World
World Gaming Executive Summit 2014
the
of
future
the
gaming
industry
Glance into the future with
10 top gaming executives
Produced by:
Have you ever
tried to ask
a gaming exec
what the future
will look like in
50 years?
Well, if you don’t ask then you’ll never know! And the answers we got from Richard Flint,
Johan Styren, Roger Withers, Tim Shepherd, Vicenc Marti, James Berkeley, Robin
Le Prevost, Justin Franssen, Joseph Cushieri and Wulf Hambach were actually
incredibly insightful.
As each looked into their respective crystal balls murky images of increasing acceptability
and availability of gambling; an age of halcyon regulation and a more personalised gaming
experience seem to slowly come into focus. Tech innovations such as google glass being
adopted and then what else, who knows? This is a fast moving industry! But one thing will
always stay the same: humans will always play games, humans will always gamble!
Check out what our 10 top gaming executives had to say in detail over the page.
We also asked them how to create a killer gaming platform and what their top experience of
gaming has been. No one is giving out trade secrets here, but if you want to understand the
essence of what has got these guys to where they are today, turn over the page!
Richard Flint
Managing Director,
Sky Betting and Gaming
What are the three
components of a killer
gaming platform?
At the core of all great gaming experiences is
something that gets your heart going, that gets the
pulse up. Mixed with that is the sense that you’re using your own ability and the chance to use your
own skills and knowledge to influence the outcome. Lastly, there has to be a certain level of ease of
use: it has to be a concept that is accessible and where you can be up and running quickly. Football
betting on all of the best platforms offers all three of those elements, as does poker on a few of the
leading platforms.
What do you think Gaming industry will look like in 50
years time?
I find it hard to imagine what the industry will look like in five years, let alone 50, but I think
gambling and betting is something that has been part of human nature forever. I think that
betting and gaming will have increasing acceptability and availability over time, and while the
devices that people will use will change, everyone will have a device on them with which to
bet or play casino games at any time of their choosing.
Allied with those changes will be the ongoing role of regulation for the industry, and an onus
on operators to behave in a socially responsible way. I think that there will be fewer operators
than there are at present and that there will be consolidation to achieve benefits of scale, but
that many of the operators that dominate the industry in 50 years time are unlikely to be the
same ones that dominate it today. Look at any industry 50 years ago and the list of major
players then is rarely the same as the list of major players now.
What is your favourite game or best gaming
experience you ever had?
Personally my favourite experience would be - not unusually, I expect – when I’ve placed an
accumulator bet before an afternoon or evening of football, and then get to see how many I’ve got
right as things go forward. Also, going to a great racing festival, particularly Cheltenham, is a great
experience, and the combination where you bet on your mobile then get to be there in person for the
event itself is a really exciting one. I also love poker, though, and would happily while away a couple of
hours playing slots, particularly the older, classic games like Rainbow Riches or Cleopatra.
www.terrapinn.com/wges-2014
Johan Styren
CEO,
LeoVegas
What are the 3 biggest challenges of tapping in to the
mobile market, and what opportunity does it bring?
The challenge to most operators is to let go of their traditional way of looking at the product, of
looking at marketing, and looking at payments, etc, and to really look at it from a different, mobile
perspective. But the opportunities are much greater. Marketing sources have been declining on the
web but mobiles are people’s second screens when they’re not watching the adverts, which is when
they grab their phones, so TV ads that view while they have their phones in hand are very sensible.
Also, with mobile you can reach people at any time of the day, and as people tend to want to play in
the early evening but don’t tend to be online at that time, targeting people via SMS makes sense. You
can also time marketing with specific events, such as during half time during major football matches,
and you can also target people in specific locations and could, for example, target people who are
inside a casino and consequently know want to gamble and tempt them onto your platform as an
alternative. The opportunities are even more obvious if you’re running a sportsbook.
What do you think the Gaming industry will look like
in 50 years time?
