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Category Archives: Social Gambling
From Vegas to the Valley – Mobile Gam(bl)ing Uncensored Meeting Coming November 12
Mobile Monday Silicon Valley reminds San Franciscans and influencers in the Valley to come check out the free mobile gambling focused conference next Monday. With mobile monetization continuing to be a major focus in the world of gaming and gambling, many of the top minds in the field are meeting to host a panel to discussion these topics. With many industry professionals, including Mobile Monday, betting on the business of betting, they invite members of the community interested in these topics to stop by and join the conversation.
Hosted at Adobe’s San Francisco office, the panel of speakers includes industry leaders and veterans in the real-money gaming space, including:
- Chris Griffin, CEO of Betable
- Carey DiJulio, General Manager Self Aware Games & Casino Products at Big Fish
- Gerard Cunningham, CEO of Koolbits, former President of Betfair
- Wynn Wu, Playstudios, former Director of eStrategies at Wynn Las Vegas
The event is free to attend, so if you’re interested, RSVP here. Read below the break for more details on the event.
Betable Forms Partnerships to Compete with Zynga
Betable Ltd has reached agreements with three social-gaming companies that will uses its platform to directly compete with Zynga’s entry into the ring. Bloomberg has full coverage of the story.
Slingo Inc, which is a maker of virtual slots and bingo titles, will use Betable’s shiny new U.K. gambling license and technology for future games. Slingo attracts roughly 54 million users every single month. The other companies that have partnered up with Betable are Digital Chocolate Inc and Murka Ltd.
Digital Chocolate was started by Electronic Arts, Inc. and Murka is the maker of the popular game “Slots Journey.”
Last week, Zynga formed a partnership with bwin.party to launch U.K. real-money gambling. But Betable was first on the scene with its partnership with Big Fish Games, which recently launched its first real-money gambling game. They’re interested in pressing that homefield advantage. Betable believes it can streamline the licensing and offer developers a framework to instantly get things running on social networks.
Betable’s new partner Slingo believes that the development of online operations will benefit he company. “Our goal would be to transition online players into gamblers of our content,” Slingo CEO Rich Roberts said in an interview with Bloomberg. “Betable gives us an opportunity to move a little bit quicker than we could on our own.”
Online gambling has been legal in the U.K. since 2005, and has reached a market value of over $2 billion.
The Staggering Growth of Online Gambling
On this lovely Friday afternoon, Chipist is giving you some weekend homework. Your assignment is to study the numbers in the below infographic and remind yourself of exactly what kind of industry the world of online gambling represents. Created by the folks over at Poker Sites, the graphic states that in a sense, the growth of online gambling has actually surpassed social media itself.
There was a 32 percent increase in online gambling in just a single year. One year saw an entire third more people get into the game. Social media only saw a 4.5 percent growth. Now, you’ll need to take that with a grain of salt. Social media already has a titanic number of users, so a 4.5 percent yearly increase still constitutes a significant number of people. But it’s exciting to see that online gambling grew by such a huge margin as well.
The graphic also takes a look at the U.S. market. We already know the U.K. market is thriving, but we’re more interested in our own shores. Coming in at 63 percent, lottery play is the most popular online gambling activity. I’m wondering what kind of numbers we’d see if online poker was regulated by the federal government?
Click the infographic for a full view.
Click for full resolution.
Zynga Makes First Move Toward Real-Money Gambling
Just because Zynga didn’t purchase the OnGame Network doesn’t mean it didn’t have a trick up its sleeve. Today the company announced an exclusive partnership with bwin.party that marks the company’s first move into the holy grail of real-money social gambling. At the moment, the plans seem to suggest that the real-money operations will only occur in the United Kingdom, which falls in line with industry predictions that Zynga would not announce such a plan for U.S. customers.
This is pretty big news, and it will be exciting to see how this announcement impact investor reception of Zynga’s third quarter results. Just yesterday, Zynga axed a whole bunch of folks, and this announcement is feeling like a bit of a bounceback.
It’s worth posting the company’s press release in its entirety because this is a historic industry development. Check back later for more news.
SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 24, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Zynga (Nasdaq:ZNGA), the world’s leading provider of social game services, and bwin.party, the leading international real money gaming operator, today announced an exclusive partnership to offer real money online Poker and Casino games in the UK market. Zynga’s UK-based RMG service and bwin.party will launch RMG products including Poker and a full suite of 180 Casino games in the first half of 2013, which include table games such as slots, roulette and blackjack.
