iGaming Daily

Joe Streeter (00:07.069)
Good afternoon and welcome to another episode of the iGaming Daily. And we are joined once again by the CEO of Incentive Games, John Gordon. John, how are you doing? It's great to catch up with you again. Yeah, firstly, how are things? How's everything going with you?

John Gordon (00:23.36)
Hi, nice to see you again, Joe. Yeah, things are great here in incentive towers. So, I'm delighted to be back on your podcast. Excited for today.

Joe Streeter (00:32.637)
Yeah, every time we catch up, always seems like a real hub of activity at Incentive Towers. It always seems like there's so much going on and it would be remiss of me not to ask you. We're going to talk about Crash games and we're going to talk about the work environment at Incentive Towers today, amongst other things, but it would be remiss of me not to reflect on our last episode where we kind of spoke about free to play games and looked ahead to the Euros and yeah,

As you can imagine, it's tough for me to still talk about the euros. It's still a little bit sore, but you predicted it would be a big summer for Predictor Games. How was it? How was the euros for Incentive Games? Aside from, yeah, not talking about the results specifically, of course.

John Gordon (01:18.798)
Yeah, no, it was great. We had, I would say, we had comfortably the most entries into any free -to -play games in the world, into our incentive games, games across Bet365 and Live Score and some of our bigger clients, flutters, some of the flutter brands across the world.

And then we did have a game that we launched worldwide for another massive brand, but we're not allowed to mention it yet. We've not released the PR yet. So yeah, it was a very successful summer for Incentive Games in terms of tens of millions of entries into our Euro and COPA products. So it was good, smooth as well. And more importantly, sorry, not only the entries, but bug free and...

we got the results we wanted in terms of the user behavior for our clients. So very successful. Thank you for asking.

Joe Streeter (02:19.529)
Brilliant, I guess that is absolutely vital, isn't it? And I forgot to mention the Copper as well, really played nicely to a schedule of football. And we have a couple of off weeks now, we're all kind of looking at the wall, not sure what to do with ourselves, but it leads you nicely onto the new season as well, sets you up nicely, you're on the path to good engagement for the upcoming season.

John Gordon (02:40.622)
Yeah, it reminds me of that Peep Show episode where they say football just never stops. It just never stops. So yeah, so with football season coming up, again we've got Bet 365 and Sky Bet and Live Score, Live Score Bet and Virgin Bet.

Joe Streeter (02:46.459)
Yeah.

John Gordon (03:03.438)
Fangio stuff all to go live along with that big client that I can't mention at the moment. So yeah, there's a lot of games going out, but we're more and more, well not more and more, but half the company is sports, so free to play sports, and the other half is free to play casino. So those games are just 24 -7. And what we'll talk about today is we've now got this new vertical that's bespoke pay to play games.

So whether it be Crash or what we call sort fast arcade style games that we're launching, sort of part of the casino team are doing it. So there's pay to play Crash games and other types of products. the company has a lot of focus on those new games as there's a huge demand for them. So it's quite exciting.

Joe Streeter (03:55.273)
Nice, definitely really exciting. And that peep show sketch you mentioned as well, holds up. see it recycled every few years and it really holds up. It still remains funny in in 2024. But yeah, let's let's talk about Crash Games and just how much the market for Crash Games has evolved in recent years.

John Gordon (04:05.176)
Yeah.

John Gordon (04:16.236)
Yeah, it's interesting. we, a lot of our clients, or some of our clients over the years have said, look, Premier Bet is one of them. We used to be quite big in Africa on pay to play games. And they've been saying for us for a few years, can you do bespoke sort of crash games for us?

I wish I did it back then when they asked us but no, the last year or so we've been really focused in bringing a new masterpiece to the...

to the market so we've we're just about to launch with Premier Bet and I think we signed some of the big operators in Africa and South America so the likes of Odie Betts have signed in 888 Africa and there's quite a few that are just about to drop in Africa so we've got a velocity or crash game system so it's not just a know a copy of other crash games

us being Incentive Games, we do things a little bit differently here. So we've got a whole crash game system for Africa and South America, which is quite exciting. So it's like a free to play product. And then at the end of it, we put our own pay to play crash game there. So it's like a pay, it's a free to play crash game. And then we put our, we get the people hooked on playing that free to play game and then they win credits into our pay to play game. So we wouldn't go toe to toe with

the current providers by just doing a copycat. So what we've got is a system that has about seven or eight unique selling points that makes it a much more compelling product line for us, so it's really exciting.

Joe Streeter (05:58.917)
It isn't the velocity game system. It's kind of something that you mentioned is your own kind of take on it, your own perspective on it, your own thing you bring into the market. Just how important is it that you kind of have your own system behind the crash games?

