Industry News

BetBlocker Welcomes RET Donation from Greentube

Published

4 years ago

June 2, 2020

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Responsible Gambling charity BetBlocker is thrilled to announce a recent donation earlier this year from Greentube, a donation that will help fund improvements to the charity’s iOS mobile app. BetBlocker relies on charitable contributions from industry players, government and corporate interests, and individuals wishing to help them in the fight against problem gambling.

Greentube, a gambling content provider and subsidiary of Novomatic, made the donation as part of its annual research, education and treatment (RET) programme. In taking this step Greentube have taken the initiative and an industry leading position in helping BetBlocker to assist their users in engaging with gambling in a responsible manner.

The Problem of Problem Gambling

The current lock down situation that is impacting large areas of the world and expected to continue for months to come seems likely to result in increased levels of problematic behaviour as large volumes of people are isolated within their homes, without their usual modes of entertainment. Excluding the sports betting markets – which have largely disappeared due to the cancellation of all major sports events – these factors are likely to result in increased uptake and engagement with online gambling. Marrying this with economic stress that a very large number of households will find themselves under and you sadly have very fertile ground for gambling addiction to grow and the potential damage it can cause during these challenging times could be significant.

Recent research (conducted before lock downs began) has shown a startling lack of knowledge about the tools available to help players engage with online gambling in an responsible fashion. Here are some compelling stats explaining why BetBlocker’s work is so important:

46% of people surveyed had gambled within the last 4 weeks
96% of all online gambling occurs in the home (due to lock downs a far large number of people are now spending far more time in their homes)
Only 6% of those surveyed had ever self-excluded from a gambling operator
53% of those surveyed did not know what a self-exclusion was/entailed.

With such a high proportion of those engaging with online gambling unfamiliar with the tools available to help them engage with gambling in a healthy manner alongside the likely increased engagement that will result from lock downs, it is more important than ever that the entire industry works together to promote responsible gambling and protect vulnerable players.

Further supporting the supposition that the lock downs could result in increased problematic gambling behaviour, since the beginning of March, BetBlocker has seen more than a 40% increase in traffic visiting our site. Alongside this we have seen at least a fivefold increase in user contacts looking for assistance to remove the app so they can return to gambling. This clearly indicates that there is increased interest in a tool to help restrict online gambling.

Q&A – How the Greentube Donation Will Help

The best way to understand how the Greentube donation will help further BetBlocker’s mission is to let them explain the opportunities they see. To that end, BetBlocker officials participated in a brief Q&A session to help supporters better understand what they are doing:

Q: Will the entire donation amount go to improving your iOS app?

Every penny that is donated to BetBlocker is spent on improving or maintaining the app. The Greentube donation is being invested in making the iOS app more challenging to bypass.

Every operating system has its own policies for developers that create different challenges to producing an effective and robust restriction. The simple facts are no operating system wants to allow any developer the facility to lock their app in place on the user’s device. Malicious developers could exploit this functionality to develop virus or malware that once on a device could not be removed. But the very purpose of BetBlocker is to place a restriction between users and reengaging with gambling. One that cannot be removed when the user is vulnerable to relapsing. This makes our job in developing an effective service a challenging one.

The iOS platform is particularly restrictive in the actions they allow their developers to take and we are constantly working to find new ways to work within the allowed policies while still providing an effective block to users. We’re far from perfect yet, but we are constantly working to improve the strength of the restriction.

We would love for the development teams at the various operating systems to step forward and work with us to ensure that BetBlocker provides the service that gambling addicts need – they could do a huge amount of good with very little effort – but to date while we have made efforts to talk to a number of platforms our enthusiasm has not been reciprocated.

Q: What kinds of improvements will be made to the app?

We cannot say too much on this front without educating our users as to potential weaknesses with the app. So let’s just say that the upgrades will make it more difficult to remove the restriction put in place by the iOS app before the chosen restriction period has ended.

Q: How will those improvements help problem gamblers?

