John Flynn is the MD of Flutterclub, an online casino and sportsbook dealing in crypto-currency with websites in both English and Chinese. Dublin-based Flutterclub is licensed in Ireland and has just launched a new affiliate program on the Income Access platform, providing a new opportunity for affiliates to jump on the crypto bandwagon.
I sat down with Flynn to talk about why his site is different than some of the other Bitcoin gambling sites available today, to hear about the appetite for such offerings in China and what Flutterclub has on offer for affiliates.
John, thank you so much for joining me today, I do appreciate it. Our audience is familiar with the benefits of using Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies –no fees, it’s instant. There are already some options out there for people who want to use crypto-currency to gamble, why is Flutterclub different? Why is it special and why should people consider gambling with you?
There are three main things we would say we have over all the other sites that are out there.
1) Being licensed itself. There are a lot of businesses in the crypto-currency space that are not licensed and are maybe based in more remote locations and there is probably not as much transparency as what we would offer. Being based in Ireland and licensed here for two years, it’s a comfort to our players. It’s something we are happy to promote.
2) Secondly, something really exciting is we now offer alternative crypto-currencies to Bitcoin- we’re one of the first companies to offer XRP which is on the Ripple network. Some of your viewership may be familiar with XRP- market cap wise it’s about 20% and Bitcoin would be the second next market cap wise, it’s becoming very popular, very secure, banks in the US are starting to adopt them as well.
3) Thirdly our sportsbook. When were staring off we looked at other companies in the same space, there are good casinos, good casino games but our sportsbook is definitely very exciting. We have all of the major sports, very tight margins and very good on the content side, we’ve got guys with tips and content writers.
So these are the main things that make it stand out.
Very good. And I know you have your site in English and you also have it in Chinese. Can you talk to me about the Asian appetite for gambling on sports using crypto-currency?
It’s pretty new for us as well, we’ve been doing it twelve months and some of our investors and people involved in the business are Chinese. We were always interested in getting into that market – everybody knows the Chinese market is a big market for gambling- in casinos especially. On the sports side the American sports are very popular – the Chinese love basketball, tennis, snooker, all those things are very, very popular.
We have full time customer support in Chinese, the whole site is in Chinese, the sportsbook, casino, terms & conditions, our affiliate program and all that.
We’re restricted in what we can do from an advertising point of view in China. Officially online gambling is illegal in China so at the moment we’re promoting more to the Chinese market in Hong Kong, it’s a more relaxed attitude towards gambling advertising there. Fortunately our investors have their own network from their own gambling contacts in Asia and we can market to them as well which is fantastic.
It’s completely new to us, but customer service is working out really well, a number of bonus and in regards to actually wagering, bigger punters than here in general which is great.
How much of your affiliate network that you have do you use to attract traffic from Hong Kong and other parts of Asia?
We’re just starting that process now, we really will be pushing for that over the next few months. The market is so big there, if an affiliate gets even a tiny percentage it can result in a massive commission.
I know that you are now partnered up with Income Access and I think online gambling affiliates are aware of what Bitcoin is, they know about crypto- currencies, but they haven’t dove in just yet. So lets say an affiliate wants to promote your site but they don’t have a Bitcoin wallet, they are not into Bitcoin themselves. What kind of payout options are you going to give affiliates that sign up with you?
Our default payout currency is actually US dollars, so what happens here for example is an affiliate brings in a player and they lose a Bitcoin which, say, is approximately $250- an affiliate would get 40% of that.
So at 12:00 every day we actually convert the losses of the players from Bitcoin or XRP into US Dollars and there is a cumulative dollar amount each day so at the end of the month you can look back and see what you’ve earned. That’s the default – if somebody wants to get paid in Bitcoin it’s not a problem.
Because it’s quite new to some affiliates who are used to getting paid in dollars it can be difficult, so we’re just trying to make it as easy as possible for the affiliates to say, OK we’re not going to be taking this Bitcoin currency that we’re not actually interested in ourselves, but we’d be happy to make money out of it.
It’s an education process as well, we wouldn’t be spending all this money getting licensed and promoted unless there was something behind it. It’s about getting that message across to the affiliates and I think once they start seeing the benefits of it, they will be happy to actually promote it.
Well it’s certainly an area to watch with immense growth potential in our industry and we really look forward to seeing what you come up with. We’ll be seeing you hopefully in October in Berlin. Thank you very much for joining me today and best of luck with your venture.
Thank you Becky, good speaking with you.