John Gordon (06:15.478)
Yeah, so as we spoke about before we went on air, I think we're very studious here at Incentive Games. We've got a data team. We just launched Incentive Labs recently, and then we just launched our AI area system.

where we analyze all the data of our current games. when we go on to, don't, I say we're very thoughtful when we look into a new product vertical as well. And I think if you look at a lot of the sort of copycat products out there, not only the copying.

They do the opposite from what we do which is adding a lot of features on the front end So how much how can we just put in what about this feature and they just put it on and by the end of it You've got a product that looks really messy or I can can look really confusing for the new user So in my opinion, that's why a lot of these crash games haven't or the copycat crash games for want of a better term haven't taken off and and a lot of the books that we read and there's one

that I would recommend called Scarcity Brain by Michael Easter and what we found is removing

things from a game or a product can actually help strengthen it. So it needs to be very thoughtfully done but think simplicity and ease of use can go a long way. I won't give you the secret sauce but I'll give you that as the sort of general direction that we're headed in. And then looking at what really are the key core drivers that really compel people to play these games as opposed to sitting in the silo and

John Gordon (08:03.802)
to think of what they want next and keeping those key core components and trying to evolve on that as opposed to just throwing stuff on the front end and see what works.

Joe Streeter (08:16.137)
Do you think that's really interesting? And do you think it's kind of indicative of an industry, I won't say problem, but somewhere we're maybe going wrong as an industry is trying to over -gamify things and trying to over -complicate things. And maybe we do just need to hone down on a simple user experience that people can easily get into and easily enjoy.

John Gordon (08:40.206)
you're hitting the nail on the head. So, Where Incentive Games started off about 10, 11 years ago, where we founded a company called Fantasy Football Real Money, or Premier Punt at the time was the brand. And where we, it was like a weekly fantasy football betting product for desktop. But what we found is over the time is the more simple we made it,

John Gordon (09:11.32)
Yeah, let me go close the door.

John Gordon (09:22.766)
Sorry about that.

John Gordon (09:29.474)
What was it? Sorry, again.

John Gordon (09:35.436)
Yeah.

Joe Streeter (09:40.083)
Do you me to re -ask the question? Yeah. So, yeah, is this indicative of an industry problem? You know, I won't call it a problem, but an industry mindset that we kind of need to change, trying to over -gamify things and over -complicate things when really we just need to focus on a simple user experience and providing players with something that's easy for them to get into.

John Gordon (09:42.744)
Yeah, please.

John Gordon (10:08.014)
think you hit nail on the head and think there's this tendency to just put half baked features onto the front end of any product. And where we started this company 10, 11 years ago when it was a fantasy football betting company, B2C, the more we found the more, sorry.

What we found is the more we simplified the product, the more uptake we got. So when it was a weekly fantasy football betting product for the sort of enthusiasts, and then we eventually stripped it down to a sort of single game. So Man U V Chelsea, you choose six players and there's no budget cap. And what we found is the easier we made the product every time for users to play, the more millions of people entered our games.

And that's where we see a lot of our competitors going the other way where they add more and more features and are more and more complex. And that's what we call the scaffolding phase of any product. And if you don't get the proper onboarding in the millions and millions of users, there's no point in having a scaffolding phase because you really just, you know...

your audience is so small. And then also I would also say is if you look at how simple the iPhone is, it used to be a button, now there's no buttons. That doesn't mean it's not complex. And that doesn't mean that gamification or whatever you'd like to call it, mean obviously we're leader in the world at loyalty, gamification, retention. But if you look at our games, there's often just one button and

The more you ask the user to do on the front end, the more off -putting they are in the long run. do all the clever stuff in the background, that's what Incentive Labs is, and all the data and analysation, just ask the user to do one thing and we will do everything else. So again, it sounds very simple, but the more you do in the background, the less you make the user think, the more you will get them to retain on your product.

Joe Streeter (12:20.645)
Okay, so where does that, where does the innovation come from then in terms of, in terms of crash games and in terms of gaming? Does it come in the back end rather than on what the user sees?

John Gordon (12:36.83)
Yeah, mean innovation, mean the product vertical came out of nowhere a few years ago and that itself was groundbreaking but all the other features I've seen since then aren't adding too much to the gameplay experience. talking about the P2P Crash game itself, yes, keep it simple but also use...

John Gordon (13:04.134)
double down on the principles that we've seen that work well on it. What we're adding to the innovation is more to do with our free -to -play system, our segmentation within the free -to -play game so we can see what the paying and the pay -to -play product and we can then...

use a feedback loop, what we call AI rewards to reward the customers the right amount of money in their free -to -play game based on their pay -to -play user experience and that sort of level of segmentation. So rather than having four segments, we've got...

