Taking care of business: Bally's CEO Robeson Reeves lays out his gameplan

Once a month, typically on the third Thursday, the Bally’s Interactive team, based out of the recently refurbished four-floor office in Malta, vacate their desks around 5pm and decamp to the spacious roof terrace for a BBQ. This long-running outdoor get-together, which has a different theme each month, is a chance for the hub’s 200-odd employees to unwind with colleagues over food and beers as the sun slips behind nearby buildings.

Only at June’s relaxed soirée there were two special guests, as Bally’s CEO Robeson Reeves and CTO Ifor Evans paid the office a visit after jetting into the Mediterranean island. However, the pair weren’t solely there that warm evening to sample the homemade Mexican, Asian and Spanish cuisine at what was an international-themed BBQ this time around. Instead, Reeves, who wore a Bally’s-branded baseball cap teamed with cobalt-blue shorts and a partly unbuttoned shirt supporting folded sunglasses, was in Malta with Evans to explain over the microphone where the company was headed and the role Bally’s Interactive would play.

“I wanted to walk the team through the strategy, the vision, explain what we are trying to achieve and bring clarity. I think focus is the most valuable asset you can deploy,” Reeves tells EGR via a Zoom call two weeks later in early July. “It was great to see the team and to show them who the leadership team is [because] we are a large company now and it’s quite unusual how diverse our C-suite is. Everyone is from diverse backgrounds, which is unique. Your people should be representative of the players you engage with. So, it was great to go to Malta and get some sun,” he smiles. 

While the 39-year-old Brit has visited the Malta office on numerous occasions, this was his first trip since being promoted from president of Bally’s Interactive to CEO of the entire Bally’s Corporation. It’s now five months since the land-based and online operator announced Lee Fenton was to step down as CEO at the end of March, barely 18 months after he landed the top job following the completion of Rhode Island-headquartered Bally’s £2bn transatlantic merger with UK-based Gamesys Group in 2021.

Like Fenton, Reeves had worked at Gamesys – the bingo and casino online operator behind brands including Jackpotjoy and Virgin Games – since the 2000s. Reeves was initially hired as a quantitative analyst and games statistician in September 2005 when he was just 21, before rising through the ranks, yet he says he held no burning ambition to one day become the boss.

“I like to drive value. I don’t care what job it is,” he insists. On the Bally’s Q4 2022 earnings call in February, when discussing how the company will be run under his stewardship, Reeves emphasised how he will, as he put it, play to his strengths and “follow the data” as part of an analytical approach to decision-making. For him, it’s about drilling down into the stats and leveraging data-driven customer journeys to predict everything from a newly acquired online customer’s lifetime value and what games to recommend, to a player’s likelihood of churning or what deposit to suggest based on historical patterns.

With the firm’s online players outside North America generating 250 million data points every 24 hours, self-learning algorithms enable systems to engage in millions of personalised player interactions per day. This, the company says, powers unique player experiences and retention, culminating in industry-leading EBITDA margins – above 30% for 2023. “The belief I had in 2005 – and I believe it now – is that data-driven insights are the fuel,” Reeves says passionately. “That’s what’s going to power growth. And that’s the key reason for our success so far. We feed data through every system, and we use it to generate insights and power everything we do. I believe we can do that at an omnichannel level. That’s what excites me about our future and has excited me since 2005.”   

Channel surfing                 

As chief exec, Reeves oversees a business encompassing three core segments of Bally’s. First, there is the land-based side with 15 bricks-and-mortar casinos it owns and manages across 10 US states. Incidentally, Bally’s is adding to that total by opening a temporary casino in Chicago this summer ahead of a permanent facility that is due to be completed in 2026.

Then, there are the online facets of the New York-listed group: North America Interactive and International Interactive (formerly Gamesys). However, there is no escaping the fact that North America’s mobile sportsbook offering, Bally Bet, has performed some way below expectations. Built on proprietary tech following the $125m acquisition of US-based betting platform provider Bet.Works in 2021, Bally Bet has barely laid a glove on the competition.

For example, data released by the New York State Gaming Commission shows the brand was at the bottom of the pile in May, generating just $2.2m in betting handle. That was under 0.2% of the total staked across the nine licensed brands, while Bally Bet’s GGR amounted to a paltry $173,560, of which the state takes 51% in GGR tax.

Back in February, almost a month after the operator announced it was shedding 15% of its Interactive workforce, Reeves’ quote as incoming CEO in the Q4 2022 earnings press release described the results from its North American arm as “unacceptable”. On the call to investors and analysts that day he was equally candid when he said: “The North America infrastructure we had in place for sports was inefficient. I own that.”

In a bid to remedy the situation, Bally’s, an operator with access to online sports betting licences in 18 states, announced in May that the in-house-built betting product was being shelved and that White Hat Gaming would provide its PAM solution, and that Kambi’s fully managed sportsbook solution would be used for online and retail. It’s essentially a chance to wipe the slate clean and start again.

Interestingly, Bally’s has the option in the future to acquire a licence to a limited part of Kambi’s tech source code, pending certain performance metrics being achieved. “The Bet.Works platform didn’t give us what we required in the competitive market we’re in. It wasn’t a high enough quality product,” Reeves openly admits.

