Soft2Bet: How casual gaming can engage a new cohort of customers

EGR recently sat down with Soft2Bet’s chief business development officer Martin Collins to discuss the company’s turnkey solutions and its upcoming first launch in New Jersey.  

EGR: With a rise of engagement in sweepstakes and social casino, is it important to create solutions that serve both gamblers and casual gamers? 

Martin Collins (MC): Yes and we firmly believe we’re at the forefront of this movement. 

There is a lot of talk about mobile-native customers, but there’s a big transition within the industry at the moment between a traditional gambling customer of casino and sportsbook and the new generation of customers coming through.

The difference being that the incoming new generation woke up with a mobile in their hand and, as a consequence, they have much higher expectations of the experience they’re being delivered within all sectors, let alone their gambling experience.

We realised that UI and UX within the gambling industry stagnated for almost 20 years. So what we started to do was bring mechanics from other industries, such as casual gaming, social and e-commerce, and integrate it into the casino and sports betting experience.

If you look at our MEGA product and the various mechanics we’ve built, it’s all around that level of engagement. Driving a user experience that increases engagement and screen time ultimately increases all the KPIs you would expect as an operator.

EGR: Can you share an example?

MC: Our city builder solution uses traditional casual gaming mechanics such as achievements. Simple. The player has coins within the city builder, they achieve certain tasks and get rewarded back within the casino or the sportsbook. 

Timeout is another mechanic. Take Candy Crush – once you’ve failed X number of times, the game closes and the player needs to do something to get back in, whether that’s a deposit or a login or whatever. We use these mechanics as well. It’s not rocket science. I often have the argument internally over whether this is innovation or not. It is innovation within our industry, but it’s coming from elsewhere, and it’s tried and tested.

EGR: How can you funnel traditional gamblers into casual gaming experiences? 

MC: It’s very, very important to understand your customer. You’ve got to personalise the experience depending upon the cohort and the audience. Say you have a 23-year-old, mobile-native customer, who comes in as a recreational customer and spends about $10 or $20 a week. They want a different experience from the casual element, from the social element, than somebody who’s 40 years old and spends $100 a week. Give the first customer a more compelling, difficult experience on the gamified side so they’re challenged, but give the second customer easy wins. 

EGR: What would this innovation look like? 

MC: We have more than 20 engines now. We also see that across the brands utilising our mechanics, they have roughly 50% engagement. 

As I said before, there is always going to be a specific part of your audience not interested in this. They view themselves as gamblers, so casual gaming isn’t interesting to them. But the rest of your audience will be interested and, if you get the material increase in your KPIs, it’s not to be scoffed at. You need to understand your cohorts within your audience and then you need to build engines, mechanics within the gamified side that appeal to them. 

A really good example of this is our Betinia brand. When we initially launched that brand, we had a city builder solution within it and the uptake was low and, given the brand is for a sports audience, we simply adjusted the product and created a stadium builder. This is when engagement started to increase. It’s basically the same mechanic with a different perspective. You must think about your customer base and deliver engines and mechanics that resonate with them. 

EGR: What expectations do you have for icasino legalising in more states?

MC: There are a lot of things to consider to make sure we get the trajectory of icasino that everybody in the industry would like to see. You’ve got to deal with the responsible gambling component that wasn’t really considered when states first started legalising icasino. I’ve seen that become more of a hot topic of discussion in the past 18 months or so, which is excellent. 

You also have to consider the experience of the customer. If you go to an offshore site or you go to play sweepstakes, the friction in terms of the registration is far fewer than it is in any of the seven states where icasino exists. 

Then there’s the talk about cannibalisation from the retail side, but I think the data actually shows that online drives up the revenue on the retail side. The biggest casualty, ironically, if icasino enters a state is with online sports betting, which nobody really talks about. That’s where you see the major area of cannibalisation. 

If we can take these messages and drive them into the psyche of those who are putting together the legislation, then we can start to move. We can’t just harp on about the missing tax dollar because clearly that’s not working. It’s not just a money issue.

EGR: What’s in the pipeline for 2025?

MC: Soft2Bet will be going live in New Jersey in Q1 or Q2 2025. As I mentioned earlier, we’ve looked at the UI and UX of the industry for the past 20 years and been really uninspired by the movement in that area. So, we really hope to make a splash with a product that nobody’s ever seen before. You really want to have something different because there’s already so many operators there. You really need to stand out, and we’re hoping to do that. 

Martin Collins is chief business development officer of Soft2Bet. With extensive experience in digital markets, he has the passion and inspiration to help organisations flourish and grow. Through both internal and external strategic analysis, Collins drives positive improvement in performance as well as helping to identify new business opportunities. Always remaining one step ahead, he empowers organisations to truly perform and drive revenue and growth.