Asia Gaming Summit 2017 day 2 recap

Asia Gaming Summit 2017 day 2 recap

The second day of the Asia Gaming Summit – Taiwan continued at the W Taipei Hotel. It was a little bit shorter in numbers than yesterday but was packed with discussions on marketing and innovation strategies, the global phenomenon eSports, and the future in customer experience.

Opened by the Morning Chairman Steve Hsieh, Chairman of Taiwan Lottery, Day 2 kicked off strong with an overview of the Taiwan lottery landscape.

The lottery business in Taiwan generates USD4 billion revenue. It has been flourishing for years in the country where most people love lottery. However, attracting the younger generation in Taiwan to embrace the game is still quite a challenge. Hsiesh shared that this market segment has a different consumer spending behavior compared to the older ones. He added, “They want it fast. They want it easy.” He believes that Taiwan lottery has to work harder in gaining more customers in this segment.

A hot topic in innovation and strategies is the co-existence of the land-based casinos and online casino. The panel moderated by Keith McDonnell delved into the key challenges of these businesses and the opportunities in its convergence, that is currently slow in pace.

Harmen Brenninkmeijer, Managing Partner of Dynamic Partners, shared how land-based casinos such as the MGM in Las Vegas and Solaire in the Philippines have successfully integrated online gaming into their land-based businesses. He believes that online gaming is not a threat to land-based casinos but rather an opportunity to acquiring customers and to opening another channel for generating revenues.

The sports betting industry has been characterized by big players and mergers. With these movements, understanding innovation regionally and globally is of high importance. Panelist Jesper Jensen, CEO of iGaming Asia shared how big data can be of help in understanding this and in driving innovation in sports betting. He shared that in any organization – be it in sports betting or others – tools to understanding information and big data must be in place. Businesses cannot only rely on business intelligence unit anymore.

The booming global phenomenon that is eSports continues to rock the gaming world. Capitalizing on this business poses a potential growth in revenues – just like what Unikrn did after recently venturing in Asia.

“We’ve always been really excited about innovation happening in Asia – in all aspects of eSports,” said Spencer Yang, General Manager-Asia of Unikrn. He shared that because of betting, Unikrn has been cautious about diving into this region. Yet, the company believes it is about time to focus in this vibrant market and work with different partners and regulators.

The Asia Gaming Summit Taiwan will run its third and final day focusing in new opportunities for growth and competition dynamics for land-based gaming.