The 2017 Czech market figures were published last week, revealing some contrasting trends.

It was surprising to an overall minimal revenue gain in the gaming market, despite the strong rise in online gambling revenue of over 50 per cent.

Czech Ministry of Finance figures for 2017 indicated total revenues of CZK39.8b (US$1.77b), a gain of 1.1 per cent from 2016 in the face of overall spending on gambling rising 14.1 per cent to CZK224b.

The gains in online gaming nonetheless did not translate to overall gains for the Czech Republic, which began allowing and regulating iGaming in the country with the revision of the country’s gambling act in 2016.

The Online Contribution

The fact is online gambling jumped 56 per cent year-on-year to CZK8.3b ($370m), responsible for a contribution of more than one-fifth of the overall gaming market in the Czech Republic.

The vertical contributing most heavily was fixed-odds sports betting, which saw a total rise in 217 of nearly CZK1b to reach just short of CZK6.2b.

The next largest contributor on the pole for 2017 was online casino, which brought in just over CZK2b to the Czech market, with live casino third at a CZK120m contribution.

Online lotteries brought in CZK276m, compared to a decline in the contribution of land-based lotteries down CZK500m to CZK6.1b.

Conflicting Disincentive

The relative lack of gains from the overall sector may have to do in large part to some changes made in the Czech market structure that took effect January 1st of 2017. The updates imposed stiff taxes on foreign licensees, resulting in many operator withdrawals who were discouraged by new individual vertical taxes of 23 per cent on sports betting, and 35 per cent for slots, compounded by a 19 per cent corporate tax and further new restrictions on online bonus offers.

Outlook

The Czech government is claiming a healthy purge of up to 90 per cent of illegal operators, but if they want to keep this purge from claiming more legitimate licenced operators on the ledger, they will have to find a way to ease restrictions on foreign operators to add more revenues and streams to the overall till. Let’s hope the operators that began trickling back at the end of 2017 have found more hospitable conditions in 2018.

Source: onlinecasinoreports.com

An innovative new project by Yumicra Games, a company based in Czech Republic, could change the history of the Polish gaming machines market. Futura and Futura Eclipse, the world’s first gaming machines that do not have randomness in the software (including the pseudorandom number generator), are currently the only legal option for gaming operators in Poland.

Yumicra Games regularly supplies its products to Polish buyers who are eager to use the only option available on the market, meeting all legal requirements related to the amendment of the Act, approved on April 2017. Changes, eliminating gambling and non-intuitive solutions for the players, only for a few months blocked the private sector related to gaming machines, because at the end of the same year legal products from the Czech producer were distributed.

Currently, non-gambling Futura and Futura Eclipse machines are available to players throughout Poland, filling salons in almost every province, including several dozen small towns and most major cities, such as Gdańsk, Szczecin, Olsztyn, Bydgoszcz, Białystok, Poznań, Warsaw, Wrocław, Łódź, Kielce, Kraków and Rzeszów.

Futura and Futura Eclipse, due to their popularity among players, operators, as well as owners of arcades and casinos, have been continuously produced for several months and had become an integral part of the Polish entertainment industry. The favour of the recipients results from the quality of the products and the certificate base offered by Yumicra Games, which is systematically growing by further positions.

The project of Yumicra Games specialists from the very beginning assumed the introduction of transparent rules for both customers and final recipient, which is the player, who for the first time in the world can fully control the course of rivalry with “one-armed bandit” and assess their chances of winning. The legality of Futura and Futura Eclipse is the culmination of the effort undertaken by company representatives at the software planning stage and later, when implementing the finished product on the market; Futura and Futura Eclipse are completely deprived of the randomness element, even in unrelated moments of operating the machine – in their software there is no pseudo-random number generator or any other generator.

Yumicra Games as one of the few producers works directly in cooperation with clients – none of the partners has exclusivity, and the company is not represented by any proxy. Permanent contract conditions, unchangeable for each customer, translate into high quality of cooperation and have a measurable impact on investment stability.

The only effective option to rebuild the Polish gaming machines market, in particular the private sector, is, thanks to the efforts of Yumicra Games representatives, top-class professional gaming machines with legal software, wrapped in clear cooperation principles and the latest technology. Futura and Futura Eclipse are certainly the best thing that could happen to the Polish market at such a difficult time.

Source: e-playonline.com

Let’s look at how the typical marketing strategies employed by iGaming firms can be applied to Slovakia.
Marketing strategies for operators and affiliates who want to apply for licence
If the laws do get changed, and you apply and receive a licence, then you will have access to the standard advantages.

These are:
The possibility to use Google Adwords PPC campaigns. I have found one of the top affiliates which is using Adwords on google.sk, and they seem to have complete control of this market right now. There are a lot of big keywords which they don’t even try to cover, so PPC could be worth exploring.
Greater advertising choices. Most of the big local sites use display advertising, and you must negotiate with the site directly (not with a network). If you can show you have a licence, then you will have a better chance of being accepted, as the site won’t have to worry about any advertising fines.

Similarly, a lot of the big native and display advertising networks do accept gambling adverts but often want to see a local licence before accepting them.

Marketing strategies for operators who don’t want/can’t wait to get a Slovak licence
With so many international operators seeming not to care about the potential fines, and Slovak ISPs and banks seemingly not blocking sites or payments, there will be a temptation for operators (and affiliates) to not bother waiting for a licence. This is especially likely with a proposed tax on revenue of 23% and considering the unstable political climate.
For those in this position, here are some strategies to gain a share of the Slovak market.

