been built through bonuses, tempting players with more and more giveaways. Everyone is trying to buy loyalty, as opposed to building a long-term brand.”
With LynxEye onboard, the goal was to create a true iGaming brand, a Live Casino online gaming site that would put table gaming at the heart of its offer. “I returned to Sweden and initiated the project,” outlined Edward. “Which meant that we went right into the research phase. We had to know - was there was a business to be had? We conducted extensive consumer research; triads to make ensure we gathered every opinion out there; player research and market research for months.”
Edward was convinced that as online gaming sites have increasingly become generalists, each adding volume to sites now boasting 1000s of slots, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for consumers to choose between the myriad of available options. “We wanted to move away from that kind of general positioning and offer quality not quantity,” said Edward. “Amongst the thousands of gaming options, you’ll actually find very little true quality. Our strategy is to follow a brand such as PokerStars, which had remained true to its poker roots until the Amaya acquisition. PokerStars won over players because they stuck to what they were good at.”
Te design of the website communicates immediately the Live Casino focus of Codeta. Were traditionally players would need to search to find live tables on traditional sites, Codeta puts Live Casino on the front page. “We have invested substantially in video tutorials for Live Casino games and have framed everything around the games, something born from our extensive research,” said Edward. “Other casinos can continue to promote 14,000 games and 100 different bonuses; our research showed players very quickly lose track of what they’re looking for on online sites. We’ve taken that into consideration, and as a result have built a clean website that we believe takes back the pride of table games.”
in particular markets find specific products.”
Good friends with Fredrick Osterberg, who before co-founding Evolution Gaming was CEO at Sportal, Edward has been immersed in the Live Casino sectors for many years. However, the idea of Codeta; the launching of a Live Casino focused site, was gestating for two years before Edward took the plunge. “I saw an opportunity,” he said. “No one was positioning themselves as a Live Casino. Tere are sites like William Hill,
bwin.party, sportingbet, etc., that offer Live Casino, but no one was saying “We are a Live Casino.”
In April last year Edward visited his brother in Singapore. Christian Ihre is the founding partner of LynxEye, a brand consultancy agency based in Sweden that had opened a regional office in Singapore in 2014. A 20 years-old firm with clients including IKEA, VW, Volvo, Absolut, Samsung and Spotify, Christian Ihre had been waiting for the right iGaming opportunity when his younger brother presented the idea for Codeta. “Te idea fitted with Christian’s view that no one in iGaming is building a proper brand,” stated Edward. “Loyalty has instead
Time spent during Codeta’s research phase convinced Edward that the business case was stronger than ever. “We knew this is what the market and players needed,” he said. “Our target consumers were telling us they were extremely unsatisfied with the available product. So it was time to go to the next stage.” For over a year Edward had bankrolled the project, but it was time for investment. Te initial funding round garnered €2m, an impressive figure based on Ihre Consulting’s presentation alone, but surely a tiny sum for the launch of an online casino brand? “Our player acquisition strategy, on the back of Ihre Consulting, was always to market the Codeta brand through our affiliate contacts,” said Edward. “It’s a very efficient market acquisition strategy, though we know we can’t build a brand solely through affiliates. We’ll need to employ traditional marketing methods too, but not in the initial phase.”
According to Edward’s initial investment budget, utilising Ihre Consulting’s network of affiliates will take Codeta into profitability, with a second round of funding to follow a positive response from the market. Codeta is hoping to establish its position in various markets, enabling its marketing investment round initiative to grow
“Table gaming players are very
different from slots players. Our players look at themselves as highly skilled, similar to poker players, whereby skill and
performance evokes a sense of pride. We believe that
associating yourself with a
brand that provides that type of product will be a game- changer. Having worked at
PokerStars, we hope that we can create something similar with Codeta.”
more quickly. “Table gaming players are very different from slots players,” stated Edward. “Our players look at themselves as highly skilled, similar to poker players, whereby skill and performance evokes a sense of pride. We believe that associating yourself with a brand that provides that type of product will be a game-changer. Having worked at PokerStars, we hope that we can create something similar with Codeta.”
Referencing PokerStars, Edward believes that Codeta can build a tightly focused Live Casino player base that will identify with the brand and establish a loyalty to both the brand and the site. Te trick will be to ensure that Codeta remains just as sniper-like in the future, rather than adopting a shotgun approach that we’ve seen all too often. “PokerStars has been hugely successful in terms of poker, but once it began to add sports-book and casinos, it began to challenge its credibility,” commented Edward. “Codeta is to remain true to being a global table games casino. If there’s one thing that we’re super-confident about, it’s that we won’t do anything unless the research proves we can achieve it. Utilising our partnership with LynxEye, we won’t offer any product that could jeopardise our original positioning. Any short- term temptation has to be tempered against long-term brand success.”
Having been at part of the industry for over a decade and a half, it’s an ambition fulfilled for Edward to work with the very best software providers to launch his own casino, including Evolution Gaming, NetEnt and EveryMatrix. “We are building on the EveryMatrix platform, using their APIs, having built a dream team of people we wanted to work with,” said Edward. “We picked Another Agency to create the physical website at a very early stage. When we conducted the quality and player studies, they sat with us in every interview and workshop and were included in the process throughout. When we approached the production and design, they knew exactly what they needed to do.”
Codeta went live on June 7th, 2016 - its mission to give table games a new online home and become the world’s leading site for Live Tables Games.
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