Skip to content

The Business of Social Games and Casino

How to succeed in the mobile game space by Lloyd Melnick

Month: December 2018

Social Casino Outlook for 2019

Social Casino Outlook for 2019

As I write virtually every year at this time, I cannot predict the future, nor do I think ANYONE else can. While the Mary Meekers, Elon Musks, Bill Gateses, etc., will often come up with insights of how the economy and world will evolve, if you review their predictions you will find they are wrong as often as they are correct.

December, however, is a useful time to reflect on the key trends from 2018 that are likely to extend into 2019, impacting opportunities for those in the mobile and gaming space.

Slide1

Two emerging revenue models will become much more important

While in-app purchases (IAP)will continue to drive revenue for social casino and social games, two other revenue sources will grow in importance.

  1. Advertising revenue.While advertising revenue already been the primary revenue source for many social games, it still represents only a small percentage of total social game revenue and many applications. In 2019, I expect advertising to become more important for all apps, particularly social casino. If done correctly, watch to earn videos do not cannibalize IAP revenue from spenders and creates revenue from the 95+ percent who do not monetize. Not only do ads not cannibalize IAP revenue, it often increases it by improving engagement and retention.

    Additionally, as customer growth in many social gaming verticals stagnates, particularly social casino, it will be increasingly important to generate additional revenue from existing players. Advertising will provide incremental revenue that complements the other product initiatives and allows companies to cast a wider net in their user acquisition activities.

  2. Subscriptions become another revenue option. While advertising will grow as a revenue source for social casino and social games, subscriptions will make an even greater impact. The subscription model has worked very well in Asia, it is a large part Tencent is valued at over $350 billion, but has not made a big difference in the mobile gaming space in the west (US and Europe). It is also the key to Netflix’s success and arguably Amazon’s (see Amazon Prime). Mobile game companies are finally understanding how to incorporate subscriptions in their business models, rather than just throwing them out there as an additional in-app purchase. The strength of subscriptions throughout the economy suggest it can become as important or even more important than IAPs eventually for social games.

Hypercasual will prove it is not a fad

The biggest development in social gaming in 2018 was the rise of hypercasual games, which now make up more than 50 percent of all mobile downloads. They have also dominated the M&A scene, with Zynga buying Gram Games for $250 million, Goldman Sachs investing $200 million in Voodoo as well as multiple smaller deals. Hypercasual games typically have a single mechanic and a single goal, yet reaching a high score can be very difficult. Effectively the core game loop is very straightforward, do one thing, get rewarded (so you can try again) and keep repeating to get a higher score.

In 2019, I expect the hypercasual segment to mature. By mature, I do not see lower growth but a more professional approach. Companies will no longer succeed by throwing a lot of products at the market. Instead, the industry will fragment, with different companies focusing on specific demographics or gameplay mechanics. I also expect you will see higher product values, while a $25k hypercasual game can be a huge success now, competition will raise the bar. UIUX will improve as will technical stability (today’s hypercasual games remind me of Facebook games from 2012, while games crashing are part of the experience). The increase in quality will eventually drive out the small and independent developers (except for the best and the brightest) but will result in better consumer experiences.

Convergence of Real Money Gaming and Social Casino will accelerate

With both Real Money gaming and social casino becoming increasingly competitive, they will lean more heavily on each other to capture best practices and improve their businesses. Social casinos are great at progression and social mechanics and these features will increasingly find their way into real money gaming, where just adding games no longer will be enough for success. On the social side, with the ability to grow the social slots market seemingly coming to an end, social casinos will take more gaming mechanics (sports betting, live dealer, virtual sports) from real money and adapt them to the social space.

Also, real money online gaming companies will get over their phobia that social gaming is cannibalistic and realize what their land based brethren discovered years ago, the two businesses are complimentary and increase the size of the pie. Social gaming provides the trigger for players to want to play roulette or slots and can also prove a great brand building opportunity. Partnerships similar to MGM’s relationship with Play Studios (where MyVegas and Play Studio’s other games share MGM’s rewards program) will extend into the real money space. As the US real money market emerges, real money operators will be increasingly anxious to partner with social casino companies to access their players.

Social casino consolidation

With user growth slowing in the social casino space, the top companies have to look elsewhere to grow their businesses. They have proven quite adept at increasing revenue from existing users, leading to unbroken annual growth for the past ten years that is likely to continue for at least another few years. But growing revenue per user has its limits, and the owners of the top social casino companies are demanding even more growth. While companies have had mixed (i.e. disappointing) results purchasing small players, the major casinos are driving growth by acquiring the other big boys. Late 2017, Aristocrat purchased Big Fish for about $1 billion. DoubleU also acquired DoubleDown Casino for over $800 million. These two deals have created the number 2 and number 3 social casino companies and I expect this trend to accelerate in 2019 as there will be limited other options for rapid growth.

Return to blogging

One prediction I can be 100 percent confident in is that I will be blogging more in 2019. While the real world got in the way of my blogging in 2018, there are many topics I plan to cover in 2019. I also look forward to any ideas from my friends and followers on topics you would like to see me discuss.

