The upcoming London Affiliate Conference (LAC) also features the Financial Gaming Expo, an event running alongside the LAC, sharing the same venue. The latest headlines hitting the news in binary and financial trading is the closure of Banc De Binary, one of the biggest and most well-known companies (formerly) serving this market. For anyone who attends iGaming Business affiliate conferences, the name Banc De Binary should ring a bell as they notoriously booked the biggest booth on the block and even brought in celebs such as German footballer Didi Hamann.
There are a number of iGaming affiliates and online gambling industry vets who are not quite convinced there is a crossover between the financial betting industry and the iGaming industry, or perhaps they find the notoriously aggressive approach of financial betting affiliate managers a bit intimidating. Negative press surrounding the financial betting industry hasn’t helped either, but perhaps we’re at a pivotal movement and opinions will start to change in 2017.
Just this week I’ve come across an innovative offering that seems to bridge the existing gap between casino and financial gambling, an offering that may assist with the crossover between these two industries. The offering I refer to is the brainchild of GPL Financials, a game developer with a collection of casino betting games based on the outcomes of the financial markets. Derek Wood is the CEO of GPL Financials and I took some time to talk with him about his games and why they will benefit operators in the online gambling industry.
Becky Liggero: Thank you for joining me today, Derek. Innovation is one of my favorite topics, so I’m especially looking forward to talking with you today. How do your innovative games “3 in a row” and “binary roulette” bridge the gap between binary and gambling?
Derek Wood: Rather than there being a gap we see that the retail financial market and the gambling market overlap and that many customers will have accounts in both markets. We have developed our games to give customers the opportunity to have a casino style gamble on the movements in the financial markets.
Pick 3 (Three in a row) is a game where the player chooses the next three moves the market will take. The player can place his chip on one of the 8 possible outcomes. Players can choose from a wide selection of currencies, commodity or stock markets. The game is easy to understand, provides an instant rush and allows the player to rebet right away if his first or second move isn’t as predicted.
Binary Roulette is much the same. It’s is a simple and exciting casino game based on the movement of the financial markets. Players place their bets on the roulette-style table based on where they think the market will end up after 30 seconds. This game offers the thrill of roulette with the “spin” equating to 30 seconds of fractional market movement.
BL: I love it. When and how did you identify this opportunity in the betting market? Give me the background story on how you were able to move from idea to product.
DW: The massive expansion in Binary Options over the last few years has shown that there is a great deal of interest in short term speculation on financial markets. But by their nature of being a trading platforms and by being part of the financial market Binary Options Platforms look complicated to many gamblers. Our idea was to produce a game that is clearly a betting product and to make the interface recognisable to gamblers. We put the emphasis on making the games easy to understand and play and on being fun.
BL: I have literally seen the massive expansion you speak of at the iGaming Business affiliate conferences, the Financial Expo continues to grow year on year. However, binary options giant Banc de Binary has announced its imminent closure, how will this news impact your business?
DW: Banc De Binary’s announcement is big news in the binary options market but this is an issue for that market. I believe there is a big opportunity for gaming operators to market to punters who are interested in the financial markets if done the right away. We believe our product, which offers a casino style bets on the movement in financial markets, gives gaming operators a really innovative asset that will allow them access to many new players.
BL: Ok, so it sounds like the Banc de Binary closure should not impact your business. At the same time, we can’t deny binary options have somewhat of a bad reputation in the online gambling industry, what steps are you taking to turn this around?
DW: The Binary Options market does get some bad press with complaints about customers being misled, hard sell tactics and poor value. These are issues for companies in that marketplace. We will be promoting our games to gaming operators as betting products. This is gaming not trading and the RTP’s are similar to other casino products.
BL: Excellent. What markets do you consider the best targets for your games and why?
DW: Our games are a new concept and so the UK will be the first market that we enter. There operators here are world class, we understand the regulatory environment and the payers are seasoned and ready for innovation.
BL: Seeing as UK is your target market, I would assume you’ll be attending ICE Totally Gaming next month?
DW: ICE gives us a great opportunity to meet a number of operators and we are looking forward to making some significant progress towards launch.
BL: Wonderful Derek, I’m looking forward to catching up with you at ICE and thank you again for your time today.
