Do you promote Mahjong or otherwise target Asian players?

[MichaelCorfman]

Many view Asia as the greatest growth market for online gaming. Certainly that is the mood at the Asian iGaming Conference (AiG) that is being held this week in Macau. But taking advantage of the anticipated growth is not trivial.

The sessions and the exhibitors at the conference repeat a theme that is common these days, which is to penetrate marketplaces like Asia it is very important to localize what you offer online gamers. And that doesn't mean simply translating some existing content for the Asian marketplace.

One major theme at AiG is that targeting the Asian marketplace successfully requires a focus on the games offered. Mahjong is perhaps the best example of a popular Asian game - it's hard to claim you are targeting Asian players if you don't promote and offer Mahjong or other games popular in this area of the world.

So, in honor of the AiG conference, this week's question asks if you promote Mahjong or any other Asian-centric games, and if the Asian marketplace is one you target or not.

Michael

[MichaelCorfman]

I chose the fourth option since Casino City does perform geotargeting for our content. For example, since I'm in Macau at the moment, we target the lists of online gaming sites we present to only include those that accept players from Macau.

In terms of promoting Mahjong, just a couple weeks ago we created a separate section on our site that just lists gaming sites offering Mahjong and rummy games, so we do at least promote Mahjong.

I view our what we do in the area of Asian marketing as being very weak right now compared with what I think we should be doing, but the little baby steps are a little better than nothing. And we'll do more later. We did acquire the domain name CasinoCity.asia, and that site will be better tailored to the Asian marketplace.

Michael

[Chips]

I have just begun to ecpand on my skill game offers and have added mahjong to it, no where near what i would consider "merketing" but it is a start, I do see some traffic at my site from asian countries so it may develop more than I current can see. Time will tell.

[Fergie]

I chose that I do not target Asian gamblers in any special way. although I am about to enter the Asian Market. My brother assures me that gambling is very much a part of the asian culture - he lives in Taiwan - and we've started to have some translations done.

[TheGooner]

The trick will be to find places that accept the sort of payment methods that asian players have.

Extended personal credit and /or credit cards are far from common in asia still.

[SportsBookie]

Although I'm Chinese and from Asia, I can't read nor write Chinese for the life of me! Thus I do not target Asia because I know it's a very complicated market. It is saturated with credit betting sites, be it sports betting or casino or p2p games. It's a tough market for any companies outside of Asia to penetrate, if you have the "we've done it in Europe thus it's the same in Asia" mentality, sadly I'm telling you straight to the face you're doomed.

We're pampered by credit choice, get an account now and pay later. That's the life in Asia.

[Nandakishore]

I have voted for option one. However, I do have some plan to enter that market.

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[aksana]

I don't promote Mahjong, but I'm going. I have some special pages for Asian players where they can find casinos in their languages.

[Fortune Palace]

I've always targeted Asian players, but UK-based Asian players who have English as a first or second language option. I chose to push games such as Sic Bo and Keno for that reason.

Having done some research into this market, though, I've found that while many UK land casinos and bookmakers have a large Asian clientele, it doesn't mean that they'll gamble online. They seem to prefer the social aspects of gambling and would rather spend a small fortune on an unregulated Roulette machine in a bookies than play it online at a reputable casino.

[Doolally]

I have a Mahjong site but also don't specifically target Asian players, it is aimed at players within Europe. However, despite loads of visitors and downloads, very few seem to become actual money players.

The clickthrough rates to the sites are very good, but unfortunately, the return is poor. I think it's maybe time to try some different sites and see how they perform for me. Is anyone else seeing a decent return for their efforts?