Inside Asian Gaming

inside asian gaming October 2015 32 to monetize games to offer them more fun experiences. We asked users if they were regulars to a land-based property and 82% said no, that tells us we’re reaching a new audience. We asked how many hours a week they spent on social virtual gaming and 93% spend more than one hour a week and 50% up to five hours. That is a lot of time and probably more time than they will spend in our buildings. To get access to this customer is very important to us.” PROFIT MOTIVE Unlike ACEP, Caesars Interactive Entertainment (CIE) took a more commercial bent when it was formed in 2009. “We are first and foremost a standalone, for-profit social and mobile games business,” said Pierre Cadena, vice president corporate development for CIE, which also operates a nascent real-money online gaming/poker business in Nevada and New Jersey and the World Series of Poker franchise for its parent, Caesars Entertainment. “CIE was formed with a very simple goal which was to create a vessel that would effectively monetize Caesars Entertainment’s world class portfolio of brands and bring them into the digital space. I and a lot of my colleagues at that time thought that that would materialize first in the form of regulated, real-money U.S. online gaming. Clearly, that was not the case.” According to Mr Cadena, Caesars stumbled into the social casino gaming world when it acquired Tel Aviv-based Playtika in 2010, which happened to be a case of purchasing the right company at the right time. “Driven by smart phone technology and apps and the proliferation of mobile devices worldwide, social gaming just took off,” Mr Cadena said. “It offered an immense opportunity for [social casino] monetization and growth.” CIE’s plan was to grow both organically and through an aggressive merger and acquisition strategy. To that end, CIE purchased Buffalo Studios, a California-based company, in 2012, in order to obtain and market its leading social bingo application. In 2013, CIE ended a white label agreement and acquired social poker assets and a development studio from Canada-based Electronic Arts. That allowed CIE to enter into a very lucrative social poker business by leveraging its World Series of Poker brand. The company’s most recent purchase was in February 2014, with the acquisition of Pacific Interactive and its top grossing House of Fun online social slots franchise. CIE has since consolidated all these purchases under its Playtika umbrella, which according to company literature is the world’s leading social casino publisher, with a 21% market share. “Our [social casino] strategy has been quite unique and not necessarily Online Gaming It appears the social gaming website is driving play to ACEP brick-and-mortar properties. Campaigns run through the social games channel have driven 100,000- 120,000 visits to land-based properties each year, according to company statistics.