Q&A: Eitan Boyd, CEO, Stride Gaming
With the bingo vertical continuing to trail casino and sportsbook on mobile, Stride Gamingâs CEO discusses his firmâs plans for the channel and how bingo can catch up
In July Stride Gaming announced the £25m acquisition of mobile-focused developers InfiApps. While the purchase marked Strideâs first venture in the social gaming space, it also demonstrated a determination to make an impact on a channel which the bingo vertical has somewhat neglected in recent years, at least when compared to the progress made by sportsbook and casino.
That may be beginning to change. This year weâve seen Rank Group overhaul its Mecca Bingo mobile product with a fully responsive redesign, while Galaâs mobile bingo offer has also seen rapid improvements.
Stride, which listed on AIM in May, is well placed to capitalise on bingoâs mobile revolution. As a newer firm which was founded in 2012, it has an agility which some of its larger rivals might lack and which is particularly essential when it comes to mobile.
eGR Mobile Intelligence caught up with Strideâs CEO Eitan Boyd to discuss how the firmâs mobile transition has been progressing.
eGR Mobile Intelligence (eGRMI): How happy are you with the current state of your mobile product?        Â
Eitan Boyd (EB): In an ideal world all of our games and platforms would be on HTML5 by now, so if you are using a PC, laptop, smartphone or tablet it would be the same game with the same experience which resizes automatically. Weâve tried this, but unfortunately game experience and the graphics are still better using Flash for players on desktop. So although from a technical point of view weâd like one source code across all streams, we are still split between HTML5 and Flash. It is unfortunate that HTML5 is still lagging behind in some aspects. But until it catches up we will continue to juggle between the two to keep the customers happy. We also donât have any native apps yet for our bingo products. But our recent acquisition [of InfiApps] will enable us to do that, and we hope to have apps available later this year.
eGRMI: How does mobile compare to desktop in terms of revenues?
EB: If you go back a year we were only generating around 20-25% of total GGR from the mobile channel. Now that figure is about 50%, so weâve doubled it in a year and it continues to grow all the time.
eGRMI: What are the most important factors to consider when taking a bingo product mobile?
EB: Players are used to having an experience on mobile which isnât as rich as desktop. Thatâs not just in gaming but more generally. Weâve actually found that reach and access to games on the go is a more important factor than usability. For example, playing bingo on an iPad or tablet is a much nicer experience than on a smartphone. Thereâs more room to chat, the graphics are cleaner and you can sit at home in front of a TV. But weâve found that actually smartphone users account for a greater share of total mobile play even though the small screen is not ideal.
eGRMI: Bingo has traditionally lagged behind sportsbook and casino on mobile. Is that changing?
EB: I think so. If you look at gaming as a whole, both casino and sportsbook are drawing more mobile revenues than bingo. Sports betting is topping the industry as it is a far easier to get right. You pick a game, thereâs no multi-player and it is a far more static experience. But while bingo has lagged behind there is no doubt the uptake is gaining across the vertical. It has a lot to do with better technology both on the hardware and the software side, which allows us to offer a better experience, which in turn encourages more uptake.
eGRMI: Is mobile changing the way Stride operates as a company as a whole?
EB: Although we only started out in 2012 our first solution was very much desktop driven. As we went along we began to think more about mobile but it has only really been in the last year and a half that it has been a key driver and weâve grown very quickly in that time. Our focus is shifting increasingly towards mobile but we still have to get the desktop side right. Â On average a customer session is about 20 minutes on mobile versus around 50 minutes on desktop, so we still have more gameplay coming from the desktop side. And of course the longer people play the more money we make, so we have to keep that engagement on desktop and try to grow it on mobile. So developing the mobile side is a focus now and we hope the acquisition will help that.
eGRMI: You mentioned your acquisition of mobile developer InfiApps. How will the firm help improve Strideâs mobile offer?
EB: We are here to use the acquisition channel to leap forward and capture market share. The idea with acquiring an app platform was about both putting bingo into the social gaming space and also putting our existing real money content into apps. Up until now weâve focused on real money gaming but having an app platform in social allows us to offer a social version of bingo. There are companies out there who offer social bingo, where you play for power-ups or to unlock new levels. We believe it can help us attract a different demographic.
eGRMI: Could it also hold an upside for your real money gaming offer?
EB: It is probably more a complementary offering to the group rather than something which can take market share from the real money gaming sector. The people who are already in this space have seen at best a 2% conversion between social and real money. The benefits are less about increasing our existing real money product and more about building a new mobile vertical on its own merits, both in the UK and outside the UK where there are less regulatory issues with social gaming compared to real money. But eventually mobile and social will fall under the same umbrella managed by the same team.