In this interview with CalvinAyre.com’s Becky Liggero, Tangelo Games CEO Vicenç Marti shares how operators are bucking the slowdown of social casino business growth.
Social casinos, which have always been an alternative source of entertainment for players looking for budget-friendly games, weren’t growing as fast as they have been a few years ago.
Among the possible reasons for social casinos’ growth slowdown were the new app policies implemented by mobile device makers like tech giant Apple. It would be recalled that Apple recently removed apps with gambling-related content off the App Store upon the request of government agencies across the globe.
Social casino operators were also affected by the challenging payment systems in several gambling jurisdictions in Southern Europe and Latin America.
Despite these challenges, Tangelo Games CEO Vicenç Marti said social casino remained to be a great and resilient industry. Marti attributed the industry’s growth resilience to its reliance on innovative platforms, which have paved the way for new revenue streams.
“At the end of the day, if you look at social casinos since its short history, it always has been growing tremendously on the back of a new platform. It started with Facebook canvas, you know, when Facebook basically opened the API to put social casino games on it and the continuation with mobile with Android and iOS,” Marti told CalvinAyre.com.
Blockchain could be one of those platforms that operators may harness, according to Marti. The Tangelo CEO described blockchain as “a backbone system of a backend system to leverage that growth.” At present, Marti said Tangelo has been heavily investing in platforms such as Facebook instant games, among others.
“Everyone knows that mobile has been more challenging in Southern Europe and Latin America because of payment systems and because of, you know, access in the App Store. I think those problems have been solved today and we will see a very good product, which I cannot reveal the name,” he said.
Meanwhile, Marti noted that land-based operators were becoming more open to the idea of partnership with online operators. He cited the convergence of online and land-based roundtable during the recent World Gaming Executive Summit (WGES), which was filled with land-based operators.
“I think it was very representative. I mean, the fact that the table was very full but it was basically land-based people, I think it shows that they have the higher interest in understanding how partnerships with online operators could be and perhaps not so much the other way around,” Marti said. “I asked them what were they doing in their own organizations besides gaming and opinion, and some of them had interesting initiatives, some of them were doing things with live dealers, some of them were doing promotions with people like PokerStars, some of them were a little more passive, and the regulator was saying, well we’ll see the way it comes and we’ll try to regulate those partnerships in any way they come.”
