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Exclusive Q&A with Phillip Runyan, Founder & CEO of Hold Gaming

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Exclusive Q&A with Phillip Runyan, Founder & CEO of Hold GamingReading Time: 4 minutes

 

Let’s begin with a few words about yourself. It’s always great to hear confident, top-class professionals say something about themselves.

I refer to myself as the Chief Executive Risk Taker – not just at the helm of Hold Gaming, but in my day-to-day life. I’m fairly certain my wife has another name for it. If it’s unorthodox, off the beaten path, or considered ‘mad’ then I’m likely to be drawn to it. I think that internal need to try things in a different way is what has helped me find success in work and my personal life.

You talk about Hold Gaming’s “deep roots in the Midwest, an area long overlooked for talent and great ideas” and the resultant “underdog mentality”. Could you elaborate on that?

I grew up in Toledo, OH and recently returned, as many do, to be closer to family. I would not say that we have an abundance of tech in my hometown but what we lack in volume we make up in chutzpah. Like many others, I left when I was younger to pursue a life I didn’t think the region could support. That has all changed. I live in a state where you can pay for your taxes in bitcoin and that’s leading the way in autonomous driving. When I’m asked where Hold Gaming is located and I reply with “Ohio,” I typically get, “oh… ok that’s great” and I can hear the inflection in their voice battle with the words they are saying. Ohio has this stigma of being rural and certainly not where a gaming company would setup shop.

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You started your corporate career as the Marketing head at DoubleDown Interactive where you were in charge of bringing in customers through social media, online branding and CRM initiatives and had spectacular success. What would be your main advice to online marketers, especially in the gaming and gambling industry, regarding customer acquisition and retention?

I’d say I started my career in gaming at DoubleDown Interactive. My core skillset of the last (gasp!) 18 years has been in Online Marketing and many of the tools and processes I incorporated at DoubleDown stemmed from selling a lot of product via the internet.

I would say my best advice is to stay flexible and never hesitate to pull the plug on things that don’t work. All too often we want a product, platform, channel, creative, or a cohort to work so badly that we will throw good money after bad. Cut your losses, learn from your mistakes, and get back to the drawing board. Dare I say, fail fast but fail forward.

You founded Hold Gaming about a year back. How was the going so far? Any significant milestones?

The first year is always terrifying and exciting, simultaneously. We’ve accomplished a lot with a skeleton crew and minimal resources considering we are a startup trying to disrupt a multi-billion dollar industry here in the US. As for milestones, I’d say being the first competitive casino game for cash prizes on Apple’s App Store is massive.

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Could you tell us more about Blackjack Fire, the game that you launched recently? Our readers would be curious to understand how the game is skill based rather than chance based, especially it is the first skill-based Blackjack game.

Blackjack Fire is our first release and is live in the App Store in both the US and Australia. The game allows two or more competitors to sit at their own table, with the same starting balance, the same amount of time to play their decks of cards, and the same min/max wager amount. As players win hands wagered, the won amounts convert to points on a leaderboard. Once both players have completed their timed challenge, the points are tallied and the winner of the challenge receives the prize. This can be either of virtual currency (which we call Fire Chips) or actual cash, which ranges in prize amounts from $1.00 to $100.00 USD. On top of that we have leagues where competitors can earn more cash or Fire Chip prizes at the end of the month.

Gaming industry is fast becoming a crowded sector, with a lot of new initiatives and innovations coming up a rapid pace. How do you plan to stand out in the crowd?

It feels like the industry is hyper focused on sportsbook or casino floor gaming. While I love the innovation coming out of our competitors, I still believe that the best way to stand out and grab some serious market share is to reach people on their time: at work, at home, waiting to pick up their child from school… at their convenience. We want to consume those time slots and with our burst gaming model, we’re finding that’s exactly what is happening.

Everybody talks about social gaming and incorporating blockchain technology. What are the possibilities of developing a sustainable, feasible and profitable business model that blends social media and blockchain technology into the gaming sector? Is it going to happen in the near future? Or has it already happened?

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Honestly, I don’t know how blockchain fits in with social. The idea of doling out transaction fees for free-to-play games sounds expensive, especially when 95% of those (social casino) gamers aren’t payers. We look at blockchain as an opportunity to ease concerns over fairness and to allow each player to see what the other did during their challenge. It’s not at the top of our to-do list, but it’s definitely on there.

The gaming industry has undergone a change in the USA over the last one year or so since the US Supreme Court lifted the blanket ban on sports betting. Do you see the country now emerging as the global hub of sports betting and gaming?

I’ve been so heads-down on the US market, I could only fancy a guess. I don’t know if we’ll dethrone APAC, but we should be comfortable at the #2 spot.


Source: European Gaming Media
This is a Syndicated News piece. Photo credits or photo sources can be found on the source article: Exclusive Q&A with Phillip Runyan, Founder & CEO of Hold Gaming

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What makes Turbo Games’ provably fair games so special?

