The Wall Street Journal has been analysing Bwin stats presented to Harvard in a responsible gambling analytical project.
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Interesting stats on online gambling
- Thread starter jetset
- Start date
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2004
- Location
- Pictland
An excerpt for the curious:
- Joined
- May 22, 2012
Yes, many (including myself) have known, well suspected this for ever. You don't have to be a genius to visit a high st. bookies, amusement arcade or casinos to cotton-on that there is an omnipresent hard core of 'regulars' which we tend to avoid using the term 'addicts' for. Spending inheritances. exhausting every line of credit, spending all their wages/benefits and selling of items before coming up against the final brick wall whereby they have a hard decision to make. One drops off to destitution and another one replaces him. Of course, there are too those wealthy enough to have a big habit and avoid the stages above. It's gambling's 'open secret' as such. I strongly suspect if you took those two groups from the equation, the industry would find itself in trouble.
This is why the bookies in the UK are going hell-for-leather to get more FOBT's online, the most addictive and profitable form of gambling ever mooted. Servicing those of us who do the weekly 50 quid or so is reliant on signing up huge volumes of new players with SU incentives. Much better for them to have a few big spenders regardless of the source of their deposits, begged, earnt or borrowed.
I would expect the Bwin report in the OP to reflect pretty much what all online gaming sites would report.
- Joined
- May 29, 2004
- Location
- England
You'd also probably be amazed at how many casinos fail to spot a high roller and nurture them too. I run regular high-roller tests to see how casinos respond and while some are very quick on the uptake, some don't even notice!
To give you an idea, I did a test a short while back at a WHG (William Hill) casino. I deposited £22,000 over 3 sessions, often spinning slots like Great Blue at £20+ a spin, made probably around £200,000 of bets - on slots - made a big withdrawal and was generally high rolling. I ended up slightly up at 3k.
ID request aside, I haven't had a single communication from them since I opened the account. Amazing.
- Joined
- May 22, 2012
- Joined
- Oct 14, 2004
- Location
- United Kingdom
No not at all. You won.
This is the problem. They focussed on the one lucky outcome, not the long term potential of a player like this. They should have done long term TRTP analysis of the three sessions to see what their long term take would be if this player continued with them, and focussed on ensuring that they did.
It also means that there is a small group of "the wrong players to piss off" with a half baked marketing screwup.
- Joined
- May 29, 2004
- Location
- England
No not at all. You won.
If I was the casino, I'd want it back...and some
Plus, the first session was a winner but the subsequent sessions were losers.
- Joined
- May 22, 2012
If I was the casino, I'd want it back...and some
Acknowledged. But overall you were up and showed you would play in a controlled manner w/d-ing when necessary or ahead. You didn't play your deposits to extinction, which is the dream outcome for any online casino. Player discipline is not the casino's friend.
- Joined
- May 29, 2004
- Location
- England
I can be controlled - but sometimes I forget how
One other thing to add: a first-time winner is generally regarded as a good thing by many online casinos because, assuming the cash-out process goes smoothly, it gives them confidence in the brand.
Also, I don't play with bonuses. This probably makes it easier for me to cash-out and perhaps they prefer bonus players. The 4-day pending period (cast in stone - I asked) certainly suggests customer satisfaction is not the number 1 priority but all that said, I personally think it's just a case of missing - or not recognising - a potentially lucrative player.
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2013
- Location
- UK
You’d probably note that with a Casino of that size the people that do the day to day things and process payments are just cogs in a system far below the board members that have real interest and just do what it says in their job description.
They just do their job and collect their wages when they drop into their bank account and unless the bottom line reduces which would elevate to senior management they don’t care one bit.
They don’t work in a cottage industry, they just work with numbers however big or small and as long as they add up all is fine.
Within a big and soulless service industry you have people that don’t understand gambling (they really don’t) and if you was to lose your house then it was your fault for being so stupid in the beginning to spend the money in the first place.
It would be nice to have a dedicated customer support team to be on hand that could deal personally with your account and have a deep knowledge of your income and outgoings to best advise you if you have over budgeted, and offer to help while they read bedtime stories to you over the phone.
I did find such a Casino but then the alarm clock went off.
- Joined
- May 29, 2004
- Location
- England
LOL.
I take your point about the bigger operators finding it harder to cater for players: it is easier for smaller operators to do this if they choose to. And I quite like that levelling of the playing field myself. But when you look at the stats from the original post, with 10% of the gamblers accounting for 80% of the casino's take, you'd still expect that to be a major strategy focal point in a casino of any size. Land-based casinos do it very well in my experience.
A looooong time ago I remember reading a study that said it was something like 5 times more cost effective to persuade an existing customer to purchase a product than it was to find a new customer.
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