News

Is Investing in Online Gambling Still Viable?

Published

2 years ago

November 30, 2020

Photo by Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash

It is not hard to realize why many have noticed the online gambling industry when it comes to investments. With growth over 224% in the US, it is hard to miss such a boom. But, many people question if investing in online gambling is still viable or has the train passed for the biggest winners.

The answer mainly depends on if the investor is planning to get rich quick or to establish him or herself in the industry. For the former, regretfully the peak has already passed if doctors and governments are to be trusted.

But, if you want to make a high-quality business that will bring regular growth and pay regular dividends, the so-called iGaming industry is the place to be right now. Even if the growth of the market slows down, it will not stop.

This is because the three main comparative advantages of online gambling will still be present even after people are allowed to visit brick and mortar establishments:

Low regular overhead
Access to global markets
Ensured advantage

And the last point might be the most important if you are a concentrated investor. The superior stability of online gambling compared to regular casinos makes it much easier to plan your business, as well as borrow against the company.

Don’t Expect 2020 to Repeat

Investing now and expecting to triple your investment by this time next year would be very unwise. While substantial growth is possible, some normalization of the curve is to be expected.

By all accounts, a vaccine against the current pandemic is expected to arrive in early 2021, with the effects taking in by the spring of next year. This will mean that fewer people will spend time indoors, thus less time gaming on phones, tablets, and computers.

Still, most of the current user base is expected to remain and new users will join in as the word of mouth spreads globally. This makes a perfect chance for someone, especially if offering niche-specific services, to swoop in and fill that market.

Enough Players for Everybody

There is no territorial competition when it comes to online gambling. With the number of players entering and the demand for online gambling rising, the competition is very fair and very open between casino operators. This makes a very relaxed atmosphere if you are a new investor in the industry. Of course in some markets like Australia the players spend more on average than in markets like Romania so competition there is a bit more saturated.

But, keeping players on your platform as well as standing out will be difficult. Finding modes to increase your offering and improve your services will be crucial if you want to remain relevant and growing.

High-Entry / Low-Maintenance

With some new legislation that will be affecting both Malta and Curacao, the industry will probably become even cleaner. But, the licenses will become more expensive, which may dissuade smaller investors from chipping in.

Namely, the old Curacao license, usually taken out by new operators, will now cost roughly $120.000, which is a steep increase from the $35.000 which was the price so far and will be until January 1st, 2021.

But, for those who have the funds, this is where major expenses end and where income begins. As the costs for operations, security, services, and technical support all scale with the level of business, you will rarely find yourself bleeding funds in any way.

Generally, if you can make an arrangement with game developers for pay-to-play terms, you can have a very secure income with minimal expenses and only a basic payroll staff.

New Curacao License

While still being valued as a license that ensures trust and safety from the operator, Curacao has been seen as the ‘second-best’ for a very long time. This is because the rules for obtaining, as well as oversight, was much more relaxed than for the Malta GC license.

But, with the new deal made between Curacao and the Dutch authorities back in Europe, the value and price of this license will rise quite a bit.

For those who had the papers this year, the ~$85.000 increase won’t be an issue, but it might be for new operators looking to open an online gambling business in 2021.

Malta is the Gold Standard

A license provided by the Malta Gaming Commission is still the golden standard when it comes to online gambling. The rules now planned by Curacao have been enforced in Malta since 2009, and even new players are familiar with the significance of having such a document.

But, for many operators, this type of clearance is not necessary. If you don’t want to market towards EU players and don’t plan on predatory tactics in the first place, you may use the Curacao license and save some money initially.

Later, when you have your business established and your investment relatively secure, you can always take the Malta license as well and try to reel in some bigger whales that are hiding all over the world.

News

Rightlander partners with Awin to accelerate growth into new markets

Published

2 days ago

June 28, 2022

George Miller

Affiliate and advertising compliance experts, Rightlander.com have announced an overall product enhancement to support their growth into new markets including affiliate Networks and Platforms, Digital Agencies, Forex, Telecommunications and Utilities.

The move follows Rightlander’s experience and success in the iGaming vertical, where a number of parallels can be drawn between customer challenges, marketing regulations and partner guidelines. These include the need for honest marketing as well as customer acquisition channels that marketing partners derive traffic from, such as websites, social media, search engines and email.

The new portal has been developed with input from leading brands in their sector such as Awin to help clients effectively review and rectify marketing infractions detected by Rightlander.

Alex Parmar-Yee, UK Strategy Lead at Awin, said “ We chose to work with Rightlander to enhance our ability to carry out publisher audits based on the requirements of individual advertisers. It was important to have a partner who was able to accommodate the wide variety of needs from our clients relating to areas such as content accuracy, offer intelligence and exposure monitoring. The tools provided have allowed our client teams to carry out important housekeeping more efficiently, so that even more focus can be dedicated to strategy and account management.”

New solutions have also been introduced to help save clients time, reduce risk and grow their partnership programs with confidence. These include Screen, which allows clients to evaluate the online content of new affiliate applicants as part of their suitability checks, and Verify that helps clients to ensure that their promotions are live on authorised sites and linking to the correct landing pages.