With that time span I really hope that regulators are very different and that there is a pan-European
regulation for gaming so that the opportunities are very much more similar in different countries than
they are today. It might take the better part of 50 years, but I think that it’s a realistic hope within that
time. The next major device to affect the industry could be something like Google Glass, but a lot of
technological change can happen in that many years, so it’s hard to predict.
What is your favourite game or best gaming
experience you ever had?
My favourite game is one called Real Rush. It’s a great mobile game, it’s easy to get going and you
understand the concept very quickly. It appeals to me because it has that feeling of the old arcade
games, the very early console games of the early 1990s when I grew up. It really reminds me of the
Nintendo Entertainment System: limited graphics but its own unique appeal.
www.terrapinn.com/wges-2014
Roger Withers
Retained Advisor,
Playtech
Do legal operators need to be protected from overregulation? Does stringent regulation make the black
market more appealing?
Regulation once encouraged the ‘dot com’ market in that regulation rarely keeps up with
technological development, and that initially allowed betting to take place in an environment that
isn’t covered by regulation to the same extent as traditional models. But regulation will always catch
up. I think new regulation will encourage a ‘new dot com’ environment of operators, and in Italy, for
instance, in a year’s time I think you will no longer have unregulated operators at all. But what do you
do in the Far East where there is generally no regulation and online gambling is a grey area?
Governments always have to weigh, when they are introducing taxes in a new area, where tax
avoidance becomes tax evasion because the risk of doing so becomes worthwhile. That’s what high
taxes generate. I’m sure that brighter people than me have worked out exactly where the level of
taxation is such that it would encourage a new tranche of unlicensed companies, but the established
operators will never want to operate in an unregulated market.
What do you think Gaming industry will look like in 50
years time?
50 years! No idea! But I think that we will find that gaming will be increasingly personal. Retail gambling
will probably diminish to the point of not being relevant, or if relevant, will be relevant in a different
way. People will have gaming available to them in a different way on their phones, and that will make
bricks and mortar gambling venues less attractive – people will still be gaming, but doing so on their
own device. We are already well into a world of portable gambling, which is a huge challenge to the
regulators: if you and I have gambling in our pocket, the only way to regulate it is to do so with the
providers, not on the location as at present. But I struggle to predict the next 10 years, let alone the next
50 years: this is a fast-moving industry.
What is your favourite game or best gaming
experience you ever had?
Firstly, I should say that I’m not a gambler – obviously I will have a bet if I go to the races, but gambling
doesn’t get my endorphins going. My favourite must be Las Vegas, as in some ways it’s so awful that it’s
beautiful. You are surrounded by people gambling as a social experience, and on a busy night it really
buzzes. On a rainy Monday night, by contrast, it’s an awful place. I’ve been to some of the casinos in
East Asia and they’re a bit colder, less fun. It’s not that
Las Vegas is ahead of the game, but it’s about the
atmosphere and the guilt-free buzz of the place.
www.terrapinn.com/wges-2014
Tim Shepherd
Executive
Director,
Tim
Shepherd
Silver Heritage
Executive
Director, Group
Silver Heritage Group
What do you think the Gaming industry will look like
in 50 years time?
I think that casinos will proliferate across Asia Pacific with one or two specific exceptions such as
Indonesia and Hong Kong, and that each metropolitan area within each country will house a casino
open 100% to foreigners and locals or, in poorer countries, open to locals who can demonstrate
wealth. No one group will dominate, as larger players will not venture into smaller markets. Instead,
smaller markets will cooperate or collaborate with biggers players to experience the ultimate gaming
experiences in Tokyo, Macau and Phuket. Online gaming will be legalised and controlled by the same
players who own the casinos, in partnership with Government. Meanwhile certain race tracks will
survive and flourish, but soccer will come to dominate all betting activities. Underground operations
will always remain and be strong, however, largely based on credit betting, be that on casino or
sports.
What is your favourite game or best gaming
experience you ever had?
For me it would probably have to be at the Grand Lucayan resort in Freeport in the Bahamas, which I
visited a number of years ago. It was a wonderful gaming experience: very relaxed, I played low stakes
black jack for an extended period, bahama mamas and everyone was on holiday. There is nothing like it
in Asia Pacific – more is the pity! I would really love to think that I broke even on that day, but I doubt I did!
www.terrapinn.com/wges-2014
Vicenc Marti
CEO,
Akamon
Is social cannibalising land-based?