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A partnership between game developer Turbo Games and iGaming solution provider and aggregator Slotegrator began in November 2022 via the APIgrator game integration solution. Since then, the collaboration has been developing successfully — and now it’s time to analyze what made it successful.

Turbo Games has noticed how the new technologies spreading throughout the industry can work for the good of brand transparency and player loyalty: “We can already see how blockchain technology has made it possible to make betting checks more accessible to players. All you need is a blockchain-hash and a decoder service. We think we will continue to move in this direction. Many traditional online casinos do not offer the possibility to check the bet. Sooner or later we all have to come to this. Perhaps the development of artificial intelligence will help here, because we are already seeing its involvement in all spheres of human life.”

Turbo Games specializes in provably fair games. Provable fairness is a concept where players can verify their wins or losses using blockchain technology — the outcome of the game is dictated by a smart contract and is absolutely random, barring the possibility of any human involvement. Using cryptographic hashing algorithms, the gambling site and the player’s device both generate seeds (random strings of numbers). Players receive a key that allows them to check the results; if the results are the same as the game round they witnessed, it proves that there was no foul play.

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According to statistics from Turbo Games, the audience for provably fair games is mostly between 18 and 25 years old. However, there are also players aged 35-40 who prefer traditional games but would like to try something new, and have turned their attention to provably fair games.

There are good odds that the technology of provably fair games will become more popular, if not even commonplace, because it gives players a feeling of transparency and proves that the business is trustworthy without the need to search through dozens of reviews. Whereas many innovations in iGaming simply add entertainment, provable fairness addresses security concerns and reassures players that they’re not being exploited, which is invaluable.

Provably fair games are beneficial for both players and online casinos. Vadim Potapenko, Head of Sales at Turbo Games, comments: “It often happens that the users are not satisfied with the result, because gambling is not only about big wins, but also possible losses. By allowing them to check the fairness of a bet, we make life easier for platforms and players. Of course, this allows us to communicate with partners and users that we work honestly and that’s why they should trust our games.”

Ayvar Gabidullin, Business Development Manager at Slotegrator, adds that “this type of game is now becoming more and more popular and has great potential for both players and game providers in the future. On the part of the player, the advantage is that the player can always be sure that his game is fair and he can independently check any of his bets. And for the game provider, this also simplifies the process of implementing casino games, since now it will not be necessary to obtain the appropriate certificates from independent laboratories before launching new games, they can immediately enter the market with these games and where anyone can check the result and make sure that that there is no cheating with players. Many game providers are starting to look towards this type of game. And as far as I see, many operators are starting to think about adding these games.”

What do players in 2023 need? The iGaming industry is all about reputation and trust. Players have a huge number of platforms to choose from, making them pickier and pickier. There’s an abundance of forums where players leave reviews, so if players view a brand as untrustworthy, there are plenty of places they can share their opinion. Provable fairness not only stops that from happening, it provides evidence to the contrary, giving players something else to talk about.

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Slotegrator also recommends investing time and effort into localization and creating an effective and detailed marketing strategy — before trying provably fair technology players need to get to the platform, and there is no acquisition without marketing.

 

 ABOUT SLOTEGRATOR

Since 2012, Slotegrator has been one of the iGaming industry’s leading software and business solution providers for online casino and sportsbook operators.

The company’s main focus is software development and support for online casino platforms, as well as the integration of game content and payment systems.

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The company works with licensed game developers and offers a vast portfolio of casino content: slots, live casino games, poker, virtual sports, table games, lotteries, casual games, and data feeds for betting.

Slotegrator also provides consulting services in gambling license acquisition and business incorporation.

More information: https://slotegrator.pro/

 

ABOUT TURBO GAMES

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Turbo Games — a provably fair games provider that belongs to Turbo Stars company — has an ambitious goal to establish widespread recognition throughout the iGaming world. Even though it is young, the company consists of professionals who have been working on the brand for over five years and are even planning to introduce a new brand for a wider audience soon.

Turbo Games also works in Europe, India, and South Africa, where the company sees the most potential and expects the same “hype” as in Brazil.

The portfolio of Turbo Games consists of 21 titles, including well-known games like Mines, Crash X, DoubleRoll, Hi-Lo, and Plinko. The studio releases a game every month. However, not all games are developed from scratch. Wicket Blast and Spin Strike, the last two releases, are based on cricket and the Indian Premier League. Crash X remains the most popular fast game in the Turbo Games portfolio, and the studio reports that crash games enjoy stable levels of popularity. Overall, the main focus of the brand is provably fair games.

More information: https://turbogames.io/

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Games Factory Talents has teamed up with Nordic Game to bring you Nordic Game Talents.

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Looking to take your career to the next level in the games industry? Then, Nordic Game Talents is the place to be! Games Factory Talents has teamed up with Nordic Game to bring you Nordic Game Talents.

From Oct 27-29, the online and interactive event is dedicated to recruitment and career building in the creative & games industry within the Nordic region. The event empowers participants to be part of a bigger community and motivates them to explore new paths in achieving their career goals.

