Jackpots: How to shake up a stagnant vertical

With eight millionaires and over two million jackpot wins in just one year, we’ve been proud to have set records for our Dream Drop jackpot format, which we hope has propelled the vertical to new heights. 

The road to innovation has been long and winding, with little progress made in the jackpots space over the past decade. Hopefully, in this article, I can go some way towards outlining a blueprint for how the industry can use jackpots to re-invent a vertical that has at many times been stagnant. 

Looking to the origins of online jackpots for context, they were originally intended as engagement tools but quickly became oversaturated in the market and failed to maintain player interest.

The reason for this is relatively simple. With mounting heavy jackpots and progressively less frequent fallouts, players grew tired of content that hinged on a mechanic that offered an almost mythical prize which seemingly never dropped. 

Unfortunately, traditional formats often require extensive time to accumulate significant prizes. This delay goes against the fast-paced, engaging experiences players crave, causing them to lose interest and move on to other options.

This gave way to the stagnant nature of the vertical we’ve seen for much of the 2010s. Compounding this issue is the repetitive nature of jackpot mechanics, as supplier brands frequently rehash the same concepts without any meaningful innovation. This stifles the excitement that should accompany jackpots and the potential for life-changing wins.

In 2016, the vertical saw the introduction of a timed/threshold element paired with Red Tiger’s daily fallouts.

This addition amplified the excitement factor and inspired the industry to develop novel approaches. It’s easy to see why this created an edge for a tired format and contributed freshness to the mechanic. 

A corner was definitely turned when these must-win factors infiltrated the vertical and there was definite inspiration taken when developing Dream Drop ourselves.

This daily drop format started by Red Tiger kick-started a new wave of innovation through an engaging proposition, as there was a definite gap in the market to create something new and even more enticing than what had come before.

Of course, we used much of this thinking when creating Dream Drop – and by building on what had already been started, we can now offer lessons to others too.

The first and most vital learning is to create a product that is exciting in its own right.

The mission needs to be to create a jackpot that can entertain and create a fun experience whether players win or lose. This has to be an immediate priority to keep players engaged.

Providing a more transparent and genuine experience is also integral to delivering the right product in today’s landscape.

The ‘must drop’ element aids this tremendously, creating trust amongst players and a feeling of inclusion. This aspect also solves a persistent CRM issue that operators had long battled.

By giving the public a clear indication of when the jackpot will fall, a world of player marketing possibilities opens up, providing operators with full confidence that their re-engagement efforts will not fall on deaf ears or create false hope.  

Another key ingredient is profitability. This has been a major issue for operators over the years, which in turn has resulted in an industry-wide lack of appetite for offering jackpot products.

Between handling costs and the high contribution rates required for the traditional model, jackpots presented more than a few unattractive qualities for casinos in the past.

What we need are formats that can afford lower-to-no handling fees as a result of increased plays. We used this for Dream Drop, which has been the key selling point of the product.

By making frequent winners across titles that are engaging in their own right, operators can create a buzz that draws players in at key moments with messages that deliver on their promises.

So, where do we go from here? In principle – the industry needs to take a new perspective and offer a product that pays regularly and makes every player feel they have a genuine chance of winning.

If you can give players the feeling they have a realistic chance of winning, then the experience becomes one that drives community interest, engagement – and most importantly retention.

In short, those in the industry that focus on creating a product with integrity and quality will always give you more of a fighting chance in a sea of endless copycat content.

That said, there is so much more to explore on the jackpot front and game content at large, in many ways the surface has merely been scratched.

If we get this right over the next 10 years, jackpots can become a serious weapon in every operators arsenal to keep transforming igaming.

Simon Hammon, CEO of Relax Gaming, has been instrumental to the success of the company’s aggregation services and proprietary content portfolio. Under his leadership, Relax’s casino proposition has cemented a strong reputation for driving studio and partner growth, delivering unmatched speed to market along with rapid, simple integration.