Landbased casions are one of the main reasons online gambling is not allowed in the uS: The lobbying power from the casions is thought to be massive. I think they make a major mistake in stopping online gambling. The reason is simply one of the foundations for any commercial success – trust. Some of the strongest brands in gambling are the land based casinos and they have a huge advantage here in trust and loyalty.

- What about offering guests free downloads of mobile games when they make their reservation?

- Use news ticker in game for offers when they are in town.

- Keep them playing when they are not in town.

- Combine a loyalty system with mobile and you cut costs for producing cards and consumers only have to know their mobile number to have the loyalty ID. Push news and offers in the for-fun and/or gambling games you given them on the phone. Give access to new games and content as they play more.

Endless opportunity here.

“Regarding the pace of change, we believe more users will likely connect to the Internet via mobile devices than desktop PCs within five years.”

–The Mobile Internet Report, Morgan Stanley, 12/09

So, what about specific niches then? I have looked into the mobile gambling arena for a while. (Disclosure: My company Acemob offers a mobile poker product). As I see it the logic is easy: Gaming as entertainment in short bursts is huge in the mobile. Gambling is huge online. Merging entertainment and gambling into your portable entertainment central is bound to happen. If you do it right and can handle the jump to mobile from desktop.

Remember we are talking gambling here. Gambling requires legislation so yes, that is also on the list. But before that the number one thing to make mobile gambling the next big thing is mindset - Online gambling companies need to broaden their mind and views of the world.

Mobile is accepted for sports betting and some simple casino style games. What I hear from people in the know is that mobile betting is really taking off. Some of the bigger European online gambling companies have as much as 15% of the betting revenue from mobile.

For connected real time gambling the view is different. Many have seen online poker in the mobile as impossible. Too poor interface, unreliable and not big enough screen to sit in at 6 tables at the same time to wait for the right cards etc. Well, positioned as a kill time 3 minute game with the extra spice of a few bucks in the game with the potential of winning a total of maybe 10-20 bucks is a different proposition. It speaks to another target group as well who never will be big stakes rollers online. If the online gambling industry could handle this new customers there’s a chance for a second period of growth.

There are two big hurdles to overcome though:

1. Legislation – going from grey to black and white regulation in Europe and from illegal to regulation in the US
2. User interface – both a technical limitation and a trust issue.Therefore mobile gambling proposition needs to be positioned differently than desktop gambling.
When these hurdles are overcome growth will be explosive. Plenty of knowledge and skills out there to deliver.

Market outlook: In Europe mobile gambling is starting to grow spearheaded by betting. Pokerstars purchased Cecure gaming to position themselves. Passing new legislation in the US on gambling will open the flood gates.

One area that is not explored much at all is to use mobile as digital give aways and customer acquisition vehicles. I think that will feed both existing online business and help grow the mobile channel. The Trojan Horse you have inherently in a client-server solution means that you can give a way a play-for-fun app and later offer upgrade to a gambling version when the time is right for that.

via the99percent.com

Stumbled upon this site and have spent some time on it already. Great to find one source on how to get stuff done and be creative. Great tool to beat procrastination into oblivion. Unless you spend too much time on the site though. Don’t miss Seth Godin’s video on the Lizard Brain or what it’s really about – how to ship. Over and over again. That’s what you should do for a living. It is not a about being creative. It’s about shipping the ideas. Get going on the 99% in your life!

Posted via web from pfhagermark’s posterous

From own experience I know that the gambling companies have been pretty uninterested in mobile gambling. In our own efforts with AcePoker, a multiplayer poker for real money play, it took long before we got things moving. Last week we launched our mobile poker with Bet2Go on Orange UK’s mobile portal. It will be very exciting to see what this brings but more so what the industry does after the Pokerstars move. Will we finally have a new mobile success category?

What do you think? Mobile poker – hot or not? Let me know!

In addition to casual games, poker and other social games are also games that can be enhanced by using socket connections to the network instead of http. For the gambling part there are of course some legal matters to consider.

Think user experience, moment of inspiration, revenue growth and smart pipes and then it is a done deal to open up for socket connections dear Mr. Mobile Network Operator. Thanks!