Pulse

Live Casino: a new breed of gambler

By Lewis - 10 June 2020

G3 speaks to Richard Hogg, CCO at BetGames.TV, about the challenges of developing and distributing live gaming products under global lockdown and the future of the live casino sector.

Can you tell us about BetGames.TV and its offering?

BetGames.TV is a unique, innovative and pioneering live dealer betting games supplier that has made significant and substantial strides since its establishment in 2012. We are based in Vilnius, Lithuania, with games broadcast from our head office. The company has sales and marketing teams spread across the world boasting a global reach with clients and consumers in Europe, Africa, Asia, CIS and Latin America.

The live broadcast business model provides games that are distinctive, and vibey. The highly presentable dealers are professional and wellversed in the products. The games take place in well-designed studio settings, including themed backgrounds such as golf courses and bank vaults.

BetGames.TV offers a wide variety of fun, entertaining and structured risk and reward outcome-based games. The live games have the look and feel of a live sports match with odds changing during games having analysed impressive data showing that a policy of market adaption and business model-reassessment can be beneficial to all service providers in the sector.

How has BetGames.TV adapted to the Coronavirus pandemic? Were there contingency plans in place?

As a 24/7 business which relies on live dealers, we always have measures in place to prevent certain outcomes or problematic issues, be it with staff or hardware and software systems. Obviously, with this pandemic we had to gear it up a bit to a point where we have full redundancy capability that means in effect we have a totally new team of people who are trained and capable who are in an uncompromising environment ready to come in if needs be.

If the virus started attacking existing staff, we could then move a team in that can fully replicate the existing team which can also be based on site as the studio we have is big enough to contain that.

We’re fortunate that in Lithuania cases are minimal. As of now, we don’t have any cases within the office and we’re quite confident it’s contained and have put in place specific measures to minimise staff interaction. The studios are only for one person at a time so we can change the shift rotas, so nobody crosses paths. We don’t believe it can be spread within the studios itself with the new measures in place.

If it did, we do have contingency plans for a worst-case scenario, but we wouldn’t want to put our stuff to work in that environment. We are quite fortunate that our staff requirements are probably a lot less than traditional live dealer that have many tables, often operating 10 to 20 tables of blackjack and roulette at any one time. We only have one table per game and that’s how our system operates so our staff requirements are minimal in comparison to a traditional live dealer operation.

How is the live casino sector responding to the temporary shuttering of land-based venues?

It is important to note we don’t class ourselves as a live dealer product. We like to be known for presenting betting options based around casino style games, presented to customers in a live environment. Many of our clients have an online presence but some in South Africa, Africa and Eastern Europe also have retail offerings.

We have always worked with our clients to provide a solution for both, and have been actively helping our clients to migrate players online and away from the retail space. Player spend more with us online, where operators enjoy a 24/7 relationship with the customer. Due to recent events, this has been enforced in many places, and we have seen an upturn in online which has helped to replace the revenues from the retail environments.

How do you think retail operations will respond? Will retail return to the position it has currently vacated in the marketplace?

As we know, the UK has struggled for a long time with retail and I agree that the retail customer is a dying breed. These retail punters are typically 60 plus and traditional retail shops have struggled to recruit a new breed of gambler. In many of the more emerging markets we operate in, we know customers are going into retail outlets because they don’t have access to communications networks that have the capability to stream our product onto their phones or have PC’s at home.

We know there are territories where retail will remain totally relevant, but we are also seeing a lot of migration from those players to online as well. We have always been desktop/mobile first and our retail presence has always been in support of our online presence.

How do you attract players across the casino and sports betting verticals? How crucial is this cross-selling given the ongoing pandemic?

When we first started developing our games, they weren’t in competition with anything else that was existing on the marketplace. Nobody had created games like ours, so the priority was how to educate people on the benefits of our offering.

We are not just another live dealer casino, operators will never see the returns from our games that they get from sports bettors or casino players, but we fit somewhere outside of those two. It has got synergies with sports betting, casino and poker but our games give them a new dimension in terms of players spend less but play for longer and they enjoy the experience they are getting.

I’m talking to new clients now because sports betting has temporarily disappeared, yet I’m conscious to mention to them that it is not a casino product. What I mean here is that unlike casino, players won’t have the same propensity to lose larger sums of money or their account balance quickly – it’s all about the retention and engagement factor.

These games don’t give the same result as sports betting and casino games so it’s a great opportunity for people to really understand where our games fit in the grand scheme of things. Further to that, regulators will understand that these are the types of games where people will get enjoyment, bet small, play for a long time and potentially win big – without the risk of losing it all immediately after.

Would you say the simplicity of the games is key to your marketing strategy and player engagement?

The gameplay is simple. It’s well known that whichever game you are playing, the rules are simple. Be it red or black, higher or lower, a pair or three of a kind, you are betting on fixed odds outcomes so as soon as we make a connection with the player, the model works. There are no free spins, bonuses or complex game types. The only barrier is getting that initial connection and an awareness of our offering.

