After announcing Betty’s launch into the UK market, NEXT.io speaks with co-founder and group CEO Justin Park about the operator’s first venture outside Ontario.
The UK marks Betty’s second market entry, though an Alberta launch is also on its way later this year. And if the launches prove successful, there could be many more new markets still to come.
In this Q&A, Park explains why the UK is the perfect place to prove the portability of the product.
NEXT: It’s a difficult time for an iGaming operator to enter the UK market. Between the tax rates and the huge incumbents with enormous marketing budgets, there’s a lot of ground to make up. So what are we missing?
Justin Park: To take a step back: our mission is to build a global blue chip casino brand. Our mission is to be in lots and lots of markets around the world, and it’s apparent that you need to learn how to operate in high tax environments. And even the markets we’re in like Ontario, who knows what happens to that tax rate in the future?
So for us, Betty UK is what we call it, but we also call it informally ‘High-Tax Betty’. And it’s about building that muscle. The UK initially represented us just being in a different market, which in itself was difficult. But now it’s also about building the muscles we need to deal with high tax jurisdictions, because that learning will give us confidence. If we want to be a global brand, we need to learn how to operate in a high-tax jurisdiction.
I’d say it’s also forced us to kind of push the envelope, even internally. So, for example, we have our own in-house platform, but now we’re working on an entire overhaul. You can use a lot of AI, but the point is not to reduce our customer support or customer success positioning. We invest a lot in people, but it’s about making it more efficient and making the workflow way, way, way simpler. Stuff like that is how you operate in a high-tax environment as well.
NEXT: So, if the UK is a proving ground for a more global product, what are the metrics you’re going to be judging that proof on?
JP: We have a North Star metric, which is just return on ad spend, and that can be applied to every operating company we have. So that will be the North Star for Betty UK, as it is for Ontario and our soon to launch Alberta businesses.
In the short term, it’s very much about just working out the kinks. It’s like a newborn baby that’s learning how to breathe on its own and drink milk. You want to balance the metric with where we are today, which is very new, and we have to just basically exist for the first 30 days.
NEXT: I suppose that simple success metric is great if you succeed immediately, but if, say after three or six months, you’re not getting that return on ad spend that you want, what then?
JP: There are actually a lot of levers you can pull to optimise return on ad spend. So some of it is going to be customising the product more and more to the local market. But at a group level we’re actually about to launch our first in-house game that’s fully certified, so there are other ways to increase margin that we’re investing in.
We also built our own in-house geolocation service. All of this optimises margin, and those are not UK specific, those are group-wide activities. I think there’s definitely a path to cracking it – you just have to keep grinding it out until you get there.
NEXT: How would you say your product is different from what else is on the market in the UK?
JP: It’s differentiated because it’s slots only and it’s highly gamified. That’s the position. We don’t even really do table games. We might have a couple, but we’re slots. Because the other thing is that in Canada, we just launched an in-house bingo product. Bingo is obviously big in the UK, so we’re going to be bringing a brand new bingo product that’s more fun. Our mission there is to make bingo not boring and there are ways to do that, so that’s also what you’re going to see.
NEXT: Sports and horse-racing tend to be really important customer channels for almost every operator in the UK. How would you assure people that the narrowness of product, only offering iGaming, is a positive?
JP: I want to say it’s like diners in the US. Some of these have pizza, okay, but they also sell a million other things. But then you also have Domino’s.
NEXT: You’ve also said previously that the UK is ripe for disruption. What makes you say that?
JP: It’s really just the fact that it’s probably one of the most sophisticated consumer bases in the world. They’ve been consuming regulated online gambling products for the longest. And if you have a really sophisticated customer and they haven’t seen new stuff in a while, then you’ve got something there.
NEXT: So what assessments have you made of UK consumer behaviour, and how does that fit with what you’re going to be offering?
JP: The one thing I’ll say even before that is that I think success in the UK is not going to be binary. I think it’s going to be about finding what level of scale we can maintain a return on ad spend that we find to be appropriate. So we’re going to be successful, but to what degree? That would be the caveat. Is that ceiling a £50m-a-year business or £100m, or £200m, or £300m? Who knows?
We’re still focused on that passive gambler slot player. A lot of them are women as well. One of the first things we did in the UK was we actually interviewed players locally on Zoom calls. So we learned a lot about the customer, and they’re similar to what we see in Canada, in terms of the things they talked about. I think what was surprising is they seem to really want live customer support chat and better service, which is something we didn’t hear in Canada.
The Canadian market’s interesting, because when you look at game preferences, it’s sort of a hybrid between the US and Europe. They like both kinds of game. So it’s almost like the European half of Canada is the one that’s going to be leading in the UK. I guess that’s a long way of saying we’ve sort of seen this customer already.
NEXT: Another big challenge of entering the UK market is brand recognition, and Betty’s trajectory has been interesting in that sense. Previously, there was that focus on being a female-focused brand, but it feels like you’ve gone away from that slightly now. Do you have a particular strategy or specific identity you’ll use to boost your brand recognition in the UK?
JP: We’re basically the best place to play slots online, that’s really what we are. A very gamified and a very fun slots platform, and you know, men are a big part of that too. So we’re 50/50, but still index higher towards women than most brands. The way it rolled out in Canada was that it was very product-driven at first. Your early customers are not very brand sensitive, so they’re just willing to try. And if it’s a good product, they’ll stick.
So that’s going to be the strategy in the UK. We’re just going to bring our product, which we’re really confident in, and it’s the same product that we see in Canada today, so it’s a mature product. And then as we grow, then we start investing in the actual brand, but that’s kind of phase two or phase three.
NEXT: Another challenge for new entrants to the UK is bonus abuse, which is a notorious issue for new iGaming operators. What structures and plans do you have in place to deal with that?
JP: I don’t think we’ve gotten that far yet, but we have our own in-house platform, so that’s going to help us.
NEXT: There does seem to be an emphasis on what is proprietary when you talk about new games and the independence of the company. Could you talk to me a little bit about the independence of Betty UK, the team that you put in place, and how you want them to lead?
JP: Maybe this is getting too much in the weeds, but we have a Betty Canada Slack channel, and we also have the Betty UK Slack channel, and it kind of defines the different lenses. So with Betty UK, when you think about the accountability chart, a lot of the things are filled by Betty UK specific team members, but in the short term, we also have Betty Canada people helping out, and also our top corporate team fill in some gaps. But yes, the ultimate goal is Betty UK will be self sufficient. All the people need to be doing their thing, and they don’t rely on anybody else in the organisation.
NEXT: And there has been reference to potential future acquisitions as well. How much is that something you’re thinking and planning for now with the franchised versions of Betty?
JP: I would say Betty UK is a very closely held franchise, if you will. But as our systems and the process gets more robust, we’re going to be able to partner with more true third parties. Because there will be markets that are good, but maybe not good enough for us to go in ourselves.
So New Zealand is an example. We would love to be there, but we need not do it ourselves, right? Switzerland is another example. There are lots of markets like that. I think we’re also learning that acquisition or buying assets will be important for entering markets, even from a licensing standpoint. Argentina, for example – you kind of need to buy stuff to really enter there.
NEXT: Does this launch feel like a risk?
JP: It’s going to be some flavour of success. It’s really just a question of scale.