 Online Gambling in Asia
The controversy surrounding the U.S. online gambling market has many operators looking to direct their attention abroad. One of the largest, most lucrative online gambling sectors lies in Asia. This market has proven very difficult for non-Asian operators to penetrate for a multitude of reasons.
1) Cultural Difference – Asian players demand more customer attention and more efficient gaming process. Most of the existing online gaming players were traditional land based casino players. They are not very sophisticated and not familiar with either working or playing on computers. They need lots of support to get familiar with online playing environment. What I mean by “efficient gaming process” is that most of the Asian players take gaming more as gambling. They want quick and direct result from every game which makes “Baccarat” always the most popular casino game in Asia.
2) Software and Technology – It is a very important of the business. Lots of games and playing behaviors are very different in Asia compare to the rest of the world. In general, Asian players take gaming very seriously and they expect the websites or the software to be presented very seriously as well. The requirement of the software goes beyond just the game itself. They expect to have all the land based playing experience integrated to the software.
3) Localization (not translation) – Most of the operators who failed in the Asian markets usually made 2 obvious mistakes. Mistake #1, they started to advertise or promote their websites as soon as the websites are translated to the local languages with no customization. For example, how can operations expect to get business from offering American Football or slot machine games only? Mistake #2, they don’t even equip with local payment mechanisms on both fund-in and fund-out.
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Kira Wissman, Gambling911.com
Originally published September 13, 2007 10:08 pm ET
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