2020 vision: Mansion Group discusses its future growth strategy

Despite the company being incorporated more than 15 years ago, very little is actually known about the Mansion Group business. The online casino-focused operator, which has been based in Gibraltar since its inception, has always preferred to keep things close to its chest – however recent events suggest the company is finally ready to emerge from the shadows and really make its mark on the sector.

The past 18 months has witnessed the implementation of significant management and structural changes within the Mansion Group, most notably the appointment of long-serving company exec, Karel Manasco, as its new group CEO. Manasco, who has been with Mansion for more than seven years, was also joined on the operator’s senior management team by fellow Mansion veteran Shelly Suter-Hadad, who now has the demanding role of both COO and MD. Suter-Hadad has herself been with Mansion for nearly 10 years, holding a number of senior roles including head of marketing operations and director of business development.

Under the duo’s leadership, Mansion has gradually began to pull back the curtain on the business by increasing its level of participation with the gaming trade press, while, more importantly, expanding into new verticals and significantly ramping up its marketing prowess. And the results so far speak for themselves.

The promotions of Manasco and Suter-Hadad coincided with a record company performance in 2017, with Mansion quadrupling revenues from its UK-facing business and boasting a 40% year-on-year rise in total group revenue. Discussing the duo’s working relationship, Suter-Hadad says: “I believe a significant factor in the strong financial performance of Mansion over the past year has been that Karel and I share a vision. We complement each other’s skillsets, and enjoy a strong partnership focused on united goals.”

Shelly Suter-Hadad has been COO and MD of Mansion Group since January 2017

And Manasco is keen to echo his deputy’s sentiments: “Over the past 12 months, we have achieved a number of key milestones in our longer-term company plan,” he reiterates. “Shelly has been absolutely instrumental in reaching this point, and 2018 promises to be another fantastic year for Mansion as we work together towards our 2020 vision.”

2020 vision

In line with this new ambition, the past 12 months has seen Mansion take major steps towards achieving its overall ‘2020 vision’ goal, with various product launches and significant UX improvements now seemingly just par for the course. For the average Mansion punter, however, the most notable change in approach has been in the ramping up of the operator’s marketing efforts, which has seen Mansion secure a number of high-profile sponsorship deals in recent months.

Like many smaller brands attempting to find a share of voice in the fiercely competitive UK market, boxing seems to have been a particular area of focus. To complement Mansion’s endeavours into the realm of Premier League shirt sponsorship agreements, the firm has recently secured deals to sponsor the super-middleweight title bout between George Groves and Chris Eubank Junior, as well as backing Dillian Whyte in his WBC Silver Heavyweight title fight against Lucas Browne.

However, an above-the-line sponsorship strategy as ambitious as this can often prove an expensive and dangerous game to play, particularly in the UK. Betsson Group, for example, recently announced it would have to pull back its UK marketing spend having thrown millions on partnerships with the likes of Manchester City, Saracens RFC, Tony Bellew and Conor McGregor. Assessing how beneficial such deals are for Mansion will now fall under the remit of its new head of integrated marketing – Rank Group’s former senior media manager, Dana Bocker.

And it’s clearly a potential dilemma Mansion is fully aware of as it seeks to retain its historical focus on digital acquisition, such as PPC, SEO and affiliation. “Digital and data-driven marketing has always been our strength and we keep abreast of online acquisition trends across different domains and customise them to our business,” Suter-Hadad explains. “Our aim is always to keep a healthy balance between various marketing channels and to keep ourselves on top of digital marketing trends/tools.”

But it’s not just the operator’s flagship Mansion brand which is getting all the love. Mansion Group is also in the enviable position of owning one of the most attractive domains in the entire online gaming industry in Casino.com, which itself was rewarded with a major marketing investment last year across UK Sky TV channels and a brand display across a number of London’s black cabs. The campaign launch itself had also followed a major revamp of its UX and customer segmentation capabilities.

“We are very fortunate to own two of the best domains in the industry with Mansion and Casino.com, and we will strive to spread our improved product offering across as many territories as possible,” Suter-Hadad continues. “The coming months will see us continue to enhance our entertainment suite, with increased marketing activity to support continued growth in brand awareness.

“We have started this year with a number of exciting announcements, including new sponsorship deals across a range of sports, and this momentum will continue throughout 2018. Outside of traditional sponsorship packages, we are also looking at other interesting opportunities – we strive to excite our customers and keep engaging with them when visiting us online. This includes a fresh real-time CRM journey, range of new games, exciting features and content.”