Land-based and social have more in common than people sometimes think. In a land-based
environment people go there for an entertainment experience and the motivation of winning real
money is a secondary issue, and social casino is the perfect complement to that.
What are your top tips on localising your mobile,
social and land-based offering?
Akamon has been founded on the whole principle of localisation, and on making culturally relevant
games. Most operators have focussed on Anglo-Saxon games but we focus on games that are culturally
relevant for southern European and Latin American markets. Most operators work on the basis that
the highest earnings can be found in the US, UK and Australia, and haven’t bothered with the rest of
the world. We could see that not every market could be served in the same way, however, and that
has benefited us. But for operators, I would use a simple checklist. First, Make sure you know what
local content looks like. What does a poker game look like in that market, for instance? Your product
has to match people’s expectations. Second, think of local marketing. It wouldn’t be sensible to give a
Thanksgiving promotion in Brazil, for instance, as people there won’t even know what Thanksgiving is.
Third, think about your local Distribution. Fourth, think about your local support. Do you have people with
the right language skills and cultural knowledge to support your players? Fifth and finally, think about
your relationship with local payment systems.
What do you think Gaming industry
will look like in 50 years time?
Human beings will always play games. Since we came
on to the face of the Earth we have played games and
have used our technology to improve them. The thing that
is different now is that the pace of technological change
is so fast. This offers exciting possibilities, for instance
Facebook’s acquisition of Ocolus [Oculus VR, the virtual
reality business), and the possibilities offered by virtual
reality. We will always respect the tradition of games
that have been played for generations, however, and
that is what Akamon does: we never change the rules of
traditional games, only adapt them for new technologies.
What is your favourite game or best gaming
experience you ever had?
I lived in South Korea for a year and a half in 2004-05, and that was the first time I went into a
Patchinko parlour and saw how people were mesmerized by the play. That was very impressive - and
not just because of the great Japanese beer I was drinking! Also, I remember the first time I played
Space Invaders as a kid: I thought my world had changed. The fact that you could then, even in a
very rudimentary technology, immerse yourself in a world of battling alien spacecraft inspired me to
new ideas about the whole notion of what a game could be.
www.terrapinn.com/wges-2014
James Berkeley
Managing Director,
Ellice Consulting Ltd
What do you think Gaming
industry will look like in
50 years time?
I think you’re going to see a huge separation, with at the top end of the scale a small
number of multi-platform, multi-offering operators which will be like the department
stores for gaming, offering everything you need under one roof: sports betting,
casino, etc etc. At the other end, you’re going to find small businesses that
are super agile and that could be specific to a particular vertical or offering
but that either way, have something very distinct in their offerings. Their
success will be based on the value that they can provide to customers and
to the excitement that they can generate for them. It’s about maximising value
for the customer in the broadest sense. The operators who are in the middle
ground, however, will be eaten up: they won’t have the agility nor the scale to create
sustained growth, and will be consolidated into the larger businesses.
What is your favourite
game or best gaming experience
you ever had?
I was involved with the owners of Special Venture, a horse that
in the mid-80s opened at 16:1 at the start of the race. The
odds fluctuated before the event but the upshot was that the
horse won and that we won over £25,000 on the race, which
we took away in a black bin liner at the end of the night. That’s
not pocket change even now, but in those days it was even
more. I was one of the people associated with the trainer and
the owner and, to put it in simple terms: I planned that coup, which was a great feeling. That all took
place on the Easter Monday of 1987 at Towcester Race Course in Northamptonshire (England), and
though there were other races for Special Venture to come, that one in particular has a special place in
my memory.
www.terrapinn.com/wges-2014
Robin Le Prevost
Director of eCommerce Development,
Alderney eGambling
What are the top lessons
learned from the new
entrants and next steps
in to the US market?
I think we have learned that waiting for
the Federal answer was wrong, and that
progress will be state by state instead.
