Opinion: William Hill's James Curwen on the potential of live casino
William Hill's director of gaming innovation discusses the future of live casino within online gaming and explains why it's been such a success for the operator
Three years ago William Hill broke all the rules for live dealer gaming. We built the ï¬rst dedicated casino environment within one of the largest and most prestigious providers, Evolution Gaming.
At that time other suppliers and operators were surprised with the way William Hill wanted to go and were unsure whether the beneï¬ts would outweigh the signiï¬cant costs.
I fondly remember my desk being covered in carpet samples, uniforms and wood panels and, best of all, the look on the FD’s face when I said we’d need £30k for the female uniforms as I held up a gold corset. What I can’t tell you is the response he gave me!
It took a fair amount of trust (and investment) when we launched WH dedicated live dealer that year, but the gamble paid oï¬ and in 2015 all the tier one operators have dedicated studios and staff being provided by either Evolution or Playtech.
Live Dealer has been one of William Hill’s big gaming success stories and we’ve seen tremendous growth. Many have asked how we’ve achieved that success and I believe it’s been an accumulation of lots of small enhancements that have contributed to a phenomenal overall impact.
Great performance
Although being ï¬rst to market with our studio was probably the biggest driver of growth there are some other key reasons behind the success of our live casino product:
⢠Dedicated casino environment & staff – exceeding land-based standards with a unique view of the dealers;
⢠All dealers trained by Mayfair experienced management to give exemplary on-table customer service;
⢠Salle Privée high stakes rooms with dedicated VIP dealers, personal limits and outstanding service;
⢠VIP Hosts exclusively available to our high staking customers, providing bespoke live support, 24 hours a day.
The result of the above has been great performance, and since 2011 we have seen an uplift in turnover of over 100% with gross win up more than 125% and net gaming revenue up greater than 150%. And I believe everyone now understands the importance of Live.
It’s clear that all operators have bought into the importance of live casinos online but many are dependant on the suppliers to tell them what to do. Only through great relationships and the sharing of ideas will the next leap forward happen.
Live casino customers are consistently the most valuable but the hardest to recruit. Thankfully none of the big land-based casino operators have been able to truly tap into the omni-channel live customer. Maybe Rank will be the ï¬rst to recognise their value as the CEO and Digital MD are ex-Hills.
The long term potential?
We have formed what I believe is the strongest live dealer team in the industry. The team in Gibraltar all spent two years in Riga within Evolution’s environment running the dedicated studio and training the William Hill dealers, VIP hosts and pit bosses. They bring between them over 30 years in the land-based gaming industry and are conï¬dent we provide the world’s best service.
We’ve also just launched our new live Vegas room which runs directly off our proprietary platform and will integrate into our new William Hill Innovation Platform giving seamless bonusing and live offers.
The success of Vegas has been new content and Live needs more new games to engage the customers. Suppliers need to think again if they imagine having 10 roulettes and 30 blackjacks is enough to take on the land-based marketplace.
Finally we’ve moved into the mobile world for the foreseeable future. Over 60% of our core customers are on mobile, and live dealer was built for bigger screens and larger devices. Mobile optimisation will be key over the next 12 months and new innovations including screen sharing to your 60-inch TV from your mobile device will be where suppliers and operators will be focusing to bring the very best live experience to the customer.