It’s fair to say that the online gambling market in the United Kingdom has become a tough one. In the past five years, the Gambling Commission, Britain’s official regulator, introduced an entire set of new rules and regulations to make online gambling fairer and safer for players.
Whether it’s identity checks, proof of income, or credit card ban, the days when operators earned a fortune while neglecting their customers are over. Today, online casinos and bookmakers need to comply with strict rules or face multi-million-pound fines or the loss of their license(s).
Running casinos and betting sites on the Internet has become more expensive, and operators need to find ways to optimise their spending. Here’s how they do it.
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Same engine, different hood
The key to running a successful online casino business is to maximise choice. In gambling, one size does not fit all, so it’s important to have assets that attract all sorts of clientele.
Before, operators would invest large sums into making each online casino site truly unique. Different account creation journeys, various player lobbies, and brand new designs and layouts for each website – players could expect nothing less. These days are over.
To reduce costs, gambling operators today use a different strategy. Changing the hood while keeping the same engine is the secret formula.
The leading firms now reuse their technical platforms for running online casinos, keeping player lobbies, payment facilities, software partnerships, account creation process, and even the customer support the same. The only thing that changes is the design and the bonus offer. Operators call these casinos sister sites since they are siblings to the flagship brand.
Gambling firms now only need to invest in web designers and come up with a new offer to launch a brand new online casino.
Thousands of slots and casino games
Another key to maximum choice at minimal cost is strategic partnerships with games developers. In the early days of online gambling, operators often signed exclusive partnerships with just one software company.
For example, to this date, Mansion Casino only offers Playtech games. If you’re a Playtech-lover, this might be perfect for you. But if you enjoy choice and the latest titles, you’ll get bored rather quickly.
Casino operators with multi-software-partnerships not only have the advantage of a more extensive game catalogue in general. They can also split the games amongst their sister sites.
Think about it; you could launch a retro-style casino that only featured online slots with a retro theme or come up with an animal-themed skin and focus on all games related to animals.
One license, several brands
For maximum flexibility, gambling operators tie all their partnerships, whether with gaming or financial companies, not to one specific online casino but their license. This way, whenever they want to launch a new casino site, all that needs to be done is to list the new domain under the current license. You can see this in the example of Genesis Global.
As you can see, there are plenty of ways of reducing costs while still keeping choices high. Online casinos are surely not as unique as they used to be, but signing up with new sites of well-respected operators also means eliminating the risk of trusting a black sheep with your money.
Simon has held senior content leadership positions at online casinos and sportsbooks for 20+ years. He leads a team of quality writers who produced trusted and authoritative iGaming content for casinos, sportsbooks, poker and bingo sites. Simon is Managing Director of Magic Word Media.