The second thing we have learnt is
that it will be expensive as each state
opens individually, and subject to its
own individual rules. But the intrastate agreement between Nevada
and Delaware [to share liquidity] is a
torch bearer that shows the way forward. Those
two territories together are still too small for it to offer
major scale, but I hope that the lessons that other states can
draw will be that the games are going to be more successful with
better liequidity, which means that the the players will be happier, and more tax
dollars are generated for the state. Finally, we have learnt that the Americans will favour
the American companies that have bricks-and-mortar presences in the States, so it will be
incredibly difficult to enter the market except as a technology partner. European businesses have to
position themselves accordingly.
What do you think Gaming industry will look like in 50
years time?
At the core of it a lot of things will be exactly the same. A lot of the games we are doing will be exactly
the same. Technology will be so different, though, and that has to change the gaming experience. 3D?
Holographic? Who knows?
At the end of the day the industry will be dominated by the huge brands, and I think it will be difficult for
small operators to exist in that markets space and find the funds necessary to invest, and it will be very
difficult for them to challenge the conglomerates.
Lastly, will we still interact with human beings in the same way? My children prefer browsing online shops
to going into physical ones like I do, and there are reasonable fears that the casino industry doesn’t
engage young people as it should. But of course there could be a kickback where people value the
human interaction as much as or even more than we do today.
What is your favourite game or best gaming
experience you ever had?
Playing blackjack in Vegas. For small stakes. Microscopic ones, really. My favourite casino is probably
the Winn.
www.terrapinn.com/wges-2014
Wulf Hambach
Partner and Co-Founder,
Hambach & Hambach
What does the current legal landscape look like for
gaming in Germany?
The “Wild Wild West!” Due to the way legislation has developed within Germany, the system is
incoherent and inconsistent when it comes to the issue of online gaming. On the one hand, the
State of Schleswig-Holstein permits online gaming and on the other hand, throughout the rest of
the country, operators are being told that their operation is illegal, too dangerous and is banned
through the implementation of the Interstate Treaty. As a result of this dichotomy, current operators
are extremely frustrated. I believe that the reason for such a dichotomy stems from political pressures
rather than legal ones.
At the end of the day it is vitally important to have a consistent system which does not cause such
a divide within the country. Germany has a large and fast growing economy, and there is a great
potential to develop the online gaming market further. However, if the provider expects the system to
change, then they need to push their interests on the government in order to do so.
Despite the incoherency within the country on the issue, however, Germany still has a huge market
for online gaming and the current situation does allow for opportunities for operators from abroad to
conduct business within the country.
What do you think Gaming industry will look like in 50
years’ time?
At present, online gambling is regulated State by State and is based on the respective laws developed
within each country. This is causing a sense of division throughout the globe on how gambling is and
should be regulated throughout. I believe that countries all over the world will unite to form a coherent
and homogenized system with the result being that a universal gambling law will be implemented.
There will be a consolidated “world law” or the equivalent of “world treaties” between various countries
which will endeavor to regulate and unite how online gambling is governed throughout the world. With
modern technology, there will always be a way to gamble online and there will always be opportunities
for organizations to develop online gambling. A unification of gambling law throughout the globe would
rectify the current disharmonious and different systematic approach taken by individual governments on
the issue of gambling.
I also think that individual casinos will come together to form a similar type of gaming style to that of
Macau and Las Vegas. Casinos will form a type of “city of gaming” instead of just being individual.
What is your
favourite
game or the
best gaming
experience you
have ever had?
Despite my profession dealing
with gambling law, I do not
gamble. As a lawyer I need
to be objective and unbiased
towards the industry.
www.terrapinn.com/wges-2014
Joseph Cushieri
Executive Chairman,
Lotteries and Gaming Authority Malta (LGA)
How successful have the move to online lotteries
been successful in bringing the younger player into
the game?
From a regulatory point of view, I believe that distance communication has created a trend whereby
traditional lottery games, which are played by an aging population, have become more appealing
and accessible to the younger generation. Added to this the other contributing factors attracting the
young are linked to instant gratification, better quality visuals, technological advancements including
mobile apps, and higher and linked Jackpots which augment the risk appetite of all players alike.