Hiring creative & games studios – Supercell, Funcom, Panzerdog, Tactile Games, Gamecan, Fingersoft, Dazzle Rocks, Redhill Games to name a few from the Nordic region will be participating in the event. These studios will share information on their latest projects, work culture and what it takes to be part of their team. The individual games associations from Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Estonia will share insights through live sessions on the booming games industry in their respective countries. Career development topics pertinent to job seekers like – How to have a successful first interview, Creative Portfolio reviews will also be discussed.

Experienced game industry professionals and individuals beginning their careers from around the world are welcome to join the event. One-to-one interviews with the hiring studios can be scheduled through the event platform. A great opportunity to get to know the studios and network with game professionals from around the world.

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Participating in the event

As a job seeker attending Nordic Game Talents, take a few minutes to fill out a simple registration form. After filling the registration form you will receive a link to the online event platform – PINE, to join the event on 27th October. Participants joining Nordic Game Talents will also receive a free-of-charge pass to the Nordic Game Conference.

To view the complete agenda, please click here and to learn more about the event please visit Games Job Fair

About Games Factory Talents

A Helsinki-based talent attraction agency dedicated to the games & creative industry. Our services include direct recruitment, organizing game job fairs and managing a community of game industry professionals through our GameDev Talent Board.

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To learn more about Games Factory Talents visit – Games Factory Talents

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810 THE SPREAD

Cumulus Media Launches 810 THE SPREAD, the Bay Area’s First Sports Station Focused on Sports Betting

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Cumulus Media (NASDAQ: CMLS) announces that it has launched the Bay Area’s first Sports radio station focused on sports betting, 810 THE SPREAD. The new station brings sports and sports betting news, information, and insights to the burgeoning and underserved sports betting audience in San Francisco. 810 THE SPREAD will deliver behind-the-book perspectives from experts in a highly entertaining and engaging format. 810 THE SPREAD goes live today on the legendary 810am frequency that has been the 80-year home of historic Talk Radio KGO-AM. Cumulus San Francisco also launched the station’s new website at www.810thespread.com. Kevin Graham, Program Director of Cumulus’ sister sports stations KNBR 680AM/104.5FM and 1050 KTCT, adds Program Director duties for 810 THE SPREAD.

Larry Blumhagen, Vice President/Market Manager, Cumulus San Francisco, said: “810 THE SPREAD joins our sports brands KNBR 680AM/104.5FM and 1050 KTCT for a trifecta of dynamic sports content across four signals and streaming everywhere. We are excited about this new chapter and look forward to serving the Bay Area’s passionate sports fans in an incomparable way.”

Blumhagen added: “This is a bittersweet day for us, as it’s hard to say goodbye to the legendary KGO, which has been a part of listeners’ lives for so many years. We want to thank all the people who have been a part of KGO’s historic run these many years – and the listeners who loyally tuned in to the station. Times change, and we must change with them.”

Kevin Graham, Program Director, 810 THE SPREAD, said: “810 THE SPREAD will be the Bay Area’s best bet for sports fans and sports betting enthusiasts, and we are pleased to introduce sports-betting radio to our community. The station will feature a lineup of expert personalities that deliver unique sports talk and sports betting insights that entertain, inform, and engage, along with Cal Football and Basketball as well as select professional and college sports play-by-play events. While 810 THE SPREAD will feature specific gambling information, we believe our entertaining presentation will make it a favorite for all Bay area sports fans and a perfect complement to the legendary KNBR and KTCT. With its addition, it truly shows Cumulus’ commitment to the Bay area as ‘The Sports Leader’!”

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The weekday programming lineup for 810 THE SPREAD includes:

6am-9am – Bet QL Daily – The must-consume show for sports fans and betting fans alike. Hosted by Joe Ostrowski, Joe Giglio, and Erin Hawksworth.

9am-12pm – Jim Rome - Aggressive, informed sports opinions, rapid-fire dialogue, and plenty of sports smack. As one of the most prolific sports talk hosts in America, Rome draws massive tune-in with legions of fans known as clones, who live for Rome’s take on the day’s largest issues in sports.

12pm-4pm – You Better You Bet – Nick Kostos and Ken Barkley have you covered for the best bets on the biggest matchups, the latest line movement and updates in the futures market. We’ll have up-to-the-minute coverage of backdoor covers and bad beats, and the cheers and tears that come with them. It’s sports betting conversation like you’ve never heard before.

4pm-8pm – Bet MGM Tonight – Live sports betting updates for all the night’s games as they happen – plus live “look-ins” for Major League Baseball games in progress. Get the latest scores, sides, totals, props, parlays, futures, and much more with hosts Quinton Mayo, Trysta Krick, and Ryan Horvat.

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8pm-12 Midnight – CBS Sports Radio

BetQL Network programming is provided by Cumulus Media’s Westwood One through a partnership with Audacy.

For more information or to stream 810 THE SPREAD, visit: http://www.810thespread.com.

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