Do you assist clients marketing your games?

We advise on game placement, margins, and bet limits, and provide them with all the marketing material we have gathered over the years. We are helping a lot of our clients ensure they position our content in the right way in the appropriate places on their sites.

Some of our customers aren’t familiar with online strategies of marketing their products to maximise customer acquisition and retention so we try to help them understand how best to utilise our product for those processes.

We’re fortunate that in some jurisdictions BetGames.TV as a brand is well-known. If you go into a South African betting shop, you will see the BetGames.TV area. That wasn’t something we did consciously, it is something that just evolved over time. In certain jurisdictions, such as the Baltic states and the former CIS states, we will go to retailors and they will say they are familiar with the brand. Ultimately, we work closely with our clients to make sure they get the best out of the relationship.

BetGames.TV recently signed an agreement with Amelco. Could you tell us about the partnership?

Amelco has proven itself to be able to attract large tier one organisations with its sports betting platform. As they enter new markets and look to increase their offering, we believe BetGames.TV has one of the most proven and successful services operators should be adding for their customers enjoyment. With Amelco adding our content, they can penetrate markets such as South Africa where the public demand our product.

Going to market in the region without BetGames.TV is unheard of as South Africa’s retail and online offerings all have our products. Our branding in the region and is very strong and instantly recognisable, as it is in other regions across the globe.

In return, BetGames.TV understand Amelco has a reach which can benefit ourselves in taking our games to players and regions we have not entered yet. BetGames.TV has also invested heavily in licensing and compliance so Amelco can be assured we are the right partner for their platform and client base.

What qualities do you look for in a partner?

BetGames.TV has been doing what is does for eight years now, growing from a small team to a fully-fledged operation with over 160 members of staff. During this time, we are fortunate to have worked with many operators and software suppliers across the globe allowing us to gather intel to optimise our games and all-round service.

Our relationships with our partners are of paramount importance to us and this has been rewarded by their loyalty to us as a supplier. Of course, this would not be worthwhile on both sides if the revenues were not achieved. Given our product was unique when we launched it, we faced an uphill battle taking it to market.

With partners who truly believed, we were able to reap the rewards. Thanks to our team’s hard work, we are live on over 1,300 websites and in over 1,700 retail outlets across four continents, so we are proven as a product.

When talking to new clients and partners we look for a similar belief from them that we have seen from our prior successful relationships. A willingness to understand our product and present it to the end user in the way we know works best is key for success.

What regions do you see having the greatest potential for live betting games in the future?

Every region has the potential for our games. Some regions just don’t know it until they try it. The ones who are first in seem to reap the benefits. Our recent entry into the Polish market with STS has seen all the other operators in the region subsequently approach us.

Similarly, when we went live in India, we were not sure how customers would receive us. We need not have had concerns since the product was very well received and we now see this market as one of our markets for the future.

I think our spend low, win high opportunities of our games suits the Indian player base perfectly. Prior to the outbreak, we were in discussions with several operators, specifically Betway, 10Cric, and Dafabet, about integrating our games onto their platforms.

Once sports were off the table, these discussions were fast tracked it and within a matter of days of going to market, 10Cric were already in contact to say how the product could be a game changer. This is a sentiment that has been echoed by many of the operators we’re dealing with.

What innovations should we look out for and how has COVID-19 affected those plans, if at all?

We are looking to add new features – we have already added subscription bets whereby you can pay in advance much like we do with lottery games as well as system bets (accas) across our games. In addition, we are now looking to add tournaments and jackpots to assist in player engagement.

In this time of credit card bans and financial concern, the low spend games are a win-win for the operator-regulator relationship. We are looking into further localisation options for different markets by researching new types of games which resonate with specific markets and demographics.

We are constantly on the lookout for new technology advances so we can deliver our product more quickly, efficiently and resiliently. Alongside out content road map, we are always looking to expand. All our games are licensed and approved for multiple jurisdictions including the UK and Malta so we’re constantly on the lookout for strategic partnerships.

In terms of COVID-19, our losses from retail have been more than replaced by increases in online activity. We have seen our online player count go up substantially and across our service of over half a million customers, bet counts have gone up by over 15 per cent and that is including the losses that we’ve taken from retail. Online operations have seen the average stake decline slightly but an uptake in the number of bets placed.

Richard Hogg has been involved in online gaming since 1999 in a career that has spanned three decades and three continents. He began his career in Asia with the launch of a series of sportsbooks, before moving to the UK market to develop the Superodds brand which went onto acquire Centrebet. He has also held roles as CMO for Betting Promotion, as well as more recently with Miomni in the US. As CCO at BetGames.TV, Richard focuses on providing the company’s award-winning live content throughout Europe, Asia and Africa.