“Bringing together Zynga’s expertise in social gaming with the top international real money gaming operator is the best way to create the highest quality gaming experiences for our players in the UK,” said Barry Cottle, Executive Vice President, Corporate and Business Development, Zynga. “Partnering with an established leader like bwin.party is a strategic and prudent way for us to enter a key RMG market while giving local players the real money games they’ve been asking us for.”
“Today’s announcement is another example of our success in leveraging our assets through strategic blue-chip partners,” said Jim Ryan and Norbert Teufelberger, Co-CEOs of bwin.party. “Zynga is the world’s leader in social games with hundreds of millions of active players worldwide and a significant player base in the UK. We are delighted to have been selected as their chosen partner for this important step in their evolution, and hope to expand our relationship into other products and markets.”
Zynga’s real money UK poker customers will join the bwin.party dotcom player liquidity pool — getting the benefits of playing on the largest regulated poker network. Zynga’s UK-based RMG service will be powered by the established operating platform, software, and related support of bwin.party.
In addition to the full suite of Casino and Poker games, Zynga’s UK-based RMG service will also leverage the company’s world renowned entertainment brand, FarmVille, to offer local players the first-ever, online FarmVille-branded real money slots game.
Zynga’s UK-based RMG service will operate under bwin.party’s Gibraltar gaming license.
The Two-Screen Experience for Social Betting and Entertainment
The “second-screen” experience is a concept that is gaining ground in sports and entertainment. Fantasy football’s popularity has increased the usage of mobile devices and laptop computers during game day, and chances are you’ve watched a game on Monday night with friends gripping smartphones or keying laptops perched in front of them.
Matthew Cullen, president and chief business development officer of RocketPlay, the company which recently launched the sports betting Facebook game Sports Casino, feels that the two-screen experience allows fans to feel closer to the action. In an op-ed on Social Casino Intelligence, Cullen wrote that RocketPlay developed Sports Casino to offer players a “more in-depth experience when watching sports and predicting the outcomes—something beyond simply placing a single, isolated bet about the final outcome of a game.”
A recent Forrester Study found that 85 percent of tablet owners use their devices when watching TV. It’s a concept that AMC capitalized on during its latest season of Breaking Bad, and you’d better get used to hearing the term “two-screen experience” before getting your zombie-killing groove on in a new episode of The Walking Dead. As an even timelier example, news outlets are reporting on the trending topics and social media mentions that occur in real time during the Presidential debates. Perhaps during tonight’s debate, we’ll get another amusing sound-bite out of one or both of the candidates, and you’ll likely hear about it because folks will have their smartphones and tablets in their hands while watching.
It is a sound business strategy to incorporate the two-screen experience in a number of entertainment ventures, and RocketPlay’s Sports Casino is a smart choice for fantasy players looking to augment their sports-watching experience. At the moment, Sports Casino is an exclusively browser-based game, but the company is hard at work on producing a mobile app. Still, the browser experience works just fine for football fanatics. As Cullen writes:
“Given that almost every sporting event is now televised live, there is nearly an endless amount of content for sports fans to watch, enjoy, and potentially bet on. That creates limitless opportunities for Sports Casino, and we believe we have created an unrivaled second screen option for Facebook—and eventually mobile users.”
At this point, the kind of two-screen experience for which Cullen is hoping is hampered by the fact that real-money gambling has yet to come to Facebook in the U.S. As lobbyists and entrepreneurs seem to agree however, total legalization in this country is just a matter of time. Given enough time and effort, it is certainly possible that the two-screen sports betting experience will become almost as popular as watching the game itself.
OSGA Examines the Attraction to Social Gambling
In a session at the G2E Global Gaming Expo titled “Social Games: Soaring Technology,” guest speakers pointed out how social media gaming is a fluid way of introducing customers to free games which could then transition into real-money games.
This holds true for social media sites and land-based casinos. As Hartley Henderson writes for OSGA,
“Right now real money online gambling is illegal in the U.S., but if the casinos can get players to play for free on social media sites then when any laws prohibiting online gambling are amended or repealed these casinos need simply to “flip a switch” and the casinos have hundreds of thousands of potential players for their real site.”
Henderson writes about the curious allure of social media gambling, and how 120,000 players flock to Zynga Poker on any given day. This is almost 2.5 times the amount of all other real money poker sites. You’ve got thousands of players participating, many of whom are paying small-time cash for virtual chips.
