Analysis: Social and real-money convergence on the rise
Firms such as bwin.party and Mr Green are leading the way, but what can real-money gaming firms gain from the social world?
Real-money gambling firms such as bwin.party and Mr Green have backed social gaming after identifying a steady growth in the convergence between the two sectors, but to what end?
Bwin.party has supported its social gaming unit Win extensively, investing 40m in the Tel Aviv-based studio which has funded the development of its popular social casino title Slots Craze since its launch.
The group’s most recent release is Sportster “ Bet and Win, a social sports betting game released on Facebook in collaboration with Top Eleven developers Nordeus. The game makes full use of branded content that bwin.party has licensed, including the names and IP of several notable football clubs such as Manchester United and Real Madrid.
Although still in beta, a full launch is said to be close and an advertising campaign “ which will again make full use of bwin.party’s branded content “ is also in the pipeline.
Bwin.party has made its expectations for the division quite clear – it expects a return on its investment and it expects the business to generate meaningful revenue moving forward. But what has begun to emerge is a different relationship, and one that could prove to be equally as fruitful.
Earlier this week Win launched its first real-money slots game. Teddy Pets, the most popular social casino title on its Slots Craze app, was made available on bwin.com and partycasino.com in the UK and plans are afoot to expand the roll-out across Europe.
Regarding the move as an “important leap forwards”, Win CEO Barak Rabinowitz said the launch was the result of a combination of Win and bwin.party’s “unique resources to break new ground in the global egaming industry”.
With additional launches to come from the business unit in the future, Win has become something of an operational test bed for potential casino games, allowing bwin to gauge what’s likely to gain traction and make adjustments to them before launching them for real-money customers.
Bwin.party is not alone in having vested interests in social gaming companies, though. Having initially helped fund it, Mr Green wholly acquired Spin Tower Casino developers Social Thrills last month, however CEO Mikael Pawlo has far bigger plans for the business than to use it to test prospective casino games.
“I wouldn’t have acquired the company if it was just a test bed,” Pawlo said, speaking to eGaming Review earlier this month. “They have vast experience in terms of social igaming and they built a beta version of Spin Tower, but that has some challenges when it comes to technology,” he said.
Pawlo has pledged to help develop the company further having identified its potential in the convergence of social and real-money gaming. “We’re just in the beginning of the beginning of the intersection of social igaming and real-money gaming, so there’s much more to come,” he added.
Social gaming has proven its value as a source of revenues in its own right. The industry is now big business and Gamesys elected to shut down its real-money gaming Facebook apps while keeping its pure social gaming apps up and running. With social proving to be so profitable, perhaps convergence is no longer even necessary.
With the Point of Consumption tax set to affect the bottom line of every UK-facing business, diversification into new but similar sectors may be a wise strategic move. Convergence is on the increase, but may accelerate in the coming months.
Whether it’s to promote synergies between individual business units or just as an investment with a potentially attractive return, the benefits of involvement with social gaming firms could become too beneficial to ignore.