Q&A: Pala Interactive CEO Jim Ryan on building a casino customer base through cross-sell
Ryan tells EGR North America how poker and bingo are helping the firm establish itself as a casino powerhouse
Q: Are there still plans to launch a real-money poker product given the relatively saturated state of the market in New Jersey?
A: The poker product has been developed and it’s going through the DGE review process as we speak, and I would like to say you’d see that in the first half of the New Year.
We don’t expect that our offering will grow the poker market in any meaningful way, because it is what it is. But I see catalysts for change and potential for real-money legislation across the US. Building out our product offering now puts us in a good position for that.
If we take a look at legislation in Pennsylvania and New York, both of those draft bills called for state-based compacting and it’s about planting the seeds now. When’s the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. When’s the second best time? It’s today.
Q: So you don’t expect the poker product to necessarily be profitable immediately, but it will set you up for growth in the future?
A: Yes. Our plan is to have the full online offering – poker, casino and bingo. I know that poker players also play casino games and we think cross-selling is our route to growth. We aren’t well known in New Jersey, so a way for us to differentiate ourselves is to have bingo and poker and we bring consumers in through those games and then cross-sell them to casino. That’s how we think we can build a database, and frankly we’re very pleased with how we’re doing in New Jersey and we continue to experience quarter over quarter growth.
Q: And does that full product offering still include DFS?
A: We have shelved the DFS product. We found from a regulatory perspective it’s so complicated and we don’t want to do anything that would potentially put us in harm’s way and stop us from partnering with land-based casinos. We’ve got so much to do as it relates to our core products that we’re not moving on DFS in 2017.
Q: What are the early returns you are seeing from the new social casino you launched with the Pala Casino in San Diego?
A: Well the results are good. The casino has just started to market the platform and the player take-up is very positive. It’s too early to give an indication of return on investment but at this stage it’s exceeding anybody’s expectations.
This is the second generation of our social product and we completely re-engineered it this time around to be less poker-centric and have better links with the various reward schemes of our partners.
Q: And you’re planning to include virtual sports in the platform?
A: That is ready to go and should be live any day now. It’s new and innovative and nobody else has done it. It is essentially a slot mechanic with sports content overlaid on it and that makes it much more entertaining. We thought we would try it in the social world and we then plan to bring it into the land–based world. We’re also in the process of adding virtual sports to our New Jersey casino, and that will be with Inspired because they’re already licensed by New Jersey unlike our social partners Leap Gaming.