The cash-out option has become a huge hit in the European sportsbetting scene, allowing players to lock in some profit on a bet before the outcome’s been determined. Bernard Marantelli, CEO and founder of Colossus Bets and inventor of the cash-out, joined our Becky Liggero Fontana at G2E Vegas to talk about expansion into North America, and other applications for the cash-out.
As Marantelli explains, the cash-out option makes all types of wagering more appealing. “Both the sports and more so the horse racing industry, particularly in North America, has often focused on jackpots,” he noted. “Big jackpots like pick six, rainbow jackpots in Florida, etc, where you can win 5 or 10 million dollars and it’s really when you’re in the fifth of six legs for five million dollars that cash-out really becomes viable. You’re one leg from a couple of million, you can sell half your ticket, keep half the ticket and really have the best of both worlds in that environment.”
Colossus Bets push now is to introduce cash-out in North America, and Marentelli explained how that could work in the context of American options. “I think it can be used for a bet pre off that becomes in play, not so much in horse racing because in play horse racing is finished very quickly, but in play sports betting, you bet a team at +500, I have to get used to American odds, and then suddenly they’re now -176 in play, and you can lock in a large profit,” he explained. “I can’t quite calculate which profit with American odds but there you go.”His faith that cash-outs can work is based off of the options success in Europe. “I think we’ve seen in Europe there’s a senior VP recently said that if you took cash-out and made it a sport, it was the fourth biggest sport on their sportsbook now,” he noted. “So I think it’s probably 6, 7 percent of handle now and still growing, so I think you see the same in America.”
Becky Liggero Fontana noted Colossus Bets deal with Bet 365, and wanted to hear more about it from the CEO. “It’s a long term deal for 365 to do cash-out under license from us in North America,” he replied. “It’s currently not a technology deal, it’s just an IP deal. And I guess they wanted that because they saw the value of cash-out for them in Europe. They kind of see themselves as the cash-out kings, and I think most people would say that they have the best pricing and best UX on cash-out in Europe, and I think they wanted to make sure that in some complex world of patents in North America, they’d always have access to that.”
Finally, the conversation turned to the world of Slots. “It’s surprising so far that they haven’t put cash-out on many slot machines,” Marantelli noted of the industry. “There’s been two slot machines with cash-out to my knowledge, both built by us. One built by Sky gaming called Colossus Frack pot, which did very well, and one called Fortunes of Arabia built by Matchbook. I have tried to convince some of the big firms here for a number of years to put cash-out. If you need five cherries across a screen to win a million dollars, that’s really like five horse races, or five NFL teams. So you just split the random number generator in two, once you get four cherries you leave the last one spinning and give them a cash-out option. I think it works perfectly and I think it will come exactly the way it invaded sports betting, it’s just a little bit slower than I expected.”
