William Hill ramps-up live casino offer

William Hill will launch an upgraded Vegas live casino room along with a brand new Mayfair-themed room within the next two months as the operator continues to build its live casino portfolio.

Speaking to eGaming Review, William Hill live casino operations manager Richard Atkinson said the new rooms, which will be in addition to the recent launches of a Macau casino and live ‘squeeze’ baccarat, reflected the growing importance placed on the live casino vertical at William Hill.

“We are growing at 20% to 30% every year in actives and the player value is very strong in comparison to the other verticals,” Atkinson said.

“There is so much focus on live casino right now – it’s been the real success story of 2015 and we intend to keep going in 2016 with new games and new rooms,” he added.

William Hill’s live casino products are powered by Evolution Gaming, products Atkinson described as being “head and shoulders above the rest”, although conceded that rivals had started to close the gap.

The operator currently has live baccarat, which launched on 3 December, on an exclusive basis until the end of January and Atkinson said the squeeze element of the game – where cards are slowly revealed to increase suspense – has proven popular with some of its more high-staking customers.

“It is definitely attracting a higher value of player,” Atkinson said. “We soft launched it at the start of the month to make sure it fully worked, which it does, and now we are starting to push it to our existing players and also letting our lapsed customers know that we have something new.

“At some point soon we will open it up to external marketing where we can have more focus and target the players we want to play,” he added.

William Hill’s casino team is currently in a period of flux with the firm having recently lost head of live casino and Vegas Kevin Kilminster to supplier giant Playtech while director of gaming innovation James Curwen has left for Gamesys.