BETSARACEN
athlete and associated party wagers e.g., the coach can’t place a bet. Arkansas did this the right way, not only with the 51 rule but they do everything they can to prohibit any game fixing. In Arkansas you can bet both college and pro, and we’ve really tried to double down on that. For example, the Arkansas girls softball team developed quite a cult following so we had tremendous interest from Arkansas to develop softball lines. That’s what Arkansians wanted to wager on so we did it, we developed girls softball lines on a sports betting app.
You mentioned you knew Chris beforehand but how did the relationship between Saracen and Global Payments come about? CS: Global Payments has done a lot for us in the traditional gaming space. To me, they are the brand leader, they are the placeholder for casino payment processing. Our relationship with them began with our slot floor. We’ve got an 85 square foot slot floor with about 2000 slot machines, 45 table games and Global Payments is our partner with everything on that. It was just a natural extension that we would move to them with what I consider Saracen’s e-commerce platform, our state-wide mobile app. Even if we weren’t using them on the floor, I think we would’ve ended up with them in the mobile space simply because of their reputation, they are a fortune 500 company and that is for a reason.
Global Payments is the payment provider for Saracen’s gaming floor in the bricks and mortar casino. Most companies specialise in one side or the other, so what is the actual core of the Global Payments company? CJ: Relative to the gaming space, I think we are the only true omni-channel provider in the space. Omni-channel being defined as helping the consumer be able to participate in commerce across any channel. We are a dominant provider in the mobile sports betting world where we supply services to all of those players, likewise we supply services to more than 400 brick and mortar casinos across the country. What makes us unique in the ability to provide the hardware, software, and services to drive commerce is our platform enables the consumer to register once. When they register once, they can use that profile anywhere they need to be to gain access to the funds they’re looking to move. That does a variety of things especially when you think about the BetSaracen app. Saracen casino is building its brand locally and the patrons are there participating on the gaming floor. As they sign up and enrol, the enrolment is useful going into the online and mobile sports betting space. What that does is eliminate the friction that typically kills an app. It is no different to the friction that kills e-commerce transaction, the more keystrokes you require, the higher the cart abandonment. We really focus on the delivery of a guest experience, whether that is in the physical casino or in the online world by minimising those keystrokes and a frictionless access which meets with consumer expectations. CS: We can market ourselves to pieces, come up with creative bets and brand ourselves as Arkansas to the
core. Likewise, people can come to the app and be wowed by bet options, the look of the interface and TV ads but if the deposit and withdrawal experience isn’t up to standard, they will look elsewhere.
How long has the app been running and how big do you anticipate it becoming? CS: The app launched about a month ago, we started in early May. We are on the cusp of 10,000 unique users which we’re very pleased with. Arkansas has a great basketball and baseball team, but this state is a football state first. In August and September, college football season, I think we’re going to see new users and numbers. We are pleased with how things are going but this is the calm before the storm. To prepare for August we’re doing everything we can to finetune things e.g., a biometric addition to the app.
We use a hybrid of two states for our projections, Tennessee, and Louisiana. They both took over a year to launch, and we launched in three months. If you look at numbers in Tennessee and Louisiana and adjust for population, you’ll get close to where we are. Louisiana launched while football was being played, they had the Super Bowl rolling and they had 3% of the adult population downloading to place a wager. When there is enough must-see sports TV, we’ll do those numbers. With 10,000 users in a sports desert, having been open less than a month on the app, we’re very pleased with our numbers. The casino business has a very known clientele, generally they are a little bit older and favour slots, which is our primary business, and they tend to be female. This audience is younger and 80-90% are male. It is an important addition because it is a new addition and a new growth area for us.
GIO AUGUST 2022 7
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