Bigly – not just another game studio. Find out how this start-up is going to help operators achieve sustainable success

European Gaming talks to Liam Mulvaney, Founder of Bigly.

Bigly is the latest studio to have launched into what is a hugely competitive space. What makes you stand out from the crowd?

You’re absolutely right when you say this is a crowded market. Today, there are more than 750 studios providing in excess of 38,000 games to operators and players. But Bigly is not just another game studio. We will be producing thrilling and entertaining content for our partners and their players, but we are positioned to be much more than just a content provider. We consider ourselves a marketing studio that happens to provide assets in the form of slots.  Our unique commercial model means operators can access our games for a reliable and predictable cost, which in turn means they can ramp up marketing activity behind the titles that best meet the preferences of their players AND keep the lion’s share of the revenue each game generates. As costs rise and margins fall, Bigly is exactly what operators need to ensure sustainable success.

Tell us more about your unique commercial model.

So Bigly allows operators to access content for a capped monthly fee instead of the standard commercial model used by other studios where they work to a revenue share format. For the operator, this means if a game performs well, they hand a significant chunk of the revenues generated back to the studio. This ultimately has a knock-on effect as to the games that operators push to players and how they allocate marketing resources – this is why you often see the same slots from the same providers at the top of casino lobbies or used for promotional activity. But with our commercial model, which is sort of hybrid between a revenue share and a fixed cost system, operators have much greater flexibility over the games they give top lobby positions to, and how they market those games to players. Of course, they also know that if the game performs well, they get to keep the majority of the revenues made.

How does Bigly’s commercial model help operators beyond cost savings on content?

Our vision is to provide more opportunities for operators to push their own brand rather than Bigly. A quick example is that Bigly will not brand our games’ loader screens, but operators are free to feature their own logo if they wish. This means more brand presence from the operators. With Bigly, operators and their marketing teams can get super creative with their campaigns knowing the cost of accessing the game (or games) is fixed so the better the game performs, the more money the casino makes. In fact, the bolder the casino is in its marketing activity, the bigger the returns they will likely enjoy.

How do operators access your content?

There are a couple of ways. The first is directly through our remote game server, which is provided by our technical partner, Reelsoft. This is our preferred method of integration as it allows us to foster incredibly strong relationships with our operators while ensuring the smooth and seamless delivery of our content into markets across the world. Operators will also be able to get our games through aggregation platforms although the commercial relationship will be with Bigly – the aggregator will simply be a technical partner in the same way that Reelsoft is. This approach allows us to offer our content – and unique commercial model – to operators in the vast majority of jurisdictions from the get-go.

How does this approach to commercials and your wider business model benefit Bigly?

It gives us a major point of difference from the 100’s of other studios in the market, that’s for sure. And there’s something nice about bringing a product to the market that disrupts the status quo and genuinely revolutionises a major part of the industry. Ultimately, our approach and commercial model mean that we can provide the games and financials that operators are seeking, and, over time, this will see us become a major player in the content provision space. Of course, our approach works both ways – while our games are a predictable cost for our partners, they are a predictable income for Bigly and this really helps when it comes to establishing, growing and future-proofing the business. This can be really tough for new studios given the competitive nature of the market and the need for their games to be played at scale which of course requires top lobby positions and operator marketing activity, both of which are hard to secure for a new developer.  It is important to note that the vision of this studio is for this approach to be the lifetime model for Bigly, a new way of selling and consuming content.

Your USP is your commercial model, but what about your games?

Our games are a crucial piece of the puzzle. Our commercials can be super attractive, but if our games are tosh then players just won’t play them. This is why I’ve been tapping into my extensive network to assemble an incredible team of designers, mathematicians, developers, testers and so on, as we will live or die by the quality of our content. The first games of a studio are always tough but we are confident that our slots will hit the mark in terms of quality and playability. Our first slot is Deep Sea Treasure and takes the cascading reels format, with symbols tumbling as players dive into the underwater abyss in search of big wins. I’ll be giving people a sneak peek at the SBC Summit in Lisbon, so flag me down if you want to see it in action.