“So, this is the reason why we looked around for something that was much more economical and nimble. We spent a lot of time deeply analysing all the alternative solutions. For us, sports [betting] is an acquisition tool that will drive further engagement for Bally’s as a brand, so we landed on Kambi and White Hat. When you combine it with our footprint, our rewards system across retail and online, and our player database, we felt this combination was the right step for us to become really good in sports betting.”

He adds: “It was sensible and safe, but it also gives us the opportunity to differentiate in time as we own the front-end platform.” For now, though, Bally Bet is offline. The plan is to relaunch the overhauled Bally Bet, which was previously live in New York, Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa and Virginia, in at least 10 US states by the end of the year. While temporarily pulling the plug and deactivating all accounts (players will have to re-register) at the end of June wasn’t ideal, especially ahead of the player acquisition and re-engagement opportunity a new NFL season presents, Reeves emphasises that the migration to third-party suppliers was simply “going to take time”.

“We have to analyse our rollout carefully […] so we are rolling out state by state. We want to have the right solution and we are going to be very deliberate. I don’t want to get it wrong this time. It’s better to have a good product rolled out sensibly rather than rush it out.” So, does Reeves regret the Bet.Works acquisition? He tilts his head and gazes at the ceiling in deep thought for a full 11 seconds before replying: “In hindsight, with everything I know now, yes.”

As well as abandoning an in-house sportsbook, Bally’s took the decision in February to permanently close Monkey Knife Fight (MKF), two years after snapping up what was North America’s third largest DFS operator for $90m. Between them, the Bet.Works and MKF transactions cost $215m. And yet Bally’s disclosed in its Q4 2022 earnings that it recorded a $390.7m non-cash impairment charge in Q4 2022, primarily linked to the Bet.Works and MKF assets. This contributed to Bally’s sustaining a net loss of $425.5m for FY 2022 after a hefty loss of $487.5m in the final quarter of the year.

North America Interactive’s net loss for 2022 amounted to $428.1m, yet net losses were $17.5m on $24.4m of revenue in Q1 2023 as “cost-savings initiatives took hold faster than anticipated”, the company divulged. These savings form part of a restructuring plan the firm instigated for its North America and International Interactive arms.

Reeves explains: “Put simply, the Interactive business wasn’t performing at the level that we know it can. So, we needed to take a step back and look at what changes we needed to make to ensure we can drive success into the future. We restructured our entire product organisation and developed a domain model that allows for strong accountability and end-to-end ownership.”

Like plenty of online sportsbooks in the US, Bally Bet also struggled as a standalone product in states where igaming isn’t legal and able to fill the void during lulls in North American sports schedules. “Sports, especially North American sports, on their own is a very challenging environment, largely driven by the sporting calendar,” Reeves concedes. “It just isn’t as intense as other parts of the world where soccer is the key driver. Soccer is almost like a slot machine for sports.”

On the flipside, a multi-vertical proposition in the US would play into Bally’s hands. “The fact that sport isn’t always on and yet most competitors are sports-led means that when the lights turn off for sports the casino specialists are more able to gain that traffic. So, the US market will lead to the igaming specialists becoming the winners in the long term.”               

The reel deal                        

Being a gaming-led operator means attacking those few states with online casino. In New Jersey, where the brand Bally Casino launched online in December 2021, around a year after an interactive licence was acquired following the $25m purchase of Bally’s Atlantic City Hotel & Casino from Caesars Entertainment, Bally’s says it has exceeded 4% market share (including Bally and Virgin brands).

The target is to grow this market share to between 6% and 8% this year in what is a mature and heavily fragmented arena with around 30 igaming brands competing for share of wallet. Of the total $149.3m statewide igaming GGR recorded in June, Bally’s Atlantic City online licensees racked up GGR of $6.6m, the majority of which would have been generated by Bally Casino and Virgin Casino.

Having the boardwalk property to sign up new online players means Bally Casino’s customer acquisition costs are sub-$250. It has historically cost digital-only operators in New Jersey two or three times this figure to snare new customers.

“We went from zero with Bally [Casino] to $5m of NGR in about 15 months,” says Reeves. Online operations in the Garden State are profitable, too. “New Jersey contributes over $1m a month in profitability, and although we describe it as a competitive market, there’s quite a bit of opportunity to grow market share. You see it in many other markets. For us, omnichannel will be the driver of growth so that we talk to our players wherever they are.” In addition, the revamped online sportsbook will be added to Bally Casino to act as “a traffic driver”, the CEO says.

Bally Casino is also available in neighbouring Pennsylvania and north of the US border in Ontario, Canada. And Bally’s will be rolling out online casino in its home state of Rhode Island in 2024 after Bill 948 passed in June. Bally’s – operator of Rhode Island’s only two bricks-and-mortar casinos, in Tiverton and Lincoln – will be the monopoly operator on behalf of the state lottery. A monopoly is probably just as well seeing as the adult population is under 800,000.

