Bwin.party’s fledgling social gaming offshoot Win Interactive has signed a partnership with Nordeus, the Serbia-based developer behind social sports betting app Top Eleven. It’s the first deal Win Interactive has announced since Bwin.party unveiled its social gaming strategy in May. Top Eleven is an established hit, consistently scoring a spot on Facebook’s top-25 daily average users charts. Bwin.party co-CEO Norbert Teufelberger said his company would provide “our unrivalled sports brand and products as well as our online betting and gaming expertise.” (And humility. Don’t forget the humility.) Nordeus CEO Branko Milutinovic said the tie-up “will lead to a highly successful title and establish our companies as the leaders in social sports gaming.”
A new report by online games research firm SuperData says revenue generated by social casino games will top $1.6b this year and hit $2.4b by 2015. Currently, North America rules the social casino revenue roost, with its 35.4m monthly social casino players accounting for $659.8m of the total revenue pie. Europe is well back at $446.4m, followed by Asia at $311.4m, Latin America at $180.7m and those gambling-happy Australians generated $59.8m all by themselves. Based on a SuperData sample of over 1m unique paying online gamers, the average revenue per paying user by social gamblers was $78 in July, compared to just $43 for the plain old Farmville and Words With Friends crowd.
SuperData’s report will come as music to the ears of Digital Chocolate, the California-based game developer whose new social casino offering, the imaginatively titled SLOTS!, made its Facebook debut this week (iOS and Android versions are in the pipeline). While the company, which was founded by Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins in 2003, has a well-deserved reputation for slickly presented, smooth-running games, the early reviews of SLOTS! (seriously, stop yelling) are on the fence; seven themed slots, mini-games and multipliers, but more of a me-too product than a game-changer. But hey, social gamblers gotta spend that $78/month somewhere, so…
