20 May, 2024 | Asia Focus 2024

The six Ps of iGaming: 2024 Asia edition

Gambling Insider contributor and iGaming marketing expert Alex Czajkowski gives us an updated 2024 Asia edition of the ‘Ps of iGaming’

Three years ago, I wrote about ‘the Four Ps of iGaming.’ They haven’t changed in their basic truths, but the nuances certainly have, especially in Asia. The list of vital ‘P’ words has continued to grow. And with each, a prognostication. Time to revisit them.

Product

The thinking here was ‘you have to have blackjack for North America, Baccarat for Asia,’ etc. This is still true. However, players are now looking for specific game suppliers. Two years ago, we surveyed Filipino players expecting RealTime Gaming, the dominant provider of ‘eCasino games in eCafes’ across the country to take significant market share.

The company came in second after Play ‘n Go, but with 90% reporting no ‘known supplier preference.’ Last month, in a survey of a similar database of Filipino players, preferences were clear. In total, 88% had a distinct choice; Jili Games were preferred by 47% followed by PG Soft at 22%.

The same was seen in Vietnam (PG Soft led at 39%, Jili at 35%). If you don’t have Jili or at least the secretive Taiwanese master PG Soft, rethink your market entry (Medusa II is one of my personal favourites).

Operators should lead with a choice of game providers on the homepage. Are Western firms doing this? Furthermore, you better have a search bar on your casino homepage. A majority of players in every country surveyed, East and West, look for specific games. Don’t have my game? On to the next.

Processing

‘Preferred methods for depositing need to be taken into account depending on the jurisdiction. In the US, it’s all about credit cards. Canada – Interac, Thailand – bank deposits, Germany – Klarna and India – UBO,’ we wrote. Still true…. And yet the providers themselves are changing to become highly localised, from TrueWallet in Thailand, GCash in the Philippines, to Momo and ZaloPay among others in Vietnam. All with zero crossover between them.

Well-heeled VIPs in many markets (like Japan and several geos in the west) still cling to their Visa and Mastercards, but preferred payments for the masses are getting increasingly localised. This trend will only continue (see Pix in Brazil and Indonesia where GoPay, Ovo, Dana, LinkAja and Jenius are battling it out).  Speed of payouts remains a vital consideration, as there is no tolerance for slow-paying sites. Nor should there be.

Personalisation

The industry is still behind on this. AI-generated odds for individual sports bettors based on that player’s past choices and performance? It’s coming, but it’s not here yet. Even ‘Good morning, Alex’ is lacking in most comms.

That’s pretty basic. Perennial western CRM favourites like Optimove and the relatively recent Fast Track are working hard to enter the Asian market with their solutions; but their Western pricing in regions where a 10% conversion rate is not uncommon makes even that level of ‘preferred comms channel’ personalisation cost-prohibitive – you’re not going to quickly see an ROI when 80% of your players never convert.

I’ve seen players convert after a year of receiving comms, so it’s important to keep talking to prospective players; you just need a cost-effective platform for doing so in these conditions. Many operators in Asia don’t even bother to work on post-day one conversions (if even that!).

Long term: they’ll lose. Players love authentic, timely and relevant copy. My 20%+ open rates prove it, even in Thailand where one platform provider said “we don’t collect email addresses on the platform; Thais don’t read them.” Keep telling that to competitors, thanks!

Presentation

This represents a very mixed bag in Asia. More operators are embracing live video (as the rest of the world will one day and as predicted in 2021). CasinoPlus in the Philippines has one of the most unique visitors in the industry, according to Similarweb. It focuses heavily on its own live presenters and own localised games, not just streamers and Evolution’s Crazy Time. There’s a lot more to come in this space.

A few operators are figuring out that, maybe, all games are considered equal, so it’s okay to roll out a poor game themed correctly to a holiday. It isn’t. You have 4,000 games on your site, how do you decide which are worthy to be featured or otherwise touted?

There’s a simple, objective, data-driven way to do this and eliminate putting clear player-clunkers in the spotlight. Keep them on your site, sure, why not? We have infinite shelf space and that certified clunker may be someone’s favourite, for some reason.

Performance

Sort of a no-brainer that I failed to mention previously. Your site is slow? Your prospects are gone. Such a no-brainer in 2024… someone needs to tell the land-based guys this as they try to come online (also, please introduce them to the concept of CRM, strange that they don’t get it given the predominance of database marketing in that side of the industry. They will, though!).

People

Likewise, previously absent from some variations of my ‘Essential Ps’ are the native-language personnel talking to players over their preferred IM channel. These include Line in Thailand and Japan, Zalo in Vietnam, Kakao in South Korea, Viber in the Philippines, WhatsApp in more westernised geos like the UAE (not Asia, I know) and Singapore.

Like ewallets, I suspect that preferred IMs will continue to be country-specific, following the eventual all-in-one model of WeChat in China. An interesting aside about people: only a minority of players across the globe claim to understand the concepts of volatility and RTP. The same is true for too many operators, I reckon.

Others, however, are including theoretical RTP on games (or some platforms put admittedly falsified “HOT” tags on games – Karma is finishing her drink and will be with you shortly) in their lobbies. Long term, this is a good thing, as “an educated consumer is our best customer,” as an American retailer used to say.

 

The seventh ‘secret’ P: Plan B

Your domain in Asia will be blocked by ISP’s, hijacked by other operators, hunted down by authorities (as I write this, “Indonesia has a team of 150 specialists operating around the clock, seven days a week, to locate and block online gambling platforms targeting players.”) While Japan is cracking down on ‘influencers’ and Thailand mulls the opening of integrated resorts, regulation is coming to fruition everywhere.

Hopefully as a responsible partner with operators rather than a bureaucratic force intent on destroying legitimate play, as in the UK and Germany having a Plan B is as vital as ever for operators anywhere. And in your own life, as well. In a previous article, I wrote “There is no Asia.”

The point being that the cultures, preferred platforms, game suppliers and payment methods of each county are as different as their countries’ languages are from each other.That’s never been more true than today.