Inside Asian Gaming

October 2015 inside asian gaming 33 in line with that of a traditional land-based casino operator’s; where the goal is to effectively leverage social and mobile gaming opportunities to engage users remotely and drive foot traffic to the land-based property,” Mr Cadena said. “Our No. 1 objective in social and mobile games is to acquire as many users as we can on key platforms like Facebook Canvas and IOS Android… and effectively get those users to convert and be paying customers of ours.” And that is just what CIE and its Playtika subsidiary have accomplished. Although it is playing in the same space as monetized social casino offerings from giant game companies such as Zynga and Big Fish, online real-money providers such as 888 and bwin, even various game vendors such as IGT and Bally, Playtika has held its own and then some—owner of four of the 15 top grossing games on Facebook Canvas, five of the top 75 games in the iTunes store, and four of the top 50 grossing games on Android. As of mid-July 2015, Playtika’s Slotomania game was the 8th highest grossing game on Google Play and 13th highest grossing game on IOS, in the same ballpark as non-casino oriented social game blockbusters such as as Clash of Clans and Game of War. “We are fortunate enough now, four years into our strategy, to really have a very significant user base where we can get a tremendous amount of economies of scale,” Mr Cadena said. “We also have the benefit of being able to cross promote very high LTV (life-time value) users across a number of our different game genres of slots, bingo and poker. We now have 19 million unique users that come and play Online Gaming our games monthly and six million unique users that play our games daily.” CIE has reaped the rewards of this growing consumer popularity. According to Mr Cadena, CIE’s social and mobile games revenue has skyrocketed from $54 million in 2011 to $586.8 million in 2014, which is a compound annual growth rate of over 100%. “Playtika’s secret sauce and competitive advantage is less about product and more about our ability to market, monetize and convert,” Mr Cadena said. “We monetize 31 cents per daily active user; which is two to three times greater than the average of general social games. In terms of conversion—the percentage of unique users that actually deposit money and pay to play your games—we achieved a 4.3% conversion rate last quarter, up from a 1.8% conversion rate in 2013. Meanwhile king.com , the makers of Candy Crush, convert at a 2.5% rate; and Zynga at a 1.7% rate.” Other companies wishing to emulate CIE’s path to social casino success are in for a very stiff challenge. “It is not necessarily a strategy that can be replicated easily by other land- based casinos,” Mr Cadena admitted. “We spent hundreds of millions of dollars over the course of four years to effectively get where we are today. We have effectively chosen to drive our social casino business for profit rather than to drive foot traffic to the property. Our social casino strategy may not necessarily fit the needs of most casinos.” Reprinted with permission from Casino Journal. “We are first and foremost a standalone, for-profit social and mobile games business,” said Pierre Cadena, vice president corporate development for Caesars Interactive Entertainment. Caesars Interactive Entertainment’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.