NEWS / THE BRIEFING /
Q
&
A
JAMIE
WALTERS
CO-FOUNDER
TAU GAMING
Q
How did you and fellow
co-founder James Newman
team up together to form Tau
Gaming?
James was a supplier to us
at Metro Play and he’s got an
existing company called Digital
Adventures which is an affiliate
business and has a number of
websites which have valued
customers and we’ll utilise to drive
acquisition. There’s already an
existing infrastructure around that
for a lot of the acquisition that
we need to do including live PPC
campaigns which just needs to be
repointed for our business. We’re
bringing both sides of the operator
and affiliate businesses together
and building a marketing services
business as much as an operator
business.
A
Q
Do you plan to launch
any major advertising
campaigns?
TV is very much in the pipeline
but we need to make sure we
have all of the digital performance
channels at maximum efficiency
before we do that. That’s priority
number one. All the standard
digital channel metrics need to be
spot on and once we’re confident
they’re delivering what we need
then we’ll go above the line.
A
Q
What is the make up of the
team?
We’re a modern business
so we have a lot of people
who work with the firm but don’t
necessarily work on-site. There’s
a strong remote working culture,
which is great as it keeps the
business pretty lean and you can
get great talent that way as well.
The philosophy of the business is
to free up as much cash as possible
to acquire customers. Every pound
we don’t spend on marketing is a
pound we’re using not acquiring
A
8
customers – that’s a big mantra for
these early days of the business.
Q
Why did you pick
Dragonfish as your
platform partner?
I had an existing relationship
with the commercial team
but never did business with them
at Metro Play despite having
discussions. We obviously looked
around the market when we were
setting up Tau Gaming but I was
always impressed with Dragonfish.
Its bingo product is fantastic and
it has a really good track record of
start-up businesses delivering high
growth and getting high valuations
off the back of it. That’s the kind of
model that we’re pursuing.
A
TAXING TIMES
A trade association for the
land-based slot machine
industry has warned it
will fight the dual tax rate
in the Netherlands that it
says will cost hundreds of
jobs. The OF Slots Industry
Organisation said it plans
to issue state secretary
of justice Fred Teeven
with a petition signed by
members of the landbased gaming industry
protesting against the
country’s remote gambling
bill and argued the split
tax rate would create an
“uneven playing field”.
The organisation has also
questioned the feasibility
of ensuring land-based
operators adhere to the
same player registration
and identification measures
as online firms, stating
it to be “not only unjust,
but [will] also lead to
an excessive investment
burden”.
Q
And you expect to launch
bi ngo in Q1 2015?
Yes, our plan is very much
multi-skin and we have a
roadmap of when we went those
skins to come out. What we aim to
do is create products that appeal
to certain niches with a different
team and offering. The route we
want to take is to use content-rich
experiences beyond the game itself
and using content as a marketing
tool to drive engagement with
the customers. It will be content
you can’t get anywhere else in
the market. We don’t want to
take a bonus-led approach to our
customer engagement.
A
Q
What are your plans from a
mobile perspective?
We’ll have a mobile app ready
to submit to the iOS store
as soon as we go live online. For
marketing, mobile is going to
be hugely important and we’ve
partnered with Silverpop as our
email service provider and its
mobile capabilities are really
strong. We expect mobile to be
50% of our revenues.
A
GROWTH SPURT
Spain’s online gambling market has
continued its 2014 growth spurt
after posting a 19% increase in
Q3 gross gaming revenues (GGR)
with sportsbook growing by more
than a third. According to figures
released by the Spanish regulator
Dirección General de Ordenación
del Juego, total GGR for the
three-month period ended 30
September was €62m – a year-onyear increase of 19% and comes
on the back of the 7% growth
recorded in Q2. Sportsbook GGR
increased by 35% year-on-year to
€33.7m, which represented 54%
of the total market and 6% higher
than the €31.8m posted in Q2.
W W W. E G R M A G A Z I N E . C O M