Why Zynga Is Leaving Money On The Table | Hacker News Reader

Why Zynga Is Leaving Money On The Table

betab.ly

52 pointsrabble11 comments

Don't know what to make of the fact that they use the phrase "get you rich" liberally in their API docs. Check out how the financing works"

"In gambling, the house must have enough money on hand to cover all the bets currently in play. This amount limits the number of current users and the amount they’re risking. Betable can provide the house’s backing or you, the game creator can be the house. If Betable provides the backing of the house, Betable does a 70% / 30% revenue share in favor of Betable because it is taking all of the risk instead of the normal 50% / 50% split."

From http://beta.betable.com/documents/betable_api_spec_v10.pdf

Real-money gambling historically generates over 100X more ARPU than typical social gaming revenue streams, so even with that rev split, game developers stand to make much more money than they currently do. Also, unlike other platforms that game developers are sharing their revenues with (iOS, AdMob, etc.), Betable is processing all of the transactions and resolutions related to real-money gambling play. In other words, Betable is much more hands on with helping the developer make money.

Betable got the UK license and runs everything through UK servers. Getting a license to do this legally cost a bundle. That's why there's the rev split as it is.

Interesting read - looks like Betable could carve out a big piece of the game. Would like to see some citations for those numbers though.

If you follow through the hyperlinks, they are the sources of the nearby data. We can formally cite at the bottom if that is where people are looking for the information.

I don't think Zynga is really leaving money on the table - they don't have the licenses for the gambling they're talking about in this post, so the money isn't really ON the table.

Interesting article, but I am sure Zynga would need their own gambling license to make these games instead of using something like Betably.

Just my two cents.

We cannot disclose at this time, but let's just say that that won't be a problem :)

I would say tricky, but if they could get away with this, it's a big win. A legal way to get money out of the games would be significantly more attractive for gamers than what they do now in black markets. We know it happens...

Has everyone already forgotten the recent implosion of poker? I'm sure smaller companies can get away with this by flying under the radar, but should the biggest player in the game go down this road it'd be a short lived trip.

Short version: gambling could make more money than Zynga's virtual good sales model.

Yes and no. We also believe that there is a huge opportunity to merge gambling and gaming in an engaging way.

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