Retrospective

It would be intellectually dishonest if I wrote about my expectations for 2019 without reviewing how my picks for 2018 did. So how did I do last year:

  • The convergence of micro-segmentation, AI and machine learning to create extreme personalization. In 2018, the social casino industry continued to experience strong growth despite flat user numbers. The key driver for this growth has been better personalization and segmentation, the successful companies are tailoring promotions and sales for individual users. If anything, I expect this trend to accelerate in 2019 as companies actually understand what they are doing with machine learning and AI.
  • Voice recognition. While it has not had a big impact on the social casino space, voice driven devices continue to gain ground with Google and Apple joining Amazon promoting voice heavily. I expect in 2019 game companies will figure out how to combine the growth of voice with gaming products.
  • Big change in social casino. I will call this one a slight miss as the space has not evolved dramatically. Stars Group did release the first social casino games, PokerStars Play and Jackpot Poker, with Live Dealer but overall the industry did not change much from 2017. I still expect an innovative company will change the market in 2019.
  • Devices and platforms will become less important. I will admit to a miss here, the ecosystem still revolves around Apple and Google.
  • Dual devices. Another slight miss here. Dual devices have become a reality but they have not significantly impacted the game space.
  • Big players will enter free to play, and fail. This was a big miss and indicative of a sea change but one I am very happy about. After years of social casino and mobile gaming overall being the shiny thing and companies make stupid investments to get into the space, the business has rationalized. Companies are now looking at the competitive situation and financials before moving into the space, leading to a much more rational environment.
  • Privacy. BOOM, did I get this one correct. As someone who personally does not worry too much about my online privacy, privacy became the story of 2018. While privacy concerns will not go away in 2019, I think the concerns will ebb as people understand how to control what they share. The days of aggressively compiling and sharing user data, however, are gone and those companies that still act in a rogue way put their whole business at risk.

See you in 2019, have a great year.

Key takeaways

  1. 2019 should see the emergence of two additional revenue streams for social casino and social games, subscriptions and advertising.
  2. Hypercasual will prove to have legs, remaining a dominant genre in gaming
  3. Real money gaming will borrow more from social casino in 2019 while social casino operators will try game mechanics popular in real money.

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn

Like this:

Like Loading...
Author Lloyd MelnickPosted on December 31, 2018December 29, 2018Categories General Social Games Business, General Tech Business, Social CasinoTags advertising, hypercasual, Live Dealer, Mergers and Acquisition, Subscription, Virtual Sports1 Comment on Social Casino Outlook for 2019

Get my book on LTV

The definitive book on customer lifetime value, Understanding the Predictable, is now available in both print and Kindle formats on Amazon.

Understanding the Predictable delves into the world of Customer Lifetime Value (LTV), a metric that shows how much each customer is worth to your business. By understanding this metric, you can predict how changes to your product will impact the value of each customer. You will also learn how to apply this simple yet powerful method of predictive analytics to optimize your marketing and user acquisition.

For more information, click here

Follow The Business of Social Games and Casino on WordPress.com

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,317 other followers

Lloyd Melnick

This is Lloyd Melnick’s personal blog.  All views and opinions expressed on this website are mine alone and do not represent those of people, institutions or organizations that I may or may not be associated with in professional or personal capacity.

I am a serial builder of businesses (senior leadership on three exits worth over $700 million), successful in big (Disney, Stars Group/PokerStars, Zynga) and small companies (Merscom, Spooky Cool Labs) with over 20 years experience in the gaming and casino space.  Currently, I am on the Board of Directors of Murka and GM of VGW’s Chumba Casino

Topic Areas

  • Analytics (114)
  • Bayes' Theorem (8)
  • behavioral economics (8)
  • blue ocean strategy (14)
  • Crowdfunding (4)
  • General Social Games Business (457)
  • General Tech Business (194)
  • Growth (88)
  • International Issues with Social Games (50)
  • Lloyd's favorite posts (101)
  • LTV (54)
  • Machine Learning (10)
  • Mobile Platforms (37)
  • Social Casino (51)
  • Social Games Marketing (104)
  • thinking fast and slow (5)
  • Uncategorized (31)

Social

  • View CasualGame’s profile on Facebook
  • View @lloydmelnick’s profile on Twitter
  • View lloydmelnick’s profile on LinkedIn

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,317 other followers

Archives

  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • December 2010

Most Recent Posts

  • Lessons for gaming and tech companies from the Peter Drucker Forum
  • Chaos Theory, the Butterfly Effect, and Gaming
  • How to give help without micromanaging
  • Measure yourself by your worst day

RSS

RSS Feed RSS - Posts

RSS Feed RSS - Comments

Categories

  • Analytics (114)
  • Bayes' Theorem (8)
  • behavioral economics (8)
  • blue ocean strategy (14)
  • Crowdfunding (4)
  • General Social Games Business (457)
  • General Tech Business (194)
  • Growth (88)
  • International Issues with Social Games (50)
  • Lloyd's favorite posts (101)
  • LTV (54)
  • Machine Learning (10)
  • Mobile Platforms (37)
  • Social Casino (51)
  • Social Games Marketing (104)
  • thinking fast and slow (5)
  • Uncategorized (31)

Archives

  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • December 2010
December 2018
S M T W T F S
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  
« Jun   Jan »

by Lloyd Melnick

All posts by Lloyd Melnick unless specified otherwise
The Business of Social Games and Casino Website Powered by WordPress.com.
Cancel

 
Loading Comments...
Comment
    ×
    %d bloggers like this: