Be The House CEO Seth Freedman on why cash-out can transform online casino

Online table games have arguably been relatively devoid of major innovation in recent years. So when Betfair launched the first cash-out roulette game back in October, it generated a little buzz around the industry.

The creator of that game is London-based studio Be The House, which also has a pending patent for accumulative casino on all table games and will be rolling out similar products in the near future.

In this exclusive interview, Be The House CEO Seth Freedman tells EGR how accumulative casino can transform the vertical in the same way accumulators transformed sports betting.

EGR: So you have a background in financial trading and the army – how did you get into the gambling industry?

Seth Freedman (SF): I was writing a book on the industry that was examining the impacts of technology and deregulation, and was looking at the way sports betting had been adapted for online and how casino had been.

Nothing had fundamentally changed about the way the casino games were played, whereas in sports we had seen the advent of in-play betting, tiny derivative markets, accumulators and cash-out. Those innovations all caught on in a big way, and it works both ways – customers get the chance for bigger pay-outs and the operators get a higher margin.

The idea struck me while researching– why can’t you have a bet on roulette about what will happen over the next 10 spins? My business partner went off and modelled it up and said the pricing was actually very similar to sports cash-out and accumulators so we took it from there.

EGR: And you have a patent pending for a similar function in other table games. How might that work?

SF: It’s very simple. In Blackjack you could say how many dealer busts, or player blackjacks in the next 10 hands. There’s even more potential side bets in fact – how many royals in the next 20 hands for example. We’re planning this for Three Card Poker and things like Baccarat and Craps. Anywhere there’s an appetite, we can adapt this and it all falls under the provisional patent.

EGR: Are there any other concepts you think you can translate from sports into casino?

SF: The big thing will be increasing the accumulator focus. Betfair will pay out up to half a million on this if you want to get specific on hitting four numbers in a row for example, and we think that could have a transformative impact on casino.

There’s a generation like me that grew up with singles and would only ever bet singles, but now there’s a generation that think that accumulators are the only way to bet on sports. It just caught on like wildfire. And we think we can do the same for roulette. Why would customers want to back black or red when they can create a bet that pays out 500,000-1 without altering the core gameplay?

And online is just the beginning – it works on the physical tables, it works on the video tables in the casino, it works on live casino.  We’ve been in talks with land-based operators who want to trial this across the floor.

EGR: Is it safe to assume you’re still tweaking the format since it’s so new?

SF: Yes, we’ve had operators talk about scrapping the traditional bets altogether and dedicating that screen space to information about the side bets and cash-out. That could make it more optimised for mobile for example and of course boost margin because the cash-out has a configurable margin compared to traditional roulette.