New Trend of Brand Collaborations Making Waves in iGaming
In online and digital entertainment, brand collaborations aren’t anything particularly new. However, with the way that certain products can offer 24/7 engagement and easy access, it’s become more and more common for major brands to explore ways of getting their brand into these always-live offerings. It’s a new form of marketing that you can loosely see encapsulated from online streaming to casino gaming.
You could look to the way in which Netflix is inserting ads into its programs as a standard form of these collaborations, but you can also see it with IP collaborations being leveraged in live service games. You’ll see seasonal events, for example, where users can tap into specific content from the brands seeking to capitalise on the marketing opportunity. In iGaming, the collaborations are forming new games and experiences altogether.
Bringing In-House Experiences to Online Players
Source: Unsplash
With pioneering efforts from Evolution Gaming, what it means to play a table game online has changed in its entirety. People now opt for the live casino games when they want that vaunted, classic casino experience because of the additional elements of immersion that the games offer. It’s all played in real-time, the croupiers are professionals who interact with the players, and you can see the results on a physical table.
From the outset, these games were live-streamed from dedicated studios designed to handle the traffic and the additional tech required to play the games in real-time. Then, land-based casino brands had the grand idea to stream from their prestigious venues. Now, you can play a roulette online game from almost anywhere in the world.
You can spin for the win at London’s The Hippodrome with Live Hippodrome Roulette or dart across the Atlantic to play Live MGM Grand American Roulette or even Live Bellagio Roulette. Branded games aren’t anything new to online casino gaming, as shown by Terminator 2 Roulette or slots like Lara Croft: Temples and Tombs. Still, this goes further by giving players the real experience of the brand live, rather than adapting the brand to a game type.
More Brands Looking for Live Collaborations
Source: Pexels
As noted, live roulette online now features games where you can play at prestigious venues like The Hippodrome and Bellagio, so where can other brands look to get in on the action? After all, these real-venue live games have become exceedingly popular among classic table game players. Over in the US, we’ll likely see this trend pounced upon, and then some, given the avid advertising market and the growing gaming revenue of online gambling.
In fact, we’ve already started to see some seemingly disparate brands explore the area. Some sports teams and leagues have made their way into iGaming through branding partnerships on new games. NFL teams, specifically, have launched branded games like 3D table games and unique American football-style betting games. Down the line, these collaborations could evolve further – perhaps even into one-off live events between brands and casinos.
Brand collaborations that have made land-based casinos playable from home continue to prove to be wildly popular with players, which will surely open the door even wider to new forms of brand team-ups in iGaming.