For any addict abstinence is a crucial part of recovery. Putting barriers between yourself and the activity that you are struggling to control can be a significant aid when working towards recovery. The harder we make BetBlocker to remove or bypass, the stronger the barrier between a gambling addict and re-accessing problematic behaviours.

Q: Are there any other improvements BetBlocker is looking at down the road?

We have a shopping list of improvements that we’d like to make to the app that are just waiting on funding coming in. These include:

– Putting together an alternative, stronger version of our desktop apps to allow users a choice between a more robust restriction and more flexible system use.

– Adding further profiles to allow for the functionality to restrict ‘freemium’ apps.

– Improving the activation process to make sure the set-up process is more intuitive and that the user is given the best possible information on the potential consequences of each selection.

– Providing information live on site showing how many users are currently using the app. This would both demonstrate how many people are helped by any donation and ensure that potential new users feel less alone, providing understanding that there are thousands of other people with the same issues.

Q: How can problem gamblers avail themselves of BetBlocker services?

Simple – visit https://betblocker.org/ and from the homepage you can download our app for the Android, iOS, Windows, Apple, Linux or Fire OS.

Q: Is there a cost associated with the app?

The app is entirely free to all users. It’s also free and without strings for all operators who would like to build it into their Responsible Gambling information/policies. Support via a donation would certainly be appreciated, but is not required to make use of the app by any means.

Q: How can gambling operators help BetBlocker fulfil its mission?

The most obvious way is via donations. BetBlocker is not a massively expensive project to run but it does require funding and we always welcome any donations sent our way. Donations also count towards the UKGC license RET contributions so also help operators meet their license requirements. This year we’ve already received donations from Greentube, L&L Europe, White Hat Gaming and even an affiliate marketer – CasinoGuide – and these have been put to great use improving the service.

Beyond this however, the simplest way that operators can support the BetBlocker project is by including information about the service in their Responsible Gambling literature. This costs the operator nothing but ensures that vulnerable players can find a service that is free to help them take control of their gambling.

About BetBlocker.org
BetBlocker.org is a charitable organisation established to help relieve the burdens caused by gambling through the prevention of problem gambling. The organisation’s main tool is software that can be downloaded and installed to prevent online devices from gaining access to gambling sites. The software is offered free of charge to both consumers and gambling operators. It is funded through charitable contributions.

Industry News

The untapped potential of SEO in iGaming

Published

6 hours ago

May 8, 2024

George Miller

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Reading Time: 4 minutes

With Filip Podborschi, SEO Strategist at The Unit

From our experience in SEO in igaming, there are a number of areas where we see room for improvement and common mistakes which can be rectified. Let’s take a look at these facets of SEO one by one, with our best tips for how to make sure you can maximise your search ranking and drive more volume to your website.

Keyword strategy

The first thing operators should do in this area is identify the best performing keywords that result in higher search volumes on each post. It’s pages that rank rather than websites, so you need a different search intent on each page, and that increases the list of keywords you’re ranking for.

The way to do this is by checking the search volume, and then implementing the keywords according to SEO best practices, which means having primary and secondary keywords and adjusting repetition accordingly.

The common mistake we see here is that companies don’t go into enough depth when conducting competitive analysis; especially when they’re new to the industry. Identifying what exactly your competitors are doing regarding SEO is harder than it looks, and it’s an area where marketing agencies tend to be quite lazy. They may use some tools which will show the standout competitors by algorithm, but they won’t crawl for long enough to ascertain what services they offer and provide a comparison with their client’s service. You need to find out which sites could be ranking better than you, and why.

We also see issues with the ranking of sites based on the user’s location. For example, you may have a website that ranks well in Canada, and when I as a user based in Romania search for that category, I’m not going to get the same list of results as a user who is based in Canada. The best thing to do is use a VPN to gauge how your websites are ranking and performing with your specific audience in your domestic geographical area.

SEO tags optimisation

With SEO tags, which are essentially the page title and description you see on the search engine results page, the page title has the highest ranking power. Google will first check the page title to get an idea of what the page is about and what searches it is relevant for. It will then check the H1 and the content, and it may look through the H2 as well.

A common issue here is some websites have templated SEO tags, especially for the inner pages, so it’s more of a formula within the code to generate a random structure. It is very obvious they are templated and that the operator doesn’t really care about the length.

The key thing with tags is to make sure your pages have titles that don’t exceed the ideal length. This is a big mistake if you get this wrong, and it is very important to optimise your titles. SEO tags can be optimised around keywords. Once doing so, it is very important to prioritise your main pages. If you have 10 pages as part of the main menu, then you should optimise those, before optimising the inner pages.

Identifying duplicate pages is also important, as well as making sure meta inscriptions include CTAs; those inscriptions don’t impact rankings directly, but they do impact the CTR. You have to do that without being too spammy though, so it’s advisable to avoid words like ‘sale’ or calls to “CLICK HERE NOW”.

Headings

Keywords must be implemented in headings; especially in H1s and H2s. Make sure not to overuse H2s and keep them optimised for content value.

If we structure the ranking power of the elements that are bringing results, we would optimise with the page title first, H1 second, content third and H2s fourth. It is better to have five H2s with three of them being optimised around the same search intent that is highlighted in H1, than it is to have 3/10 optimised around keywords. Too many H2s will just confuse Google about your search intent. You can have similar search intent as with H1s, and also have H3s and H4s to highlight value to the reader.

Interlinking strategy

Interlinking between pages is often missing. I’m not talking about interlinking from the main menu, as every page has the ability for you to go back, but I’m talking about interlinking within content, which Google considers to be much more important, because it cares about the relevancy. Google will consider pages with high-quality content as a higher authority page.

Our advice would be to implement anchor links on both branded and non-branded keywords. You should make sure there is an anchor link to the parent page. For example, domain.com/blog is a parent for domain.com/blog/igaming-seo.

It’s very important to have child pages linking to the parent page, passing authority to the parent page. Having that interlinked structure will pass more authority to that parent page.

To explain that in a little more detail, let’s say you have a sportsbook page with 10 more child pages that reflect a particular set of sports. Having each of those 10 pages optimised so they have some authority and linking them to the parent page would pass authority to that parent page. Parent pages usually have a keyword with higher search volume, and passing as much authority as you can to the child page is very important. Too often websites lack content on child pages.

The future of SEO and experience needed

Going forward, we see AI as one of the most significant developments in SEO. At this point, we are not able to rank user engagement in AI, and it is important to keep yourself updated with how Google is reacting to this.

Google in time may provide additional options if you want to be eligible for a particular set of results in that environment. Keep an eye on what features it will offer and the types of websites. Google may consider implementing specific types of results for betting, such as displaying odds or a comparison of odds from three or four sites at the same time.

With all these issues, it is vital to have the relevant experience on board, particularly when it comes to the skill of conducting very in-depth competitor analysis, and this is something The Unit can provide. Conducting competitor analysis is something we have done across several industries, and not just in igaming. The main strength you can have with SEO is to know your competitors inside out, and those skills can be adjusted based on your needs.

The post The untapped potential of SEO in iGaming appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.

Industry News

IGT Expands Footprint in Spain’s ‘Salones’ Sector with Launch of New Multi-level Progressive Theme

Published

8 hours ago

May 8, 2024

Niji Narayan

igt-expands-footprint-in-spain’s-‘salones’-sector-with-launch-of-new-multi-level-progressive-theme

Reading Time: < 1 minute

International Game Technology PLC announced that its latest multi-level progressive (MLP) game, Diamond Mania, has launched in Spain’s Amusement with Prize (AWP) “salones” sector. Diamond Mania will follow the success of IGT’s Magic Fortune Link AWP game in Spain, a high-performing title that recently surpassed a 1000-unit deployment milestone.

“IGT is committed to growing its footprint in Spain by supplying researched-backed, market-attuned games that meet the player preferences in the region. Building on the successful deployment of IGT’s debut title for the salones sector, Magic Fortune Link, we are excited to expand our offering to include Diamond Mania, a unique multi-game jackpot that can help operators achieve excellent results and diversify their gaming floors,” said Maria Aldana, IGT Director of Sales Western Europe and Africa.

Specifically adapted for the salones market, Diamond Mania features four lively base game themes: Samurai Takeo, Majestic Stallion, Ramosis Treasures and Wish Mistress. Featuring proven mechanics for a highly engaging experience for players, Diamond Mania offers three special bonuses, a reel boost, a prize boost and a jackpot bonus, which can combine to activate the super games and mega games features and ultimately lead to the chance to win one of the four progressive jackpots.

Diamond Mania is available on the BINTIA 27-inch multi-game cabinet, which offers dual HD monitors and a topper option for casino-like styling. It features an ergonomic design, programmable LED lighting, vivid high-resolution graphics, an immersive sound system and can be configured with the TITO function.

The game will be exclusively distributed through Orenes Grupo, Spain’s salones sector market leader in operations and gaming machine distribution. Later this year, IGT plans to introduce Treasure Box, the Company’s third MLP developed specifically for Spain’s salones sector, which represents approximately 3000 gaming and bingo halls.

The post IGT Expands Footprint in Spain’s ‘Salones’ Sector with Launch of New Multi-level Progressive Theme appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.

Industry News

Sportradar Appoints Behshad Behzadi as the Company’s Chief Technology Officer and Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer

Published

8 hours ago

May 8, 2024

Niji Narayan

sportradar-appoints-behshad-behzadi-as-the-company’s-chief-technology-officer-and-chief-artificial-intelligence-officer

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Sportradar Group AG announced that Behshad Behzadi has been named Chief Technology Officer and Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer of the Company (CTO and CAIO), effective May 1.

As Sportradar’s CTO and CAIO, Behzadi will be based in the organisation’s headquarters in Switzerland and report directly to Chief Executive Officer, Carsten Koerl. Working collaboratively across the organisation, Behzadi will drive the usage and adoption of AI and cutting-edge technology to enhance its product offerings and roadmap to deliver hyper-personalised experiences for sports fans. Additionally, his extensive experience in leading initiatives aimed at improving internal operational efficiency will help optimise processes and drive innovation across the business. Sportradar has the largest global coverage of sports data, fan insights and betting liquidity. The usage of cutting-edge AI will help to drive the Company’s future efficiency and can create significant value for clients and stakeholders.

Koerl said: “We are proud to welcome Behshad, a world-renowned leader in harnessing generative AI and other advanced technologies, who marries a unique blend of technical expertise and business acumen. His proven track record in developing and commercializing product strategies to accelerate growth and innovation, as well as spearheading initiatives aimed at improving internal operational efficiency, will bolster our leadership position, keeping Sportradar at the forefront of technological advancement.”

With more than 20 years of experience, Behzadi is a distinguished computer scientist and recognised global technology leader with expertise in algorithms, search ranking, natural language processing, speech recognition, machine learning and generative AI. Behzadi joined Google Zurich in 2006 and has played a key role in Google’s AI-first strategy as co-founder of Google Assistant, Google Lens, Google Smart Display and the Next Gen Assistant, a breakthrough in mobile assistant technology with on-device Machine Learning. Most recently, he led Google Cloud’s Conversational AI and applied Generative AI initiative focusing on applying the latest AI advancements to reimagine and automate customer services and operations for large enterprises. Behzadi earned a PhD in Bioinformatics from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris and did postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics.

Behzadi said: “Sportradar is an exceptional company and category leader operating at the global intersection of sports, technology and digital content. I am very excited to join an organization that pushes the boundaries on technology and puts a premium on innovation. I look forward to working alongside Carsten, the rest of the executive management team and their talented group of creators to continue Sportradar’s history of innovation as the Company enters its next exciting chapter.”

The post Sportradar Appoints Behshad Behzadi as the Company’s Chief Technology Officer and Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer appeared first on European Gaming Industry News.