Analysis: Facing the facts

I wasn’t really surprised to hear the news last month that Gamesys had withdrawn its real-money gaming products from Facebook after being on the platform for two years or so.

As the first company to launch real-money gambling on the social network, Gamesys obviously scored a big PR coup for doing so, but I think they also paid a big price for that. Facebook were a bit concerned about moving into real-money gaming.

Before launch they didn’t know how the public, media, politicians and regulators would react and as a result they were extremely restrictive around what the first apps could be.

The result was that the first app launched by Gamesys ““ SlotsFriendzy ““ was not very customer friendly at all. You had to register and deposit before you could do anything. So unfortunately while Gamesys were first movers I actually think it probably backfired a little bit.

They had to rework a lot of stuff and I think the organisation was surprised about how labour intensive the entire process was.

Once the products went live, however, it became clear that the world didn’t collapse and Facebook relaxed a bit. So the guys that joined after Gamesys, like Bonza and 888, had a bit more free reign and could create apps that were far more commercially viable and customer centric.

Anti-climax

Sadly, it was probably a bit of an anti-climax for Gamesys. I think in general it turned out to be a lot harder to be successful on Facebook than many previously thought ““ regardless of the restrictions Facebook set.

Considering all these things I don’t think it was a surprise to see them take the product down eventually. We regret that Gamesys pulled out because we think the more good products and good companies on Facebook, the better for the ecosystem.

But I understand their decision. Making a success on Facebook ““ where the outcome was pretty unknown ““ was always going to require a lot of hard work for any organisation which has lots of projects going on in the real-money sector, where the outcome is a lot more guaranteed.

It seems the challenge is still to create something genuinely innovative which appeals to the audience on Facebook. It has been said many times, but simply taking an existing or even slightly different product that works on a destination portal and taking it to a social network just doesn’t work.

You have to come up with something really different to leverage the social network and that’s actually very hard. You have to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.

Tough task

In fact the core products Gamesys launched were very good. But in social gaming you have to tinker and test these products for months and months and AB test certain things. It just didn’t get the traction I think they were looking for.

Do I think this news will have put other operators off from trying real-money gambling on Facebook? No I don’t believe so and I don’t think it should, either. I think it’s a company specific decision rather than one that’s related specifically to the Facebook ecosystem.

It shows that to succeed in this space is a lot harder than some people were thinking and hoping. The message it does send out to those operators considering a move into this space, is that it is not an easy ride, nor an easy channel to add to the revenue mix.

Those who believe they have a real-money product which can succeed on Facebook need to have something truly unique that leverages the strength of the platform. I hope the news concerning Gamesys doesn’t put them off as this is an opportunity to truly innovate and, eventually, generate strong revenues.