LeoVegas co-founder: Casino is the new battleground
Gustaf Hagman, co-founder and director of LeoVegas, explains how the mobile casino was quick to capitalise on the shift to smartphones and tablets and why casino is the new battlegroundÂ
We went live in January 2012, so we are barely two years old, but we could see a change in technology and a change in user behaviour with people using their phones more and more. This was especially the case in the Nordic region. Apple was taking over the smartphone market and it was clear that mobile was the future. The shift to mobile has been so fast and nowadays there is even more than one, possibly several, tablets in homes.
We are a mobile-first casino, unlike the other dinosaurs who create their website first and then try to create a mobile casino by squeezing all of the website onto it. We did totally the opposite by making the mobile casino first, which is a different mindset. Itâs quite amazing that we have been able to take a big market share while the rest are just standing there. Other casinos havenât done their job in the mobile sector. We started growing the business in Sweden, Norway and Finland, and we have entered the UK a few weeks ago. This market is picking up really quickly for us and is now the second largest market after Sweden.
When new technology comes in, so does new user behaviour. We have around a 50-50 split in terms of traffic coming from mobile and web. We also exist on the web because thatâs where most of the affiliate traffic goes. In the evenings and towards the end of the week and weekends we see a lot of play on mobile phones and tablets. There is also mobile play during the day and clear to see when people are waiting for something or perhaps on the Tube early in the morning or playing during their lunch breaks. These people tend to play for a shorter period, but they play more often than those on the web. But it terms of money wagered, web players probably spend more. Also, mobile players donât play until they are out of money like they do on the web. On mobile, they play until they are out of time and they then have money when they come back to play.
We used to put 80 or 90% of our marketing towards iOS players. Thatâs because we used to see a big difference between iOS and Android traffic, but Android has been picking up since last autumn. Of course, we are web-based so it doesnât matter what kind of device a user has â we work just as well on iOS and Android. In the near future, though, we will have an app, especially for the UK. iPhone users are still more valuable to us, but the cost to acquire an iOS player is a little bit higher. If you can buy an Android customer for a little bit less then maybe it doesnât matter if the lifetime value of that customer is not as high as one on iOS. So itâs the acquisition costs, not just the value of the customer.
When you type casino into Google 200 come up, but I donât think that people need to have more than maybe two or three mobile casinos. Itâs like weather apps â you might have a two or three, but you donât need ten. So if you have downloaded a casino and itâs performing well, you keep playing.
The major sportsbooks have had live odds on mobile for quite sometime. Probably about 50% of sports betting is through mobile because itâs so instant. But their casino numbers will be far behind sportsbook. Casino is clearly going to be the area where the battle will be in the future because thatâs where you make the most money. And casino is so good for mobile, itâs a perfect match. A couple of months ago, I read that by around 2015 we will see that money spent in the mobile arena will be the same as the web. In some countries you can already see the numbers are close to each other. So with the smartphone revolution happening around the globe, we plan to follow this and move on from country to country.