A closer look: Gala Interactive

Having bucked the trend for bingo, Gala Coral is mounting a challenge to be the market leader on mobile across other verticals

Having identified the mobile channel as ripe for growth of its core verticals of bingo and casino Gala Interactive has invested heavily in order to establish itself as one of the market leaders in what is becoming an increasingly difficult market to enter, succeed in and predict.

Countless mobile casinos have launched and found it difficult to differentiate themselves, while bingo has struggled as a vertical altogether. Shrugging these concerns away, Gala, with the help of its interactive division it has tasked with the bulk of its technical development, has bucked the trend for bingo and is eyeing even further growth.

Itay Fisher, product and technology director at Gala Interactive, has led the technical development at the operator and now wants the firm to become a market leader by pursuing a relatively simple strategy.

Fisher joined Gala Interactive in June last year after just less than five years in various roles at software supplier Playtech, where he worked on project delivery for Playtech licensees Betfair, Paddy Power, Ladbrokes and Gala Coral. He immediately set about establishing a number of teams, but most notably a new mobile department that has become important for the group’s strategy.

“We have a mobile and tablet first strategy here, everything we do across our brands takes into consideration our mobile and tablet users first,” Fisher says. Gala isn’t alone in taking this strategy though, with multiple operators staking their claim to be mobile first. What sets Gala apart however is the “unique relationship” it maintains with Playtech – benefiting from Fisher’s links with the company to established a “ring fenced resources model”.

Most of Gala’s developers are full-time Playtech employees working under Gala management. “This is allowing us to enjoy the best of both worlds, we get Playtech development expertise but with the product and operation vision of the Gala Coral group.”

The development expertise brought in from Playtech is part of a wider investment into the channel, with Gala Interactive championing it as a huge growth opportunity for the firm. The last six months has seen considerable investment in not just development resources, but in support functionalities that Fisher states as being crucially important to good performance. User experience expertise is high on the agenda, while creative teams have also been assembled to assist with in-app design.

Developing the product to the best of your capabilities is, as many operators are beginning to realise, only half of the battle. Research and analytics has become an area in which many gambling firms are beginning to invest, with some going as far as outsourcing such capabilities entirely. Ladbrokes’ deal with Chelsea App Factory has been designed to just that, while Colossus Bets recently signed Element Wave to handle the analytics side of the business.

Gala Interactive however does this all in-house. “We are constantly doing market and competitors analysis to each of our brands,” Fisher says. “Our core product is similar to galabingo, galacasino and gala.se but we are fitting the offering according to the specific brand.”

The benefit of doing all of this in-house is the ability to ensure that the teams collaborate as and when required, with little obstacles in place to prevent work from taking place. Fisher stresses the importance of ensuring that the right people are in the right place at the right time, but more important of the right calibre. “We have uniquely skilled employees across our bingo, casino and marketing departments, and the product team is working hand in hand with the relevant brand teams, who are experts in their fields,” he says.

Having spent considerable time, effort and resource in bringing together the right people into the right environment, it would only be right for Gala to expect a return on their investment.

Proof is in the pudding

Stopping short of revealing precise details, Fisher confirms that the initial return on investment for Gala has been impressive. “We’ve more than tripled our revenue from mobile and tablet since last year,” he says.

New products have been released, the most recent of which being a new Gala Bingo iPhone app with various improvements on early versions of the product. A new user interface has been designed to make it easier to roll out new features to the product as and when they roll off of the pipeline, and user feedback has been used to trim down and improve on various pages in order to make sure customers aren’t being turned off by reems of text or untimely bonus offers.

The aforementioned pipeline is also continuing to produce results, with more products due for release later this year. New iOS and Android apps for the firm’s Gala Casino and Gala.se brands are to be released, both of which will be optimised for smartphone and tablet devices, but Fisher remains coy on what else could be about to emerge. “Obviously we have a few more tricks up our sleeve, but the market will have to be patient and wait and see,” he says.

One of the biggest success stories Gala has had has undoubtedly been its bingo business. Much like poker, the vertical has struggled to capture its audience’s imagination in recent months and many operators have reported it to be in trouble. Ian Burke, the outgoing CEO at Rank, said last year that the group’s Mecca Bingo brand had to invest a substantial amount in advertising just to stay level and have subsequently gone as far as to instigate a complete overhaul of its online and mobile offerings in an attempt to stem the tide.

Gala however has seen strong growth in its bingo business, aided by various product launches. The smartphone app released last month follows a new tablet app released in December of last year, designed with the help of Playtech developers after it struck a deal with Playtech’s bingo software supplier Virtue Fusion. The launch was purposefully timed to coincide with the Christmas rush for tablet computers, and one that has been enormously successful.

Given its target audience, some have suggested that bingo lends itself better to tablet users searching for a second screen experience however Fisher disputes this, arguing it not to be restricted to any one vertical. “It’s not related to bingo specifically,” he says. “We clearly see that players are spending more time on tablet than on mobile and a session is significantly higher.”

“Players are using their tablets as a second screen while they are watching TV at home, so we clearly need to be giving them a better user experience.”

Lofty ambitions

Despite the success the latter half of 2013 and first half of 2014 has brought, neither Gala nor Fisher is standing still and has lofty ambitions for the next year. “We’re not targeting to be second best,” he says. “There is only one option for us, and it is to be a market leader across all brands.”

The operator wants to push on from the position it currently finds itself in and look to grow its market share even further, looking to attain and cement a market leading bingo operator position in the near future.

In order to do this, development at Gala Interactive has been ramped up throughout the early months of this year and the operator is continuing to recruit. Further improvements are currently being made to user experience – a key subject for the operator – with a particular focus on reducing customer journeys one click at the time. “Our customers is everything and we are investing in UX improvements and simplifying player experiences,” Fisher says.

Another key issue for Fisher and Gala Interactive is improving its apps from a performance perspective. “It’s still a big issue and sits high on our agenda for the near future,” Fisher says, stating that loading time for gambling apps is still significantly slower in comparison to what’s available on desktop. The subject has continued to fuel HTML5 vs native application debates with little evidence of a cure-all being on the horizon, but Gala remains intent on tackling it.

Rather than look inward and emulate what other gambling companies have achieved, Gala is instead looking for inspiration outside of the sector and has targeted two sectors in particular. “We’re steering learning from sectors such as retail and banking, which are clearly doing a lot of great things when it comes to personalisation and simplification.”

Having invested significantly into the platform, Gala Coral is beginning to reap the dividends of a clear and concise mobile strategy. With the teams and platforms in place and a product pipeline said to be healthy for the rest of this year, the operator seems well placed to mount a challenge to lead the bingo and casino verticals on the mobile platform.

Fisher openly admits that further improvements still need to be made, but having identified these and dedicated resources to rectifying the situation Gala Coral could find itself in a very strong position on mobile indeed. The balls would certainly appear to be in their court.