1 .3 million on a certain operator. Every single user gets a specific reward in the free -to -play game based on their actual activity in the pay -to -play stuff in real time. And then we can continue to measure and adapt that users, that single users segment, rather than clustering them.

their customers rather than clusters. And that's when you, for me, that's the clever stuff in the background that should be done as opposed to shoving more shiny stuff on the front end, for example.

Joe Streeter (14:13.929)
Yeah, that level of gratification is huge, think, and rewarding players like that can be really significant to boost engagement, I think. another factor with Crash games that maybe we haven't seen tapped into yet is could we see a new layer of social interaction and could we see them build the bridge to kind of social gaming?

John Gordon (14:39.66)
Yeah, mean, crash games, yes, are social, so there are chat functionality and such, but there's what we're doing on our, what we call arcade games, or fast crash games, sorry, fast mini games. If you think of Stake .com original style where they've got instant blackjack mini roulette.

tiles games or mines games or wheel or high low and stuff. That's what we call sort of arcade games or mini games. We're adding a new layer on top of that where it's maybe community based where you turn up on the hour every hour between 12 noon and midnight and play a community version of the product.

similar but different to the community version of Crash. So there's a reason to come back on the hour every hour, but then once you've finished with the community version you can play your own RNG version. So what we see ourselves is forging a new sort of category of betting product, fast still credit, betting product that we're going to be deploying across the world in the next few months.

Joe Streeter (15:59.561)
And I guess to bring it to the kind of environment incentive, the environment that you're creating, I guess to build something like this, need, you can't have any working in silos. And even if different elements of the incentive games company are, they're very different. There kind of needs to be that communication. Is that key to kind of having the whole company communicating and getting everybody on board with what they learn?

John Gordon (16:26.796)
Yeah, I mean, as a CEO, I've really only got two or three jobs and one of them is to make sure that everyone's on board with our vision. So the vision is, you know, we are very proud to be the number one free -to -play games provider in the world and we've built that reputation and we're still true to that.

But the company knows that these new type of products go hand in hand with what we've done in the past. So the free to play games and then we feed them into these new sort of pay to play games is part of our strategy and we're all enthused on that. But the design and how it all hangs together will all...

will all be seamless as well. So that's transition from the free -to -play game to the pay -to -play products and how they're all beautifully designed is all very well thought of as well. So it comes from our product and design team and we get those suite of products and then we hand them in to devs and build them out. And we're very fortunate that we also work closely with our clients, so Fangio and Bet365 and the premier bets of the world.

We sort of involve them early on when we're in the product development and show them where we're headed with it and then we sort of collaborate with them and give them a sort of masterpiece that they can really be proud of as well. it's quite a different approach than maybe what you see with other quote unquote suppliers would do, which would be just build a game and see who takes it and we do things a little bit differently.

Joe Streeter (18:16.733)
So that communication with the operator starts as early as possible and then you can really build something that they want that they think is gonna tap into their player base.

John Gordon (18:26.711)
Yeah.

Yeah, and make sure it resonates with them. And so we come up with some designs, some concepts, and we show our friends and colleagues and partners at those companies that I mentioned. And we get their buy -in and we get their input and we sort of collaborate together. So there's a big sense of ownership and they can really get behind it and make sure that it is what they want as well. So it's really exciting. And more and more these days, operators want unique

So we've seen that with our Sky bet game, our Betta X5 games, our Fangio games, our LifeScore games, our Premier bet games, they always want something different from the crowd and when you get them involved early on we can shape it to what their needs are and that helps them get the market share advantage that working with Incentive Games can provide so it's really key in their strategy as well, unique content.

Joe Streeter (19:26.099)
How does it impact time scales? Does it decrease the time scale to get in a game out or does it maybe increase the time scale but it's worth it having that kind of close tie with the operator while you're building the game? Or the product, not necessarily the game I should

John Gordon (19:40.686)
Yeah, the foundations are there. We've been building these games for 10 years or so. The maths, the RNG certification is all done. The backend and how we build games is relatively quickly. We're already integrated with lot of these operators. I'm not saying the front end is trivial, but...

Once it's signed off and we're in control of it, we've got all the developers in -house, it's relatively straightforward when we're in control of our own destiny. And we work relatively quickly compared to some other providers.

Joe Streeter (20:23.463)
I say it definitely provides for strong partnerships and something else you mentioned kind of a moment ago was just the enthusiasm and how energized incentive games is and that's something that reflects whenever I speak to anyone from from the company and It kind of made a bit more sense when I heard that you guys have a four -day working week I guess that can help fuel that energy and can

stop staff being lethargic by the end of the week. Yeah, just talk to us more about that and how come you implemented a four day working

John Gordon (21:02.708)
It was quite radical when we spoke about it. We've been doing it for a year and a half now or longer. I'm a bit of a workaholic, but I have been asking the team for the last six years or so we've been sort of running.

a random hard and it wasn't sustainable. We were very fortunate to be in a position where the company is in a very strong financial position. So we decided to hire more people to make sure our team could take a bit more time off and have that work -life balance.

