888 not "giving up hope" on Facebook RMG
COO Itai Frieberger says the firm will persist with current strategy despite recent closures
888 has not “given up hope” on achieving success with real-money gaming (RMG) on Facebook and plans to give the product “additional firepower” in the future, according to its chief operating officer Itai Frieberger.
888 is now the only real-money operator with an RMG app – Bingo Appy – on the social network after Bonza Gaming closed its Bonza Slots product yesterday following its acquisition by Unibet in Q1.
In March Zynga pulled its bwin.party-powered social gaming products ZyngaPlusPoker and ZyngaPlusCasino which followed similar decisions from Paddy Power and Gamesys last year.
However, despite these closures, Frieberger told eGaming Review 888 had no plans to close Bingo Appy and would instead aim to increase investment when circumstances permit.
“We believe there is a potential here and although it’s not making a lot of money yet, we want to give it a go,” he said.
“We’ll need to ramp up investment in marketing and product which is not on the agenda right now but at some point we will give it some additional firepower,” Frieberger added.
In November eGR reported that social gaming CTO Raz Bar Haim had left the operator as part of a broader restructuring of its social gaming business, a move Frieberger revealed had now been completed with the firm’s former VP B2C casino Erez Sadan now heading up the division.
“The restructure has been completed and it’s up to us now to figure out how we’re going to make money out of it,” Frieberger said.
“All real-money operators have traditionally been unsuccessful with regards to social but I do believe there’s a market and that RMG firms should be leading the charge,” he continued.