16 B 2 B
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August 2012 25
BetConstruct in Russia
28
Scientific Games buys Parspro
30
The new Jack Hammer game appears
32
Tackling fraud in a global marketplace
BettingBusinessInteractive • AUGUST 2012 Essential guide to Out-standing
William Hill soft launched its new Live Casino on 24 April and the company is pressing for the full launch with a more interactive site in the coming months followed up with a UK advertising campaign.
Chief executive Ralph Topping believes Live Casino is about understanding the customer. He said: “This is where our passion for service meets our passion for gaming, and I think we’ve made it stand out from the crowd.”
Revenue growth
William Hill said that a series of gaming innovations were introduced in the first half of 2012,
including the launch of a much improved and leading edge Live Casino offering, which helped Live Casino net revenues grow by 51% per cent.
BETINTERNET.COM
Crucial for serving an Asian gaming market
As one of the early adopters of the Live Casino concept,
Betinternet.com is well versed with the necessity to provide Asian customers with a real view of what’s happening.
etinternet.com has been offer- ing a version of Live Casino for over ten years now. The opera- tor was one of the first adopters of the casino webcam product from CWC and as a result has been waiting for the rest of the industry to play catch up. The online bookmaker’s managing di- rector Garry Knowles acknowledges that his firm could be viewed as a pioneer of the sector, but says it is behind the curve compared to some Asian operators. “From a Western point of view, we are probably view that way, but from an Asian point of view it’s a different perspective all together. There are quite a number of oper- ators out there and a fair few of them run their own software and they probably un- derstand a little bit better than we do what the Asian consumers demands are. We’ve just recruited a marketing manager from Asia and we are looking more closely at what we’re offering our customers.” Knowles believes the key development for his firm would be sorting out a bonus- ing structure to run alongside the Live Casino. “The way forward is getting the software to analyse the player behaviour and do some automatic bonusing if re- quired. It really is about VIP customer management. It’s no different to a normal RNG casino in that respect. But it is a cul- tural thing too. Most people who play live dealer games are Asian and they have no expectation from a bonusing point of view, compared to a Western customer playing on an RNG casino.” He doesn’t believe there is much expan-
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sion for the concept though: “The games are standard. Baccarat is the biggest for us
in Asia, then roulette, then blackjack. You are fairly limited as to what table games you can offer because there are a limited number of them. If you put craps on, for example, you’d just end up streaming an empty craps table.”
Betinternet.com has actually turned off the Live Gaming product to the UK market for now because of UK Gambling Com- mission complaints about the licens- ing issues sur- rounding the Live Casino being host- ed in Costa Rica, but it’s not been a major issue given that the live cus- tomer base is al- most exclusive- ly Asian.
Knowles comment- ed: “We did have some UK clients play- ing it and if you play it yourself you do wonder why more people play RNG. It’s a little slower, but it is much more like the expe- rience you would get in the casino.”
Knowles acknowl-
edges that running a live casino is more costly than an RNG product, but suggest- ed it was a price worth paying. “If you didn’t have Live Casino, you wouldn’t have any Asian customers,” he said, matter of factly. “You have to give the cus- tomers what they want. It’s no use trying to force customers to bet on something they’re not interested in. It would be like trying to get football punters to bet on cricket. It is more expensive be- cause there are peo- ple involved, it is slower, but the expe- rience is there. And if we have players who prefer an RNG casino, we have that for them too.”
GARRY KNOWLES: ‘IF YOU
DIDN’T HAVE LIVE CASINO, YOU WOULDN’T HAVE ANY ASIAN CUSTOMERS’
Betting Business Interactive Edition
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