SEO
No good strategy in a market like Slovakia would be complete without some good old-fashioned SEO.
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Aside from building quality on-site content in the Slovak language, operators and new affiliates would obviously need to build links from quality local sites to their pages, to challenge the top spots.
Acquiring links from existing Slovak sites might be difficult, because of the potential €250,000 fine that the site owner might face. Foreign operators in Malta might not feel threatened by such fines, but a small amateur site owner in Bratislava is likely to take these threats very seriously. The situation for link-building in Slovakia is likely to be very similar to the one in Finland right now.
Slovakia therefore looks like the kind of market where you may need to run a quality Private Blog Network (PBN) to build rankings.

A potential PBN strategy for Slovakia

I would recommend a multi-tier structure, with the bottom tier being made up of expired .sk domains with positive metrics.
The content on these sites should be recreated as much as possible using the waybackmachine downloader tool. A new landing page would then be created with casino content in Slovak, and a link from that page to the upper tier sites.
These upper tier sites would be made up of expired .com or .eu domains, with positive metrics. The content would be changed to iGaming content in the Slovak language, with links to the money sites.
This mix would protect against the .sk sites being confiscated by Slovak authorities at any future stage, while still allowing for some local TLDs.
.sk domains no longer require to be registered to a Slovak business address, but anonymous ownership is not allowed, although some registrars will allow you to use their details. You can buy expired .sk domains at Webhouse.

Top keywords for your SEO strategy

Keyword research of the Slovak market shows that poker is still a popular subject in the country, as is roulette.
The data below is pulled from SEMRush and Google Trends, and shows the following suggested keywords to focus on (where available, monthly search volume is given).

Kasino: 1000
Poker Online: 880
Ruleta: 1000
Ruleta online: 210
Poker: 14800
Online Ruleta: 20
Kasino online: n/a
Hracie automaty: 15 – 100
Hracie automaty online: 0- 100
Online kasino: n/a
Hraj v online kasine: n/a
Online kasina: n/a
Hraj online: n/a
Stavky online: n/a
Online stavky: n/a
Stavkuj online: n/a
Online stavkovanie: 0 – 90
Vyhraj v online kasine: n/a
Ako vyhrat v online kasine: n/a

Right now, the top keywords seem to be mostly informational in nature, reflecting the newness of the Slovak market. The user intent seems to be about learning more about how to bet online, and not about which is the best casino.
Building landing pages with content focusing on satisfying these user intents seems to be the way to go for now. It might not convert immediately, but building trust is an important step at the top of any sales funnel.
There’s no surprise about who dominates the social network scene in Slovakia, with Facebook and Instagram both the most prominent.

Facebook’s targeting tools are second-to-none, but they require a big advertising spend before they will allow you to run gambling ads. In a small country like Slovakia, it probably isn’t going to be worth it.
However, gambling fan pages that aren’t too pushy should work well.
I see three basic ways of getting traffic from social media in Slovakia:

– Find a local influencer on FB or Instagram and get him or her to endorse your brand
– Start a FB group where people can swap tips, bonus offers etc.
– Start an Instagram account and send out a mix of funny gambling-related pictures/quotes, and offers such as welcome bonuses

Partner with existing Affiliates

Operators looking to gain a quick foothold in the Slovak market will naturally turn to the affiliates who are dominating the google.sk SERPs.
The current reluctance for these affiliates to partner with licenced local operators means there could be room for some negotiations.

Use Adwords even if you don’t have a licence
I have heard that some clever PPC ninjas use cloaking to display adverts in countries where they don’t have a licence. It sounds really risky to me, but if you have plenty of accounts that you don’t mind sacrificing, and don’t put landing pages directly on the money sites, then it might work.

Display

This form of banner advertising dominates the top local sites. Most of the big media sites will probably turn down gambling content because of the fear of fines.
That said, I know that one of the big names on the blacklist uses display advertising on one of the top 50 sites in Slovakia. I won’t name names, to protect both parties, but this shows it is possible.

Adult

Several of the top 50 sites are adult-themed and are part of the Trafficjunky network. The targeting options on Trafficjunky are excellent, allowing you to target even to the city level.
This could be useful in a diverse country like Slovakia. For example, Google Trends data shows that the hracie automaty (online slots) keyword is much more popular in the east of the country than the west. Similarly, you can target by gender, so you could perhaps offer games popular with women on the ‘female-friendly’ adult niche.
If you want to try the adult channel, you should know that visitors who are there for the free content tend to have low conversion rates. That could be a problem on a CPM model (as Trafficjunky is) as you might have to burn through a lot of cash to see results.
However, premium adult subscribers tend to convert a lot better, and Trafficjunky have several sites which offer these customers, making this network the perfect place to experiment.

Native

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years, you probably have been exposed to native advertising.
In contrast to display ad banners which leave no doubt they have a commercial intent; native ads aim to blend in with other articles on a site. Here’s an example of native advertising from the Times of Malta recently, alongside some classic display banners.

This form of advertising has become very popular in the English-speaking markets in recent years, especially on informational websites like online news, forums and other places where users come to consume information. However, it’s pretty new in Slovakia and not many publishers have signed up with the big networks (yet).
Native works well for binary options and other such financial niches. People are always on the lookout to make some money, and if you can create native adverts which claim to spill the secrets that the casinos don’t want you to know about, then this could be the perfect way to tap into the Slovak customer’s hunger for information.

The MGID ad network allows gambling content, and doesn’t specifically prohibit it in Slovakia, but you should check with them before trying this out.
Anybody thinking of entering the Slovak iGaming market will need to be flexible to deal with unstable and unreliable laws and regulations.

Written by: Ivana Flynn for Calvinayre.com. Ivana is a Malta-based SEO Consultant dedicated to helping iGaming operators and affiliates improve their organic search rankings. Her biggest professional passion is using SEO to break into new and tricky markets. In her spare time, she bakes, works out and plays with her cats.