By Damian Martinez, journalist at G&M News.
How would you describe your current role at the company?
In a short sentence, the job is about having full responsibility for the budget, delivering revenue growth and financial targets for the StarGames brand in the licensed German iGaming market. Of course, in everyday tasks, this translates down to aligning and brainstorming new ideas with all teams, starting from Customer Acquisition, Retention, Casino Management, SEO, but also through Customer Service, Player Protection or Fraud Prevention with one single aim: how can we provide an even better experience for our customers?
What are the main benefits of StarGames’ collaboration with Borussia Dortmund? How do you plan to engage with the club’s fan base, which is known for its loyalty and passion?
We want to increase brand awareness and recognition. Partnerships with clubs like Borussia Dortmund can do this effectively. We know this for a fact as we made our first steps in the sponsorship-world in the previous season of the German Bundesliga with Hannover 96. At the same time, having a renowned club like BVB by our side is increasing the trust of our customers in our brand. It is also a major milestone for the overall licensed online casino industry in Germany, as no other brand that exclusively provides online slots to its audience has ever struck a partnership of this magnitude. Having our brand visible for the years to come legitimizes our business that has long been seen in the country as something negative that must be banned. We believe that there is nothing wrong with gambling, if done legally, within the financial means of the person participating. As for engaging with the fans, we already have our first plans set for intriguing promotions, giveaways and money-can’t-buy exclusive experiences. Keep your eyes out on the StarGames social media channels or on our website in the weeks to come.
In which way this association aligns with your strategy of centering around the German gaming market?
StarGames is a brand which centers exclusively on the German market due to its long tradition and history in the country. For this reason, we have the advantage over some of our competitors of having a more focused approach. As a result of this strategy, our partnerships are also concentrating solely on Germany. We have been one of the main sponsors of German darts professional and eight-time Darts World Championship participant, Max Hopp. We also struck a Premium Partnership with this year’s International ADAC Truck Grand Prix at the legendary racing track Nürburgring. All these commitments have one thing in common: we want to go beyond the common “placing our logo on the side and waiting for an effect to kick in”-kind of attitude towards sponsorships. We always want to deliver more or innovate. For examples, StarGames was one of the first ever brands in German football that signed a pure “training-gear” partnership. It was a huge success.
What steps is your company taking to ensure responsible gaming on your platform?
StarGames is a licensed slot operator by the Joint Gaming Authority of the Federal States in Germany. The German license already requires us to implement several responsible gaming measures, from mandatory monthly deposit limits across all operators to connecting to the nationwide self-exclusion list, OASIS, to implementing a safe server solution. Nevertheless, at StarGames, we strive to go beyond the minimum requirements also for player protection, just as we do with sponsorships. We work together with player protection software Mentor to provide our players with automatic, real-time notifications once their gambling behavior is getting out of hand, as well as interesting data and transparent statistics on their spendings, winnings and losses. Besides this, we work actively on promoting the free app from BetBlocker to our players. We feel that this app truly helps players with gambling issues. Finally, we are planning to raise awareness for responsible gaming as part of our partnership with Borussia Dortmund.
Which goals will the firm try to achieve over the coming months?
The two focus areas for us in the coming months will be adding more game suppliers to our portfolio, as well as making sure that players can find their preferred games faster and more efficiently when navigating through the apps and our website. The two go hand-in-hand, as a growing content library results in longer search effort from players to find what they truly like to play. We want to minimize this time with more automation and better design. Mainly, our objective is to ensure sustainable growth while also increasing our brand awareness. The German licensed market is a place where this is not easy to achieve. Very high taxes, strict cross-operator deposit limits, €1 maximum bets per slot spins and 5-second-spin durations are all factors that lead to limited revenues. We must invest wisely and with careful consideration in the returns.