeff Tseng. “Land-based and online casino operators know how to build addictive casino games, but that expertise does not completely translate into how to build a successful casino game on Facebook and other social platforms.” Meanwhile, he added, “social game
developers who have built games in other genres don’t necessarily understand the best practices for casino games, which have different mechanics and benchmarks for monetisation than other game categories.” Unsurprisingly, the solution that he urges is
to commission Kontagent’s services in analysing consumer behaviour on social and mobile platforms.
Whatever next? InplayMatrix, which provides online
sportsbooks to operators, is to offer the ZonePlay product from British firm Buzz Sports, allowing many more in-play betting opportunities. ZonePlay lets consumers bet on the next
development in sports they are watching live: for example, whether a corner or goal will occur. With constantly changing odds, it complements rather than replaces existing in-play betting markets offered by InPlay Matrix; these tend to focus on numerical outcomes, such as scores or the time of the first goal, or choices from a list such as guessing who will score that goal. By contrast, ZonePlay simply asks the consumer to wager on “what happens next”. Says the firm: “A typical English Premier League soccer game can offer over 60 unique betting opportunities, transforming even the dullest 0- 0 draw into a betting spectacular.” ZonePlay is also available for tennis and cricket, with baseball coming later this year. InplayMatrix will focus on deploying ZonePlay
for Asia, where in-play betting is highly popular. Morbid curiosity
OnlineGamblingPal.com has changed its
name to
BestOnlineCasino.com. I give space to this development not because it’s terribly interesting, but because the press release announcing it – which came out just before 1 April but not, worryingly, on that very date – also mentions in passing that this “leading online casino portal” (that makes 72 of them out there, by my count) “recently purchased Michael Jackson’s hair at auction for $10,871” and “is making progress with transforming MJ’s hair into a Roulette ball”. I note that the domain
MichaelJacksonHairRoulette.com is still available, but for how long?
MAY 2012 73
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