Alex Kelly, CEO at Playsino, discusses why the social casino space remains so interesting and how the company has positioned itself for growth
Social Casino Intelligence (SCi): Can you talk about your time at IGT and the acquisition of DoubleDown?
Alex Kelly (AK): At IGT I had commercial responsibility for the online and mobile gaming business worldwide. I also had P&L responsibility for Kerching, the B2C casino in Europe which IGT is running, as well as the services delivering platform and content to third-party
brands which want to be in the gaming space.
During this time I quickly realised that IGT needed to be in the social casino space and so I evaluated all of the potential partners in the marketplace and realised that DoubleDown
was the best partner. I pitched that idea to the CEO Patti Hart, got approval, started the conversation with DoubleDown and the deal was fi nalised in about six weeks. Even though the price tag was high it has turned out to be a phenomenal investment for IGT and a lot better than anybody expected.
SCi: How did you end up as CEO at Playsino and what was it that attracted you to the firm?
AK: While we were talking to DoubleDown we were also looking at other options in the marketplace, everything from bingo to slots companies, but what was glaring to me was that these companies were pretty amazing businesses and growing a type of content which is very popular across the mobile and Facebook platforms.
After a year in a consulting relationship with IGT, I knew I was going to get into the social casino space and was looking at many different opportunities before being approached by Brock Pierce and realised it was a golden opportunity. After doing about a month of due diligence with Brock, looking at the team and platform, I said it was something I definitely want to get involved in.
SCi: How do you feel your time at IGT has helped Playsino to develop over the last few months?
AK: I’ve been the CEO at a number of companies before so I’m comfortable working in small teams. In fact I think intellectually and from a passion standpoint, I actually prefer that. My background has always been working at new companies and then starting new companies or working at big companies trying to help them out strategically where they need to be going for the next five years which is almost like creating start-ups out of giant resource companies.
SCi: Did you have any experience in gaming before joining IGT?
AK: I didn’t have direct experience in gaming. I was brought in to come up with a strategy for IGT within the interactive space. I ran new media for 20th Century Fox, so this was during a time period when gaming was sort of a part of it. It was very much at the forefront of how the internet and mobile platforms were growing and different business models and how content was priced. It wasn’t much of a stretch for me to realise that gaming and gambling is just an extension of entertainment, it’s how people spend their leisure time and the monetisation models are just different.
SCi: When you spoke to SCi before you said that Playsino was relentlessly developing its platform but would now focus on growing its player base. How was that worked out so far?
AK: It’s worked out great. A significant investment has been put into this platform, which is allowing us to extend the gameplay into any distribution channel. When I first started the company had a single game on Facebook and since then we’ve bolstered our platform, we’ve launched our bingo product on Facebook and mobile and we’ve integrated with other payment platforms. A key part of the business that we’ve built is a platform that enables us to customise language and update the overall gameplay.
We are also talking to many large US casino companies about providing them with their own branded poker, bingo and social casino plays on Facebook and mobile. If you think about what’s happening in the US casino market you’ve got IGT moving up the value chain, you’ve got Caesars as a competitor to the casinos cutting across the value chain, and then you’ve got up to ten casino companies which have the scale to do anything themselves. The other 1,395 casinos in the US need a play in the space and we can turn every single one on with their own brand and create a really lucrative business for them and for us.