I’m not going to bother trying to figure out how process isn’t actually real-money gambling. I don’t see myself understanding how exchanging how actual money for virtual money … and then gambling it isn’t a form of actual, no-BS online gambling. Perhaps it is? Perhaps there are hardened folks in Congress who view it as such and wish it outlawed? I don’t really know.
Anyways, Henderson’s article about the attractiveness of social media gambling offers great insight into this topic. Required reading for anyone interested in this industry. Head over to OSGA and check it out. As he concludes:
“It certainly isn’t for everybody and personally I couldn’t fathom playing any gambling game without a vested interest but as most marketing departments would suggest, the customer is always right. And in the case of our cab driver, if he prefers to spend time and money on Zynga rather than at a Las Vegas casino who are we to question it?”
BragBet Social Betting Pursues Real-Money Gambling
The Dublin-based social betting platform BragBet is partnering up with bookmaker Boylesports Online so that its users can place real-money sports wagers.
BragBet was founded in 2010 and recently created a competition at Euro 2012 for groups of friends to get together and place virtual bets. The concept inspired CEO Phil Riordan to enhance the social experience with real money gambling.
“Following the success of our Euro 2012 tournament we’re delighted to be working with Boylesports to allow real-money bets,” he said. “Together, we will allow anyone to create a team, throw money in the team kitty and then enjoy some banter and a few bets while following their favourite sports online and on mobile.”
Boylesports Online views the marriage of social gaming and social gambling as an enormous growth area. With Facebook users flocking to Texas Hold ‘Em and other startups pushing the envelope for real money gaming, it’s encouraging to see a respected social betting platform like BragBet move toward real funds. Go get ‘em, boys!
Will Zynga Unveil Real-Money Gambling in the U.S.? Odds Don’t Look Good
Zynga CEO Mark Pincus
OnlinePokerReport has a prediction. Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus isn’t going to unveil any kind of real-money online gambling plan at the October 24 quarterly earnings call. Blogger Chris Grove writes that the U.S. market simply isn’t strong enough yet to warrant such a move. Delaware and Nevada are pushing ahead toward state regulated online gambling, but that’s just not enough at this time. And international markets?
“The first problem Zynga faces getting ‘GambleVille’ off the ground is the lack of a viable target market for real-money gambling in the status quo. The European market is so competitive that IGT recently up and walked away from Entraction, a poker network that it paid over $100 million for only a year ago. Emerging markets such as South America and Asia present substantial regulatory and legal challenges that are anathema to a publicly traded company like Zynga.”
But as Grove argues, the primary challenge Zynga faces is not just the tenuous nature of online gambling in the U.S. but rather the changing face of casual online gambling, which caused the total number of active players in Zynga titles to drop precipitously last year. Grove concludes:
“It is this cocktail of political uncertainty, internal confusion and more pressing priorities that will leave Pincus unable to lay out a path that Zynga can follow to real-money gambling prominence and profits in the quarter ahead.”
October 24 is coming up soon. Perhaps Pincus will surprise us all?
Bally Technologies Grows Portfolio with New Partnership
Three cheers for Connecticut and Pennsylvania! Bally Technologies announced an agreement to provide its iGaming platform to Mohegan Sun’s casinos in both states, adding to Bally’s growing portfolio of online gaming sites for casino operators.
Bally is a strong leader in slots, video machines, casino management, interactive applications and server-based systems for the gaming industry.
“We’re thrilled to continue our successful partnership with Bally Technologies,” said Mitchell Etess, Chief Executive Officer for the Mohegan Tribal Gaming Authority. “Our goal is always to provide our guests with the best gaming and entertainment offerings, and we believe iGaming is the next step in fulfilling the demand for regulated online play when customers aren’t able to be on property. Further, we believe this exciting new offering will entice new players to visit our properties and experience all that we have to offer.”
Bally Technologies has been steadily adding to its partnerships over these last few months. In August, the company partnered with High 5 Games and last month Bally reached for the stratosphere through an agreement with American Casino and Entertainment Properties, LLC.
“We are proud of our long-term strategic partnership with Mohegan Sun,” said Bally Technologies’ Chief Executive Officer Richard Haddrill. “This partnership will demonstrate the advantages of having an open iGaming platform, which allows for best-in-class content.”
Bally is a company that dates back to 1932 and is based in Las Vegas. Where else?
