A few weeks ago, I attended Casual Connect Amsterdam. This time around I tried to do something new on the stage and rather than giving an updated State of the Social Casino Industry talk, I did a fire side chat with Jeff Grub from Games Beat. We discussed the current and future challenges for the Social Casino market. We discussed topics like: the importance of content in social casino, user acquisition, market makeup, growth drivers, how smaller companies can differentiate themselves, what Playtika does dominate this market, and more. Below is the video. Hope you find it insightful.
Social Casino
A Rare Interview with Playtika’s CEO, Robert Antokol
For those of you who follow the Social Casino niche you’ll know that Robert our CEO rarely speaks publicly. Though it took me some convincing, I was able to get Robert to speak at Casual Connect Tel Aviv.
Robert is one of the only CEO’s in the games industry that has been able to successfully build a company from the ground up – from two guys with a power-point and a big vision – to a 1200 person company with hundreds of millions of dollars of revenues, 5 hit games, and all this while maintaining a leadership position in a niche with some big and worthy competitors. I recommend the talk below to anyone who is involved in the casual/social games industry and even more so for those who are involved in our niche.
Below is a rare interview with Robert conducted by Venturebeats Dean Takahashi where they discuss Playtika, the social casino market and some of our secret sauce.
To view an up to date market review of the social casino industry click here
State of the Social Casino Industry Q3 2015
Casual Connect Tel Aviv was a big success and I will be writing a specific post about the conference pretty soon. I have gotten several requests to share my presentation from the conference so here it is. Just note that this is a rolling lecture series and is given approx every two quarters. The previous versions of the lecture can be found here on my blog as well.
#Playtika at a Glance. Our new infographic prepared for Casual Connect Tel Aviv. #CCTLV #socialcasino
Happy to share our new infographic which we produced for Casual Connect Tel Aviv. #CCTLV
Playtika infographic October 2015. Casual Connect Tel Aviv.
Social Casino in Asia
Revenues in the Social Casino market come mainly from the western speaking core markets. Namely the USA, Canada, and Australia. It makes lots of sense as Slot Machines, Poker, and Bingo are all native/local games in these markets. This reality is also evident when you walk into a Casino in Macau where, although slot numbers are on the rise, most of the games are predominantly local.
Some companies have emerged as early local leaders in the Social Casino markets in Asia including Boyaa, Tencent (with their poker games), and Sammy Sega but the reality is that Social Casino in Asia is still in its infancy is one of the big growth opportunities in the Social Casino market.
Of course we have to be careful to say the “Asian Market”, there is no such thing as a homogeneous Asian market but rather a whole list of markets each with its own likes, dislikes, propensities, languages, and purchasing power.
In the lecture below, Adi Hanin, from the Business Development team at Playtika reviews the Asian Social Casino market and discusses some of the challenges for western Social Casino game developers in the Asian markets. This lecture joins the list of core lectures on the Social Casino industry in my Guide to the Social Casino Industry.
Adi has recently launched a blog of her own. Go and follow her here
Market Insights 
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