Uncharted territory

What has undoubtedly caught the industry’s attention most over the last few months is Mansion’s sportsbook ambitions. In February, Mansion announced it had partnered with SBTech to launch a new online sportsbook product – marking the casino operator’s first foray into the realm of sports betting since its inception in 2004. Utilising its company group moniker, MansionBet will be fighting for a slice of a pie worth approximately £2bn in the UK alone.

“Mansion has always been a firm supporter of the UK sporting industry – we are well known for our history of Premier League football sponsorship, including Manchester City, Tottenham, Crystal Palace and most recently, our current partnership with AFC Bournemouth,” Manasco says. “As such, it was a natural progression to enter the sportsbook market. The launch of MansionBet was a significant milestone in our company vision, and we are thrilled to have our latest brand up and running.

“SBTech offered a fantastic product and platform solution, alongside a selection of managed services which we found to be very appealing as we expanded into this side of the industry. This was both in terms of completing our product offering through the addition of our new sportsbook, MansionBet, and UX improvements across our portfolio of casinos.” the CEO adds. “We aim to offer our valued players the complete package – with fully optimised casino and sportsbook products across all devices, with impeccable service and impressive promotions to match.”

It’s a well-trodden path for most brands vying to carve out an attractive space within the sports betting space – and MansionBet can look forward to a wave of new features from one of the industry’s leading sports betting suppliers. But what makes Mansion such a captivating proposition is its aspiration to become a ‘boutique hotel’ for the online gambling space.

Traditionally, Mansion has always offered a very competitive VIP programme and loyalty scheme and its principle of “Once a VIP, always a VIP” remains to this day. But what exactly does this and its ‘boutique hotel’ proposition actually entail? “Our size allows us to be dynamic, agile, prompt and bespoke in our approach to our players,” Suter-Hadad explains. “We pride ourselves on offering a boutique hotel level of customer experience that is second-to-none, and this is reflected in the positive feedback we receive from our members.

“As a smaller player than many of our high-street competitors, it is imperative to us that we differentiate ourselves through providing unrivalled player support, alongside a best-practice and personalised CRM approach. We believe that many of our potential customers prefer the more private, exclusive and personal choice rather than the mass market most recognised choice – especially when it comes to their gaming experiences.”

The world’s local operator

In 2017, a clampdown in one of Mansion’s biggest markets, namely Australia, was one of the main catalysts behind its renewed interest in a plethora of different markets. Indeed, the closure of the Australian market, led to an unprecedented shift from being an English-speaking countries operator, to a multilingual/multicultural operator, with moves into markets including Germany and Sweden just one piece of the puzzle.

It all fits neatly into Mansion’s thirst to utilise its Mansion and Casino.com brand power and localise the operator’s product offering. For Mansion, this doesn’t just mean translating the product to a local audience, but also having boots on the ground in different markets to ensure the product is capable of offering the nuances required to chime in with the local populace.

According to Mansion’s management team, this could well mean opening new offices in various markets in the very near future. “We learned about and investigated our target markets, and understand the differences in the product offering, customer journey and preferences,” Suter-Hadad explains.

“Localisation is not translation and/or setting a native language call centre – it’s a lot more, and we understand the importance of product and marketing offering amendments. The effort will continue across all business areas – product, CRM, acquisition, HR, branding, and many more.”

However, its initial priorities are much closer to home, as Mansion looks to build on its ever-growing brand recognition in the UK market. But despite growing its UK-facing business by triple digits year-on-year, isn’t Mansion’s voice getting drowned out by competitors with much bigger marketing coffers against a backdrop of increasingly stringent regulatory burdens?

Not according to the operator’s CEO. Manasco says: “We have always found the UK to be a strong market for our Mansion brands – however our performance in the UK during 2017 surpassed our expectations. For instance, we quadrupled our market share, which was reflected in a 400% growth of revenue generated from that market. We also managed to triple our number of UK FTDs YoY.

“We fully appreciate the importance of regulatory tightening and work closely with the UKGC, adhering to best-practices. Across the business, we embrace these changes – which we believe actually strengthens our relationships with our valued players. As such, we’ve absorbed regulation and compliance into our strategic guidelines, and overcome the challenge by being efficient in the way we operate.”

With this in mind, Mansion’s strategy comes down to the very basics of what should make this industry tick. The operator’s newly focused ‘2020 Vision’ is defined as ‘delivering world class entertainment with integrity, under globally recognised brands’. And its financial results indicate Mansion has already taken great strides towards achieving this goal – but what the company does next will be far more intriguing.