Venture Beat – Social and mobile casino game operators are facing a shrinking market, as the number of monthly players has shrunk to 85 million from 109 million a year ago, according to market researcher SuperData Research. In response, those companies are shifting away from acquiring more players and instead are focused on making money from those that they already have.
Joost van Dreunen, the chief executive of SuperData, said that the sector is entering its next stage and that casino-style game operators are positioning themselves for a mature market. Building a long-term relationship with consumers now makes more sense for a sustainable social-casino-game business.
“As the number of available casino-style games on Facebook and mobile continues to grow, a subset of the audience has cycled out of the abundant but relatively low-quality offering and moved on,” van Dreunen said.
“This means that publishers active in this category face an important transitional moment,” he added. “No longer is it enough to merely acquire new users. For one, because it is becoming increasingly expensive. The current market landscape forces publishers to consider a strategy centered on player retention. And it’s working. In April we recorded a record month in terms of revenues, totaling $175 million in the U.S.”