What are your top 3 tips for lotteries looking to move
into the online space?
Firstly: go mobile. Tablets and mobiles are overtaking traditional PC internet usage.
Second: advertise on the right social media
Third and finally, change the form of conventional prizes so as to appeal to the young.
What do you think Gaming industry will look like in 50
years time?
Trying to predict the future leads me into thinking how I would like to see the gaming industry
reposition itself in the years to come. From a regulator’s point of view, I believe that we need to instill
certain principles from now so as to pass them on to the future generation, and that is what the LGA
is doing.
Secondly, as a regulator I need to assess what decisions we need to take today as a catalyst for
the best result in the future. I believe that the Gaming industry will be faced with a better political
backdrop rendering a harmonised set of EU rules more feasible and forthcoming.
Looking at the historical developments and the current trend I believe that the diversity of gaming
regulatory regimes in force and the evolving industry dynamics render it difficult to survive through
such regulatory and operational challenges.
I also believe that there will be more administrative
collaboration between member states at a higher
level, and an increase in performance based
regulation. Finally, I envisage a growing digital
economic merger between non-EU Markets and the
EU markets on gaming transactions and agreements
covering this sector.
What is your favorite game
or best gaming experience
you ever had?
I seldom play, however when I do play I get
motivated to spend some quality time with my
children playing digital games of skill at home.
www.terrapinn.com/wges-2014
Justin Franssen
Partner,
Kalff Katz & Franssen
What is the current legal landscape for gaming in the
Netherlands?
A complete overhaul of the Dutch gaming market is imminent. Firstly, the draft remote gaming bill
is due to go to Parliament this summer. Second, there will be a complete overhaul of the lottery
market. Basically, this will end the lottery oligopoly and a transparent allocation of licenses has been
announced by the government. On a final note, Holland Casino will lose its monopoly. In 2015/2016
we will see major change both in the land based as well as the remote space. The Netherlands is
facing drastic changes in the gaming market which leads to major investment opportunities.
What do you think the Gaming industry will look like
in 50 years time?
Roughly ninety per cent of all worldwide gaming experiences now are still land-based, and I think in the
future remote gaming will take up a much larger portion of the market. I also predict that some of the
blue chip remote operators will have acquired some major land based operations.
What is your favorite game or best gaming
experience you ever had?
I used to be a casino dealer dealing blackjack and roulette as a student, both for Holland Casino and
on cruise ships. Probably the best experience was when I took all the money I had made on a cruise
ship and entered a high stakes private table at a casino in Monte Carlo, playing on a table with a
group of grumpy Italians who thought I was a tourist and didn’t know basic strategy. I soon started
an unprecedented winning streak that seemed to last for hours, whilst my Italian friends all seem to
lose consistently. I later made the “classic” mistake of drinking some cocktails and blew most of my
winnings to be honest. Nevertheless a good story to tell to my grandchildren some day.
www.terrapinn.com/wges-2014
World
280+
attendees
World Gaming Executive Summit 2014
83%
Our interviewees will be joining over 280 gaming executives at the World Gaming
Executive Summit on 8 – 10 July 2014 in W Hotel, Barcelona. If you want to learn
from some of the top gaming executives and find out more about what the future
holds for the industry, you need to be there in July.
The World Gaming Executive Summit is the only forum in the world where the
industry’s elite CEOs from both the online and offline community gather annually to
share ideas and debate their strategies in an open forum.
Director
Commercial
Director
Senior
Executive
50%
of participants from
operators
13+
Attendees by job title
CEO
boardroom/executive
level audience
CIO
CMO
hours of dedicated
networking
1-2-1
partnering
70+
speakers
3
days
33%
33%
15%
9%
6%
4%
For more details about the event visit our website: www.terrapinn.com/wges-2014
1 BIG IDEA
=ROI
World
World Gaming Executive Summit 2014
www.terrapinn.com/wges-2014