This is in addition to Rightlander’s core solutions that help clients to Discover undisclosed content and continuously Monitor partners for accurate and compliant marketing worldwide.

Rightlander’s new modular portal allows clients to segment and prioritise results by business objective and marketing channel (websites, social media, PPC ads, video streaming, Telegram and email) and offers a comprehensive list of API integrations to deliver data to a client’s systems.

The solution offers targeted scanning by frequency (daily, weekly, monthly) and compliance issue (e.g. required T&Cs or prohibited text) per URL along with cutting edge technology to reduce false positives, minimise time spent checking infractions and streamline the remediation process.

Ian Sims, founder of Rightlander.com, said “Having the opportunity to fine-tune our product with such a high profile partner has been fantastic. The evolving nature of affiliate marketing and the emergence of influencers, coupled with an ever-increasing array of regulations and advertising marketing guidelines in different consumer verticals has heaped a huge compliance workload on marketing teams.

“Awin put Rightlander through a 6 month trial period before selecting us as their marketing compliance partner and we’re delighted that our monitoring software has saved them so much time and helped them to resolve so many more compliance issues.”

News

SCOTT THOMAS TEAMS UP WITH CASINO GURU TO RAISE AWARENESS OF PROBLEM GAMBLING

Published

2 days ago

June 28, 2022

George Miller

SCOTT THOMAS TEAMS UP WITH CASINO GURU TO RAISE AWARENESS OF PROBLEM GAMBLING

Scott Thomas TV personality, podcaster, the managing director of The Social PR, and co-founder of Food4Thoughts, has recently joined forces with Casino Guru to promote responsible gambling and raise awareness around safer gambling initiatives.

The successful British entrepreneur, social media influencer, and TV personality, Thomas opened up on his podcast, Mancs on the Mic, with brothers Adam and Ryan Thomas, about his personal struggles with gambling addiction at the age of 21, a period which he described as a really dark time. “I was gambling away student loans. I was borrowing money off friends, I would even wait outside the casino in the morning for it to reopen … I was constantly trying to chase whatever I lost,” confessed Thomas during a series of videos created for the campaign.

Overwhelmed with the amount of feedback he’s received after discussing the issue for the first time, Thomas and Casino Guru, the world’s largest online casino database and an established gambling authority, have collaborated on a problem gambling awareness campaign.

Casino Guru has been working towards better and safer gambling for years. Pushing online operators to become fairer and more responsible, solving thousands of complaints of players who feel deceived by an online casino, and providing honest reviews of over 4,400 online casinos are just some of the examples of that.

This mission is also reflected in many responsible gambling projects and initiatives they launched to date, including the Global Self-Exclusion Initiative and the Casino Guru Academy. However, Casino Guru has recognized that it’s getting increasingly harder to spread awareness of problem and responsible gambling and reach the desired target group: despite providing a plethora of high-quality content related to responsible gambling, the younger population simply doesn’t read it.

According to Statista, 39% of Britons aged 25 to 34 gambled in 2020. What’s more, around 25% of Britons in the same age category have reported to engage in some form of online gambling within the four weeks prior to being surveyed. In other words, one in four Britons in this age bracket are playing in online casinos. And since this is the generation that can most effectively be targeted through social media, Casino Guru‘s collaboration with Scott Thomas was a natural next step.

The campaign ran on Instagram, which gave it a big potential to reach large audiences, since Thomas’s Instagram account currently has close to 1 million followers. Both parties ultimately hope to help not only current and future people at risk of problem gambling, but also friends and family members of someone exhibiting problem gambling behaviour.

“I was in a mess at the time, and it massively affected me and my family,” Thomas confessed in one of the videos. “I’ve teamed up with Casino Guru to try and raise some awareness around this subject because clearly there’s a lot of people out there who are still struggling,” he added. “Even if it helped just one person, this Casino Guru awareness campaign has done its job. Because I wish I had a video like this when I was going through my struggles.”

Apart from Thomas’s personal story of gambling addiction, the series of videos tackles topics such as how to know if someone has a gambling problem, how to gamble responsibly, or how to approach someone who has a gambling problem.

As Daniela Kianicová, Public & External Relations Lead at Casino Guru, explains, “This awareness campaign is the first of its kind – it marks the first time that a company operating in the gambling industry uses the power of a mainstream influencer to communicate the risks of problem gambling to young adults – and we’re very proud to have the honours.”

With gambling becoming more and more accessible and widespread, it is vital that the risks of problem gambling as well as responsible gambling principles are communicated to as many players as possible. And because different generations consume content in different ways, finding new and creative alternatives to reach audiences of all ages is paramount to success of such campaigns.

News

The 5th AskGamblers Awards Winners Are Here!

Published

1 week ago

June 20, 2022

George Miller

The 5th AskGamblers Awards Winners Are Here!

After several months of anticipation, on a magical night on 16 June we finally revealed the names of winners in the 5th AskGamblers Awards.

Drum Roll, Please!

After more than three months of anticipation and wholehearted support from our players, we finally know the names of the winners of the 5th AskGamblers Awards! The race was tight throughout the process, but the names you helped us choose genuinely deserve to be the next laureates of one of iGaming’s most prestigious accolades.

Without further ado, here are the winners in the fifth edition of AskGamblers Awards: