Amid speculation that mobile gaming will more than double despite the recession, it seems that igaming providers continue to work toward providing mobile product offers. Most recently, Netplay TV acquired two mobile gambling and skill gaming properties, and they don’t intend to stop there. As Gaming Industry Media reports:

NetPlay TV announced on Friday the acquisition of Venturygames.co.uk, and Toucanwin.com, the mobile gambling and skill gaming businesses of Info-download Ltd., a subsidiary of Zed Worldwide S.A.

The interactive gaming company said it has signed an exclusive two-year sales agreement with Zed to sell the NetPlay TV range of interactive gaming solutions to its worldwide mobile network client base. As part of these transactions, NetPlay TV said it will also acquire the United Kingdom mobile quiz business, “Grab a Grand,” from Info-download.

The story goes on to explain that Netplay TV intends to offers its services across all available channels, including TV and conventional internet.

Nevertheless, mobile is both the newest and fastest growing of the available gaming channels. Mobile technologies (hardware & software) are approaching a tipping point in pricing that is pushing them toward critical mass. Currently, the market is in a place where the technology itself is readily accessible. The only remaining obstacle to mass consumer adoption of mobile technologies, now, is time. And that time can now be measure in years rather than decades.

For mobile service providers (igamign or otherwise), the time has never been either more ripe or critical for expansion. I suspect that not only are there huge gaing to be had by mobile service providers who invest now in expanding their business and product offers, but future losses for those who don’t.

So, the holidays are over and the new year is underway, which means that it’s back to business. Well, just before the holidays, iGaming News released a whitepaper that was titled Perspectives on the iGaming Economy. Given how we’re all preparing to start anew, it’s probably a good time to stop and take in a little extra perspective so that our decisions have a little added focus.

Some of the perspective in this whitepaper, moreover, is provided by our very own CEO, Nicky Senyard. Essentially, the 58 page document features an article she wrote titled Marketing Amid Recession: Strategies for Onilne Poker Operators. In the article, Nicky discusses how online poker operators have and opportunity in a recession to both ramp up their marketing efforts and consolidate their control over their marketing spend by leveraging affiliate marketing because it helps them:

• generate a better return on their marketing spend,
• better target & engage online poker players,
• and convert offline players into online ones.

During a recession, there are just as many players/consumers as before, it’s just that their spending habits have changed. What this means is the the balance of supply & demand has shifted, and any business that is quick to respond to that new balance of supply and demand may not only survive an economic slowdown, but prosper throughout it.

As for all the other perspective in the whitepaper, you’ll just have download it and have a read for yourself.

It seems that football pools are on the upswing in the UK. You see, after the National Lottery came into the market in 1994, brick & mortar pools waned. But now that players can enjoy a kind of interactivity and user-experience that a brick & mortar pools just can’t offer, it seems the private sector is poised to reclaim some ground over the National Lottery. As Lorien Pilling reports for iGaming News:

It is tempting to see the social networking phenomenon and online poker as being behind this recent renewed interested in the pool-betting business model. Pool betting is an ideal model by which to leverage social networking features because it brings a group of players together — all of whom maintain an opinion on the weekend’s fixture list. So it’s no surprise that the modern generation of pool games Web sites include community features, forums, chat facilities, player profiles and the option to create private leagues with friends.

Of course, there are other factors at work. For instance, there sheer convenience of betting online as opposed to wagering a bet with the National Lottery at a betting shop has surely contributed to this trend. Also, as Pilling notes, the influence of poker cannot be overlooked:

[...] poker, after all, is effectively operating a pool-betting model. In tournaments, players contribute to an overall prize pool, and the players that fill the top places take the biggest share of the pool. It means that there is a new generation of punters who are comfortable with the pool model and online operators could be looking to exploit this familiarity across other products.

This isn’t, however, to play down the social effect of web 2.0. Just consider how CentSports.com has prospered. Centsports does not let players deposit, but rather gives them 10 cents for free, and as soon as a player reaches $20, they can cash out. Despite the unlikeliness of users ever really making any money (and not much if they do), the site has still been a smashing success because of it’s social networking features.

Essentially, brands in a variety of verticals have experience the economies of treating a market as a community. It’s not surprising, then, that such benefits might be playing a serious role in reviving UK bpool betting.

Of course, the mobile web is particularly conducive to sport betting. Players can make and adjust wagers as events unfold no matter where they are. This has helped the mobile gaming sector grow considerably quick in recent years.

Well, now new research shows that mobile gaming is not only going to continue to grow despite economic slowdown, but it will more than double. As Gaming Intelligence reports:

A new report published by Juniper Research is predicting that total wagers on mobile phones will more than double in 2009 to over $3.6 billion, benefiting from the increased availability of mobile betting services. In comparison the report expects user spending on mobile TV and mobile games to be adversely impacted by the current global economic downturn.

Report author Dr Windsor Holden said: “Gambling is essentially a recession-proof industry, as while there may be marginal reductions in level of stakes amongst casual users, the overall appetite for gambling per se will be unaffected. Furthermore, with the growing availability of betting services on portal, the mobile is an increasingly convenient and user-friendly means of placing a bet.”

One element likely fueling this growth is the mobile sector writ large. Mobile services are still a very new market, and this is a time when all the necessary technologies (hardware & software) are hitting a tipping point in pricing. That is, very recently it became very affordable to use all the services offered through mobile devices — such as the internet. Even mobile device management is getting cheaper.

All in all, the odds are in favor of mobile gaming (no pun intended). Consider: a recession proof product combined with a technology on the cusp of critical mass. Any way you look at it, there’s quite a bit of opportunity in the mobile gaming sector.

Last week, it seemed like the recession represented an opportunity for igaming. This came to light from GameAccount reporting considerable growth. As we speculated then, however, that kind of growth couldn’t all be chalked up to a change in the economy. Some of it had to be due to strategic marketing on GameAccount’s part (disclosure: the GameAccount is an Income Access partner).

Well, in a recession, strategic marketing will often mean not just getting a higher return on your marketing investment, but doing so by focusing on tangible results (as opposed to less tangible objective, such as branding). And in last week’s edition of iGaming News, our very own CEO, Nicky Senyard was discussing just how that can apply to online poker operators. In an article called Recession Marketing Strategies for Online Poker Operators, Nicky discussed the recession opportunity for online poker operators to both ramp up their marketing efforts and consolidate their control over their marketing spend. In the article, Nicky covers how poker operators can leverage affiliate marketing to:

• generate a better return on their marketing spend,
• better target & engage online poker players,
• and convert offline players into online ones.

During a recession, there are just as many players/consumers as before, it’s just that their spending habits have changed. What this means is the the balance of supply & demand has shifted, and operators (or any other business) who are quick to respond to that new balance of supply and demand may not only survive an economic downturn, but prosper through it.

Nicky’s article, then, might be worth a look at for igaming entrepreneurs who want to shit their marketing efforts in a more strategic direction. After all, if there are fewer consumer dollars to capture,every dollar you capture gives you that much more of an edge over the competition.