Q&A: The time is now
Mani Honigstein, founder of social developer RocketPlay, on why now was the right time to sell his firm to land-based slots manufacturer American Gaming SystemsÂ
Q: Why was now the right time to sell RocketPlay? Were AGS the only interested party?
A: Weâve had several discussions in the last few months with interested parties, but felt that the synergy with AGS was by far the best one. There was immediate chemistry between their management and ours and they shared a very similar vision for the social business. With our know-how, platform in social, and their world class content we all felt that this was a winning combination. [private]
As for why we sold, I think it is clear that there is consolidation happening in the social casino space, which we canât ignore. Today, the market is dominated by a few players that come from the real-money space and we hope to become a dominant force by joining the AGS family.
Q: Will there be a management shake-up post acquisition, or will the RocketPlay team remain relatively unaffected?
A: There was no management shake-up whatsoever. The whole RocketPlay team, without exception, joined AGS and we are growing the team post acquisition. We are proud to announce that the only change is the re-branding of RocketPlay to AGS Interactive.
Q: How will you drive growth post-acquisition? Why is important to have land-based content in social casino?
A: We will invest in marketing and also explore working with existing AGS partners. We believe the industry has proven that real-money content is very important for the social space. In some cases, it is because of the fact that the games are well-known brands to players, but in most cases it is because that content is superior in terms of its math, sound, art, and overall experience.
Q: How is your flagship Lucky Play Casino performing?
A: Lucky Play Casino is very strong on iOS with great monetization and overall KPIs. We have not really scaled on other platforms and there is still a lot of room for us to grow in this area. We believe that with the AGS slots content, and potentially also table games, we will be able to make Lucky Play into one of the dominant games in the market.
Q: How is your social sportsbook performing?
A: We have a history in the social sports business, but we love slots and have really focused on that part of the business. Moving forward, the sportsbook will be less important and we will really focus on the content we will get from AGS.
Q: What new products do you have in the pipeline? What are your thoughts on wearables such as smartwatches?
A: We are working on a new slots title that will feature AGS/Cadillac Jack content. We anticipate this to launch very soon and we are very excited about it. We looked at wearables and are still watching the market closely. Currently, we donât see a big use case for our kind of games on smartwatches, mostly because you have to have a phone next to your smartwatch in order for it to be functional. If this changes in the future, things might become more interesting.
Q: Would you consider yourself a mobile-first developer?
A: Yes, we are definitely a mobile-first developer. About two years ago, we decided to go mobile first. We have not invested in any non-mobile platforms for a very long time, although we know that platforms such as Facebook are very viable in our space. Fortunately, we monetize our users very well and this is how we cope with the rising acquisition costs. In addition, we are trying to get smarter about user acquisition and really trying to invest only in ROI-positive channels.
Q: What does the next six months have in store for AGS Interactive?
A: We will be very busy in the next six months with expanding the team, growing the business in terms of scale of users, releasing a new game, and, most importantly, integrating the world-class AGS slots content to our games.