Sunday 16 December 2007

Casino Gaming/gambling/betting format(trust) war: "on vs offline"

--- this happened last week.. This blog thing is taking much longer for me to send out.. ---

I had a lovely lunch with an ex CEO of a poker network, didn't ask him if I can use his name, maybe I should have as I and no doubt him have nothing to hide. But just in case, I shall not reveal unless I got prior agreements.

Saying that, I didn't thought I would want to blog about this, I still can't believe how people can make time to blog, I certainly feel like its a chore.. But I promised myself that I would persist.. Although very sporatically...

Here it goes...

We had a lovely lunch and touched on various occassion where our remote gaming gambling sector will go. (I should only touch on the business stuff.. )

I'm soooo surprised and pleased that unlike many contempories of our sector, he totally agrees with me regarding the future developments of our sector:

Namely when some external event(s) happen, most likely a G8 nation start regulating the remote gaming properly, then most major household brands will jump in the bandwagon and the present "big name online" brands might be blown out of the water... By likes of online establishments like Yahoo/google or offline casino household names like Hurrahs/Cesars, Venetian, etc.

However, we stopped agreeing when he thinks offline and online gaming would diverge, rather than converge due to dramatic difference in gaming experiences (social vs solitude, fast vs slow, not dressed up vs dressed up) general expectations etc.

He reckons that online (I would call it remote, namely via internet, mobile or TV) has so much more different experience that its a totally different addressable market.

I would agree in so long that he is STILL talking about existing gaming gambling audience! I'm referring to the majority of population who don't yet do casino gaming, gambling... They would still need to be convinced/educated via online/physical or via TV means.

Therefore I would argue that the real and biggest opportunity is for those that can bridge the trust & confidence gap (maybe by brand, physical location, or sheer fact that a trusted celebrity already do it!).

Consequently, its more likely for brands that has BOTH on and offline real estates rather than pure online/remote play...

No time to check/double check grammar.. Do give me your thoughts.. And yes, I might be wrong, but its what I believe firmly on so far.

Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device