Interactive IGT INTERACTIVE Reach, retention and revenue
DoubleDown Casino has big plans for land-based casinos to benefit from the continued growth of social gaming by driving play between the two
The latest online legislation in the US has changed the global market for interactive gaming providers. How will the big companies in the European market seek to expand across the US and how will US companies adapt their cur- rent offering to provide their existing casino partners with interactive solutions?
Speaking to Robert Melendres, Executive Vice President of IGT Interactive Group at the G2E Las Vegas, he explained that the company’s strategic focus is keeping things sim- ple - aiming to provide its highest performing slots games across all sectors. “Taking our leading titles on the land- based side, we are seei ng the same games out-performing everything else on the online side,” said Mr. Melendres. “And it’s the same games that are also the highest per- formers on our social gaming platform, Double Down. If you look at those top titles it’s games such Siberian Storm and Da Vinci Diamonds that are the highest performing on casino floors, the top games on Double Down and across our online offering too.”
One of the few gaming companies to provide a consistent gaming offer across land-based, online and social gaming; operators can find an IGT solution regardless of their leg- islative environment. “We have operators embedding Double Down in their sites to offer players our most pop- ular titles on a social platform,” explained Mr. Melendres. “This allows them to use social gaming as a marketing tool to incentivise players back to their locations. We give casinos promotional materials to incentivise players to venture to the website, where we track their activity and incent the player to return to the land-based casino. While legislation limits what a casino operator can offer on their own website, embedding DoubleDown enables their players to play online and revenue share once the player returns to the location.”
There’s been a great deal of skepticism regarding DoubleDown's ability to incentivise players to play offline and in real-money environments, but the evidence from IGT’s partnership with Arizona-based Casino Del Sol in August is indisputable evidence that this social gaming model works in real casino locations. “Our partnership with Casino Del Sol was the world’s first cross-platform video poker tournament,” confirmed Mr. Melendres. “It was also the largest tournament of its kind ever staged, where DoubleDown players qualified to play at the real casino location to play for real and win prizes. Players both online and offline at the casino all played the same game, our Game King Video Poker.”
The statistics from the event are impressive, with 350,000 people qualifying to play, which increased installs of DoubleDown through the Casino Del Sol site by 500 per cent, which meant that video poker play increased by 100 per cent, while video poker play at the location increased by 20 per cent. In fact, the winner of the overall tourna-
6 8
ment didn't qualify on DoubleDown, but instead entered the competition from within the location, something that Mr. Melendres sees as a response to direct cross-promo- tional activity between off- and online gaming.
“It’s all about reach, retention and revenue,” underlines Mr. Melendres. “We give players a reason to continue to play with the casino and return to the location. We accept that DoubleDown is a freemium product, in which 98 per cent of player are enjoying the games for free - which isn’t exactly a model that casinos wish to emulate. However, because we have a consumer brand in DoubleDown, we are able to educate players with our games, which means that casinos are not having to spend marketing dollars to bring players to their locations - we are doing it for them.”
POKER PLAY ACROSS THE USA Online casino games have always been self-sufficient, but
poker is the hot-house flower of iGaming, needing feeding and constant nurturing. There's a reason why the major poker providers, such as PokerStars and 888 Poker, con- tinue to dominate the smaller localised land-based brands and that's because of liquidity. Most smaller casino offer- ings simply don't have the capability to leverage the num- bers needed to pool together the numbers of players need- ed for profitability.
How do you ensure the numbers of
poker players you need for your site? We have two million unique people
playing poker per day on DoubleDown and 6.7m unique players per month.
“The idea of liquidity is really important,” states Mr. Melendres. “How do you ensure that you have the 50,000 people playing poker that your site needs? We have two million unique people playing poker per day on DoubleDown and 6.7 million unique players per month. Those are the figures that attracted operators in Delaware, where three racinos have embedded DoubleDown into their sites to build player databases in advance of the leg- islative green light and integration with 888’s real-money platform. Our Remote Gaming Server is able to integrate our content into any platform, whatever the environment. At present we have completed over 20 integrations of our IGT RGS with online platform providers in Europe (Lottomatica in Italy is a customer), and have integrated with both OpenBet and GTECH in Canada. At the end of the day, our ability to integrate into any online space is hugely important, but ultimately content is king - it’s what IGT does best. Our goal is to build once and deploy everywhere - this is nothing more than a content and dis- tribution story!”
Robert Melendres, IGT Executive Vice President, IGT Interactive Group.
DoubleDown Casino is the top grossing online destination for players who want to access Vegas-style multiplayer games, including Poker, Slots, Blackjack, Roulette, Bingo and more on Facebook and on mobile devices, including iOS, Android and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. DoubleDown Casino also features single player table games including rgs Black Jack, Roulette and Game King’s Video Poker. As a wholly owned subsidiary of International Game Technology (IGT), DoubleDown Casino features the hottest IGT content straight from the casino floor.
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