Opinion: Untapped potential
Vicenç MartÃ, CEO of social casino developer Akamon Entertainment, on his firmâs plans to exploit the lucrative video bingo vertical
Despite the relatively young age of the social casino industry, things have moved very fast. It was barely five years ago that we first offered players the opportunity to play casino style games for no money, and since then billions of dollars in shareholder value have been created. CEOâs of the leading companies in our industry have been busy maximizing returns in well-known verticals such as slots, bingo and poker, but little or no innovation in game genres has occurred. [private]
So when thinking about new localized content and markets – at Akamon we think is one of the trends that will define the next couple of years of our industry – we came across a genre that has yet to show the same potential online as it has done in land-based gaming: video bingo.
First of all, letâs look at the popularity of video bingo as a game. This single-player casino game that plays more like a slot than traditional âliquidityâ bingo is very popular in the land-based casino halls in Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines. All of those are target markets for superior growth, particularly if your favourite development market acronym is BRICK or MINT, but specifically in Latin American markets where video bingo is more popular than slots.
In Mexico, for example, 40% of the estimated 100,000 games machines in the country are video bingo machines, and informal sources estimate they represent about 60% of GGR. In Southeast Asia, there are more than 20,000 video bingo machines in gambling halls. However, video bingo as a social casino category remains untapped.
Secondly, its mechanics and capabilities are perfect to engage users. In video bingo, players bet on several bingo cards at the same time, and it is the players themselves who start each game. In the most common mechanic, a batch of 30 out of 60 bingo balls automatically comes out of the drum and their numbers are marked on each pattern. After the first batch, the player can make an extra bet to buy one extra ball at a time to make a bigger win, and thatâs where the game gets exciting as players try to complete wins. The real returns for both the player and the operator lie on extra ball mechanics.
Video bingo became popular as a casino game in Brazil a couple of decades ago, and it then spread to other Latin casino markets fast, where video bingo is already mature. Leading land- manufacturers include Ortiz Gaming and Zitro, and of course Zest Gaming, with whom Akamon has recently signed a distribution agreement with the aim of offering the best quality games to our players and to translate successful land-based gaming into the social casino environment.
In recent months there have been an increase in activity in this regard, mostly led by land-based video bingo companies that port their games to the social casino market, but also from some independent new entrants. Akamon welcomes this competition as it will create yet another rich vertical for the industry as a whole. From our experience, video bingo can be either the anchor game for a social-mobile gaming app or a rich complement to other bingo games in social casino. But operators must be aware that it takes a lot of familiarity with the product to make a competitive game with a âgambling feelâ that must be communicated through well-executed graphics, math, sounds and effects.
So the current video bingo market looks like the social casino slots market from several years ago, but having even better recognition than slots in some Latin American and South Asian territories. In all, it is very likely that it will become a staple of the emerging Latin American social casino industry. And at Akamon we have no doubt that video bingo has arrived in the social casino sector and is very much here to stay.