Meanwhile, the state, igaming platform provider IGT and the towns of Tiverton and Lincoln will pocket 85% of slots revenue and 51.5% of table games revenue between them. And when it comes to table games, only live dealer is permitted. RNG-style games – the bread and butter of online casinos the world over – are out. In July, Bally’s inked a multi-year live dealer agreement with supplier Stakelogic to offer games like blackjack, roulette and baccarat in Rhode Island from April 2024.

Despite these idiosyncrasies, Reeves insists “regulations bring opportunity” and that Rhode Island legalising online casino is a “brilliant” development. “Rhode Island is a critical market for us. It’s where our home is, it’s where our roots are and it’s great to see the continued support and commitment to the state’s gaming industry.”

He continues: “Not only is the sort of revenue igaming will generate critical to the state but it also generates positive returns for all our stakeholders, in addition to creating other new and exciting opportunities for our Rhode Island customers. We very much see Rhode Island as being a great case for how omnichannel can grow, and it’s also worth noting neighbouring states like Massachusetts and New York do not offer igaming.”  

Gone up in the world              

Turning attention to across the Atlantic and specifically the UK, the market where Gamesys established itself as a leading light of the igaming space, and hence why Bally’s came knocking, the market continues to perform well for the group. The firm’s UK operations, which falls under the International Interactive arm of Bally’s and includes brands like Jackpotjoy, Megaways Casino and Monopoly Casino, grew its revenue 9.6% year on year on a constant currency basis to £118.5m in Q1 2023. Before that, Q4 2022 revenue was up 12%, “well ahead of the market”, Reeves stated on the earnings call.

The growth was boosted by acquisition and retention marketing optimisation helping to fuel improved customer loyalty. All this against a backdrop of increasing regulatory pressures as the UK gears up to overhaul its gambling laws. Bally’s took voluntary measures to pre-empt the changes, which included reducing maximum stakes on flagship slots to £10 and a net deposit limit for all players.

“We got ahead of the regulation. Others are chasing to catch up with the regulation, which will add friction for them,” Reeves notes. As the UK market continues to consolidate, and with some smaller operators deciding to throw in the towel, Reeves views the shifting landscape as an opportunity to take additional market share.

“The regulatory requirements carry operational costs that you can only satisfy if you have sufficient scale. So, smaller operators will fall away. Working in a model to fit regulation is quite complex for most businesses. We’ve adapted to fill the shape of the UK market, but even medium-sized operators will have to make adjustments to their limits, to their staking and so forth to be able to operate without suffering declines. Change brings opportunity. Incumbents lose control when there’s change in the marketplace,” he warns. 

But whether you have 30% or 3% market share, all B2C firms are having to adjust to the fact the UK is grappling with stubbornly high inflation (running at 7.9% at the time of writing), well above the Bank of England’s 2% target. The Bank has raised interest rates 13 times in a row to 5% to try to cool the economy by reducing spending, while mortgage rates have soared to their highest level since 2008. All this inevitably puts a massive squeeze on personal finances. That includes discretionary spend as consumers tighten their belts. Perhaps even more so among bingo players, who tend to be among the lower socioeconomic groups.

Reeves, who experienced first-hand at Gamesys how the 2008 financial crash impacted players and the business, says: “When things happen like this, you want to ensure that you are the best value place to play. You have to bear in mind that when people gamble with us, there is no inflation that kicks in. It doesn’t cost more to make the same bet, so you actually become one of the best value forms of entertainment. Yes, there will be some impact from the cost of living, but we have seen very little impact on us, and we have seen our ability to grow share of gambling accounts.”

Looking ahead, the aim is to launch Bally Casino in the UK later this year, followed by sports betting next year, to create “further growth pathways”. “I see very little that can derail us,” Reeves announces confidently on the outlook for the firm’s brands in the UK.

Elsewhere, the segment defined as ‘Asia’ (Japan), where the Vera&John and InterCasino brands operate in what is an established grey market, was flat in Q1 compared to the same period in 2022 at around £83m of revenue. “Japan is a fairly challenging environment,” Reeves acknowledges as he folds his arms. “Our platform is performing well, and our market share is holding up.”

He says he’s most excited about Bally’s progress in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ontario, although if he had to single out one market that he’s particularly bullish on it would be Brazil, Latin America’s biggest opportunity. “Sports betting and gaming together are the future for us and for the future of the industry, so we are looking at expanding into additional markets. We are looking at Brazil.”

Over the course of the past near-two decades, Reeves has had a front-row seat on the evolving online gambling industry. To underline how much has changed since he joined four-year-old Gamesys straight out of university in 2005, PartyGaming was the world’s most valuable publicly traded igaming stock at the time, the UK Gambling Act 2005 had yet to be implemented and it would be another two years before Apple’s Steve Jobs unveiled the first iteration of the iPhone. “Mobile gaming was just a concept at the time,” Reeves recalls.

“The only truth that I’ve seen remain is those that understand their players and treat them well are the winners,” he asserts. “Customer preferences and expectations always change, and we’ve had to evolve alongside them. We’ll continue to do that. Players want to play the same games they play at our physical properties at home on their phones, so we’ll provide that for them in as many markets as we can.”