iGB Affiliate 52 AugSept | Page 45

ADVERTORIAL How exactly will the player experience change following the launch of the new bingo client on Unibet, Maria and Bingo.com, and will there be any impact on the jackpots and prizes available? Players will notice a fastdeveloping product with updates, clever solutions and new features being delivered regularly. Partnering with Relax Gaming has proven to significantly speed up the development process and allow us to achieve faster time to market. We share a forwardthinking approach to the full customer experience, across multiple platforms and output devices, and we aim to stay relevant through innovation with a fast response to customers’ feedback and ideas. We believe that a fun and exciting bingo product should deliver a multi-layered and rewarding experience. When analysing the shortcomings of our old client, we found that 90% of our active bingo players were getting less than 50% average payback when playing bingo, compared to the expected 80%. This meant that too many players were having a bad experience by hardly winning anything. Our new client seeks to address this so that even if they lose in the main bingo game, they can still have a winning experience thanks to our new loyalty system which offers them the opportunity to regularly spin a wheel and win cash, bonuses and free mini-game spins. trying. With inspiration taken from casino games, we’ll add special game effects in order to get the heart racing and enhance that near-win experience. The bingo market is notoriously competitive across Europe. In which markets do you see most potential for penetration and growth with the new bingo product, or do you see its main benefits as deriving from the retention of player spend within the Unibet ecosystem? Bingo is a popular product in a number of our core markets, particularly Scandinavia and the UK. We hope that launching a unique and innovative product will help us to grow organically in those competitive markets. Having said that, we also soft-launched the new bingo client in two of the regulated markets where we hold licences – Belgium and Estonia - and the results are looking very promising with great player interest and activity so far. Bingo is also a great complement to our casino-focussed brands and will increase our opportunities to cross-sell between products and build customer loyalty. Unibet players will now be able to access the full casino game portfolio from the bingo lobby, allowing them to easily enjoy a multi-product experience. Even if bingo is a small percentage of the overall business compared to sportsbook and casino, “[...] It’s important for us to offer bestin-class products to our customers.” With an exciting new bingo product, offering more winners and the addition of casino elements into the bingo gameplay and loyalty mechanics, we hope to see increased player interest and satisfaction that will help us grow across the board and lead to an increased market share going forward. Lastly, why should affiliates be interested in this latest product innovation? As an affiliate, irrespective of whether you actively target bingo traffic or not, your goal should be to partner with programs which deliver the best products and player experiences overall. Satisfied customers are more loyal and will drive more revenue in the long run. We hope that the launch of the new bingo client might encourage some new bingo-specific affiliates to sign up to the Unibet Affiliates program, and at the same time assure existing and ne ܁