WOW! Have you had a chance to watch Bolt running at the 100m dash finals? (Yes Thomas, we know your wife claims you are faster, but it isn’t athletics she is talking about…)

Speaking of dashes and finals, we are in the final lap of the long-awaited US iGaming legislation, with all eyes focused at the partnerships between the Bricks-and-Mortar casinos of Atlantic City and the technological giants of the online gambling sector.

Few days ago, 888 have reached an agreement with their local US partner (a small company called Caesars, not sure if you have heard about them, or their tiny loyalty program), and they plan on launching an online presence in NJ – using their own 888 brand name.

Add that to the PokerStars announcement about their joint venture with the Resorts Casino, and what do you get?

You get a brave new world, in which migration from land casinos into the internet means less and less. Why is that? Well, no one would have bothered playing poker on the Resorts’ online card room – if it wasn’t well-known that PokerStars are running it. So in fact, the Resorts name has no importance in this case. Also, 888 are so sure of their own brand’s strength that they don’t even look to associate it with an already existing casino that may or may not be popular within the regular AC visitors. So again, the physical presence of the casino equals to absolutely nothing for them.

Is that the right approach? Isn’t minimizing the effect of the existing offline database in your launch strategy is simply opposite of retention marketing? Well, the reason behind such a move by 888 might be due to the fact that going through such migrations can be extremely painful, and it takes a lot of experience and time to do it correctly (please have a look at our offline to online casino migration case study). Another possible reason, of course, could be internal politics. Instead of going through frustrating debates with the “old people of the pre-historic US casinos”, resulting with a useless middle-way marketing plan, the bottom line is “we don’t even need your brand name, so please step aside, and let the guys who really know how to operate online gaming pull their tricks”.

We would love to hear your thoughts and interpretations of what goes on in this specific market – so we hope you can manage with finding the comment box at the bottom.

After all, as a regular “star of any social gathering”, you have never had any failure to communicate, right?

IMPORTANT: vacations are for weak people. That’s right; we are talking about you. So if you guys are away, we find no harm with us taking the rest of AUG off. Don’t like it? Sue us. But please do it only after we return on early SEP, with our usual weekly spam of everything that is Player Development. Shanna Tova, y’all.

PS: Meet us in Vegas! Or, meet us in Barcelona!! OR, even better – get a life!!!

• G2E, 24-26 September (Las-Vegas)
• EiG, 8-10 October (Barcelona) <- 10% discount if you register through us!