Starting your own online gambling site – here’s four things you need to think about
While traditional gambling revenues have fallen since the high of 2019, the same cannot be said for online operators. You may look at online casino DrBet and think it looks easy – but it’s much harder to set up in practice and there is so much you need to do before you can welcome your first customers.
Here we discuss four things you maybe hadn’t thought about that you will definitely need to consider:
1. Getting the appropriate licences
In the UK, you can’t just set up as a gambling operator, you will need to obtain the appropriate licences from the UK Gambling Commission. If you are outside the UK, you will still need to hold a remote operator licence if you want to target and attract UK players.
The UK Gambling Commission list all the licences required on their website, however depending on what you plan to offer, you may need several licences to operate an online casino.
Licences don’t come cheap, and the cost varies according to how much you expect to turn over. However, in addition to the cost of the licence application fee, there are also annual fees to be paid 30 days from when the licence starts. At present, for the smallest level up to £550k, the remote casino licence application fee is currently £4224 and the annual fee of £4199 will be due 30 days later – and that’s before you have invested a penny in creating the site.
This can be a complex area of law and if you are a novice, you will almost certainly need to engage a specialist law firm to check you are compliant and have purchased the correct and most relevant licences.
2. Developing the site
Developing a site can be easy or difficult, dependent on what you want to offer, however bear in mind that competition in the industry is fierce.
It’s possible to buy an ‘out of the box’ gaming site solution, and it’s certainly appealing for start ups, however to really stand out from the crowd you are likely to want to engage a team of developers sooner or later to create your own unique games, and increasingly you’ll be looking to have an app too in order to compete.
Developer talent doesn’t come cheap and is hard to find, although these days many people will outsource this to overseas. However, managing a remote coding teams has it’s drawbacks too, so you’ll want to ensure you can work with an experienced team.
3. Customer Services
While you may operate remotely, when it comes to money, your customers will expect to be able to contact you if they run into problems, especially when claiming their winnings. This is something you should put in place from the get-go, even at a basic level, or bad reviews will quickly scare off the customers.
Having a good customer services solution from the word go will help you establish trust and build your reputation. It’s important too to think about the steps you will take to support problem gamblers and not view them as ‘easy revenue’. Having plans in place to support customers and prevent them from gambling more than they can afford is about more than legal compliance – doing it well and with care will build trust from both customers and the UK Gambling Commission.
4. Branding and Marketing
Often new operators have thought about getting the software right and the games right but you also need to think about how customers will find you.
Investing in a qualified, experienced marketing team will bring dividends in the long run, from achieving better search results, having a more professional appearance which appeals to your target audience, and ultimately getting you more customers.
Yes, you can get cheap online freelancers, but ultimately you get what you pay for and if you pay cheap, you may wind up paying twice.
Hopefully we’ve give you some things to think about before you get started – there’s one last thing you need to succeed – the thing your customers want too – just a little luck!
