Peter Wilkinson-White interviews PlayVegas.io’s Paul Twaddle
Casino nights are always a popular means of raising money for charity. At PlayVegas.io, Paul Twaddle brings real-world casino experience to this for-fun activity. But first, we took him back to his beginnings.
Could we commence this interview with a brief history of your life to date and how it brought you to where you are today?
I’m a seasoned gaming veteran and worked my way through London’s grottiest and grandest casinos in the 1990's before taking contracts abroad and on cruise ships. In 2006, I made the move to online and spent an extremely enjoyable few years at Betfair as VIP manager. It was there that I came up with the original idea for a blackjack variant which Betfair Casino rolled out to great success. Over the next decade or so, I took up long-term consulting contracts for a number of white label casinos, plus an indie slot studio.
What is PlayVegas.io?
PlayVegas.io is a live casino tournament provider, for fun and not real money. We offer free-to-play, live dealer roulette and blackjack tournaments, where players compete against each other to top the leaderboard. Tournaments are structured in a way to stimulate competition, but also to provide maximum enjoyment — whether you’re an experienced player or a complete novice. Clients can offer daily, weekly or monthly leaderboards which can support any promotional campaign — whether through acquisition, conversion, retention, cross sell or reactivation of lapsed players. Our free-to-play events can have prizes offered by the operator – it doesn’t have to be cash but can be an enhanced bonus offering, free spins or physical prizes and experiences.
No integration is necessary and we can have operator tournaments up and running within days.
We also provide corporate and charity events where we raise valuable funds for charity. Operators can opt-in to the charity fundraising initiative at no extra cost.
What was the background to the development and launch of PlayVegas.io, and what prompted you to create this site?
During lockdown, I teamed up with an old friend who owns the most prestigious fun casino events company in the UK (www.VivaVegas.co.uk). The hospitality industry was decimated at the time due to Covid-19, and together we set up a studio to offer virtual casino events, mainly for companies to bring staff and clients together in a very fragmented workplace. His highly regarded reputation and existing client base, along with my knowledge of the online industry and live streaming, enabled us to pick up bookings immediately. One was a big-budget event for a blue chip company who brought in a celebrity to host and chat with players.
As the events got bigger and we were being requested to quote for events with 20+ tables, it was soon apparent that we needed to optimize the execution to enable unlimited scaling without the associated rising costs of dealers, tables, studio space and investment in more tech. So I decided to create the software in which to run multiple, concurrent events from a single roulette and blackjack table, with each event appearing totally bespoke to the individual participants and client.
Can you explain the charity aspect to this new venture?
Players can receive additional chips, in-game bonuses or extra lives for a donation to charity. Clients have the option to participate in the charity fundraising initiative which can provide multiple benefits:
• it’s raising vital funds for charity
• it heightens the client’s Corporate Social Responsibility profile
• it can help qualify players as potential depositors
Clients can choose their own charities to support or select from our existing partners. Players can select a different charity to support with each purchase additional chips.Our 20-plus years’ experience of delivering fun casino events for charities has given us great insight into the effectiveness of casino games as a fundraising tool. Particularly when driven by gamified elements and dealers who are able to deliver promotional messaging throughout the event with calls to action.
The casino industry attracts a lot of flak from opponents to gambling, namely because of the potential harm to vulnerable players. How does PlayVegas.io address that?
Chasing losses is the biggest influence in uncontrolled gambling. However, as there is nothing to cash out at the end of our tournaments, we see many players ‘going for it’ purely for the thrill of it – knowing that any donations for additional chips has gone to a good cause. This is a great opportunity for casino operators to generate valuable funds for charity – even if it does come directly out of the players’ pockets and not their own.
Can beginners and novices login and have fun on PlayVegas.io?
Absolutely – our user journey is designed to enable complete novices to enjoy live casino games with as few obstacles as possible. From registration, to navigation and understanding the games, we are continuously trying to make our events as inclusive as possible, no matter the level of experience or availability of budget.
Games are conducted in a professional, but much more relaxed and engaging manner than a regular live casino where dealers need to be more sensitive to players losing. We aren’t dealing with real money and therefore players do not take offence to our dealers joviality or become abusive in the chat. Our dealers are mainly native, English-speaking professionals with years of experience in London’s top casinos, although we do offer additional languages, too.
The dealers are trained to offer guidance and tips throughout the tournament as many participants from our corporate and charity events have never played before. We’re also creating an interactive tool which will offer varying levels of advice and strategy.
We’ve run many master classes for corporate clients where our dealers actively teach participants how to play – not just roulette and blackjack, but also poker and craps.
So PlayVegas.io is free to play, is that correct?
Similar to the poker industry, we offer Freeroll tournaments which can be used as an acquisition tool to bring in new players or cross sell live casino games to players that are curious, but have misconceptions that the games are complicated or out of their budget.
In these cases, the client pays for the event and the player participates for free. The client can set the entry requirements – whether it’s to make a qualifying deposit on their site or have the tournament restricted to players from a particular geo, we can create it entirely to requirements. Our charity events have an entry fee which is a donation that goes straight to the charity.
Live dealers are costly, especially if they are not always busy, so how does PlayVegas.io overcome that burden?
Put simply, we do not operate 24 hours a day and never have any downtime. We operate on a booking and sponsorship model, so clients only pay for the time they require. This ensures the time is used most effectively and by having a set start and finish time, is more likely to drive players to make the time to participate.
If a client requires a one-off event between 19:00-21:00 CET on a Wednesday, we have it covered. Equally, if a client is targeting South America and requires geo-restricted daily tournaments at localized peak time, we also have that covered.
The two games are blackjack and roulette?
We currently offer the two main games that players instantly think of when mentioning live casino games – roulette and blackjack. We also have a three-dice sic bo variant which clients can include in their tournaments. but most prefer to maximize their time with the two most popular live casino games. We’re working on enhanced odds variations of both games and game shows are very popular right now, so we’re planning to move in that direction, too. As we are not a real-money gaming product, there’s no regulation or certification required, meaning we can create concepts to test the market. So nothing is off-limits.
What are the main goals for PlayVegas.io over the next 12 months?
We’re aiming to firmly establish ourselves as the free-to-play, live casino provider for operators to use as part of their entire marketing strategy. We’re confident operators will see a positive ROI with each campaign when delivered correctly. There are no lengthy contracts or integration required, so operators can test the effectiveness of a free-to-play live casino tournament with minimum commitment. We have the capacity to bring new games to market in a swift manner and are working on some real wacky ideas, so watch this space.
*** This article was originally published in September 2024 edition of Casino Life Magazine Issue 169 ***