What seemed as a potential gamble has been paid off unbelievably because what really matters is the quality of our output and to keep that level of output and for instance, let me work back from the games we provide have such a big impact on our clients market share.

that we're able to charge a certain level for our services because it has such a big impact on our clients' operations.

Therefore, we're able to provide a culture where we're able to have enough sufficient staff and cover the sort of four day week so that our staff have a great work -life balance. And therefore, more importantly, what happens then is we retain the people. So no one's really left in the last two years. And we went from a normal term rate of a company from say 10, 15 % to 0%.

John Gordon (22:49.068)
and what that has is a compound interest on retention and a compound interest on experience and therefore a compound.

effect on their output. So we shifted about a year and a half to say, okay, we're the number one in the world at acquiring or retaining our clients, customers. Why don't we use that mindset to be the number one in our industry at acquiring, retaining the best staff? And that was the biggest tool for us to do that.

So, we're very proud of it and since then no one leaves and we love to just create the best place in the UK. Our aim is to be the best place to work in the UK.

Joe Streeter (23:38.727)
nice, it's commendable and it's great to hear that it's worked so well. I guess the other side of having staff come in and having, you no staff leaving is they can really understand the company culture and they really understand and get behind the, it boosts them in getting behind the company goals as well because they've been there for a while and they know the fabric of the company.

John Gordon (24:05.004)
Yeah for sure, we actually gave up until very recently because we had to stop it and the last couple of months every new employee gets share options in the company but given the amount of staff we have now we had to sort of...

I'll put a stop to that but 90 % of the employees have shared options in the company. I'm very clear and open with our vision. We're a very transparent company as well. it does help that everybody's just working in the same direction and pulling towards the same goal. And even, I'm proud of something we, it was a year ago we won an award for great place to work, top hundred in the UK.

We had an independent survey done and we got a 97 % satisfaction rate which we were extremely proud of by the great place to work people. But then we conducted it again this year to find that we got a 100 % satisfaction so we're really proud of that and creative.

Joe Streeter (25:15.773)
What changed if you don't mind me? Obviously that's such a very minor, no, significant, but a small change, but a significant one. But what do you think led to that increase?

John Gordon (25:27.534)
I think it's just continually doubling down and continually following through with all the promises and what we want to deliver to our staff and the environment. It's a four day week but it's also completely hybrid or remote or whatever.

the employees want to do. Now that doesn't mean that we're some wacky socialist company or whatever the case may be. We're very meticulous of who we hire and then when we do hire them we trust them and we give them the tools and we empower them to be the best they want. Now there is a caveat to that.

I talk about this analogy between Federer and Djokovic and Nadal all being the best.

probably the three best tennis players we've ever seen at the same time playing, you know, all playing at the same time. But the Volk have very different styles. So, you know, Nadal is expending a lot of energy, making a lot of noise across the court. Whereas Djokovic is very almost robot -like and emotionless. And then you see Federer, you know, walking up two minutes before his match and he's laughing, he's giggling, he's not sweating at all.

very very very different styles but V3 very successful and know grace almost three of them is almost greatest of all time tennis players and it

Joe Streeter (27:01.489)
Yeah, it's a pertinent analogy. It's a really good one for sure.

John Gordon (27:06.072)
And it just shows you that that Federer approach or the Djokovic approach or the Nadal approach, there's very different styles and you can be a very successful company in any of those different ways and we found that this is the most natural and best way for us to thrive as a company.

Joe Streeter (27:26.685)
Yeah, I really like that. I'm gonna use that for Shrubbin' Stealer. It's a really good one. And we are running out of time, so I'm gonna ask you for potentially even a yes, no on these final two questions, just to wrap us up and wrap up the two main subjects we've been talking about. Firstly, John, can you foresee Crash games becoming a staple in operator offerings alongside the likes of Slots, Poker and Roulette? Are they gonna really become a staple?

John Gordon (27:54.048)
It already is. And yes, seriously. Or else I wouldn't be doing it.

Joe Streeter (27:55.719)
I'll... Yeah.

Good point and maybe one that's a bit more of a long shot but the four day working week, can it catch on across iGaming and across the wider working sector in the UK?

John Gordon (28:14.062)
I hope not because I get all the best talent in the world and the longer everyone else is sleeping on this the better it is for me. yeah, mean eventually the benefits far outweigh any negatives from my company, that's for sure.

Joe Streeter (28:31.805)
Good answer, great answer and a really insightful podcast as always. Thanks ever so much for joining us and we look out to some of the big partnerships, some of the big crash games coming and the free to play games from Incentive Games as well. Thanks again, John, really appreciate your time today.

John Gordon (28:47.576)
Thanks so much and I look forward to coming back whenever you invite me on.