Quote from: CasinoBuilderX on June 01, 2025, 05:39:18 AM

Quote from: Riceandbean on May 31, 2025, 11:03:33 PM

You mention having already spent around $100,000 on setting up your casino — company formation, licensing, recruiting, choosing providers, etc.
That’s quite a commitment. But where’s the record of any of it?
If this is really happening, why does everything look like just talk?
$100k spent and zero proof shared doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.

I think its pretty reasonable to say I don't want to dox my whole identity on the internet. Especially not in such a sensitive topic. Therefore I won't provide any invoices or payment receipts. The reason I mentioned the current spend is to give people a realistic idea of how much it takes to even get started.

You will need to form a main company that operates the casino, a payment company that will receive payments and manage banking on behalf of that company. Then you will need a license.

Curacao used to be the most common license, but a couple years ago a lot of things changed. The price, compliance and turnaround changed a lot, so a lot of people are moving to Anjouan or Tobique. Anjouan is the cheapest and fastest one. Tobique is something in between Anjouan and Curacao, in terms of pricing and speed. I won't talk about the tier-1 licenses as those are not my target for now. Many of them alone cost hundreds of thousands (up to millions), take at least 6-12 months to obtain and serve only specific countries and markets.

Quote from: Riceandbean on May 31, 2025, 11:03:33 PM

You also say you’ll be documenting the journey, yet the X profile you linked is completely empty — no posts, no updates.
If this is really happening, why does everything look like just talk?

I just created the x profile alongside this account. I didn't get to make a post there yet, but will do shorter form updates there as well. The goal is to connect with other operators.

There isn't much that I can do now while waiting for all the legal stuff to get done. Company formations takes 2-4 weeks, banking another 4 weeks. Obtaining the license another 4-8 weeks.

I just wanted to start this thread already to share my experience so far. I think this way people get a realistic insight of how long things actually take to get one of the "fast and cheap" licenses.

Quote from: Potato Chips on May 31, 2025, 11:59:44 PM

Try going to gamba events, op. Perhaps you could end up making those connections. Grin

I found this nice calendar: https://www.igamingcalendar.com/

I don't have any plans on launching a casino, but I'd be interesting to know the behind-the-scenes. I'd be interested if you actually end up documenting from start to finish.

I'm guessing you have read this AMA from @/SirJohnVonSlotty as well? see: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5482508.0 otherwise, I would highly recommend it.

Great of you pointing out. I am currently traveling for my summer vacation as I had this trip planned already last year, otherwise I might have been already at the Sigma Asia this weekend to get my first industry insights.

Either way, I do plan to attend major conferences as I had a great experiences and made impactful connections on affiliate conferences and events earlier in my life.

And yes, of course I did read SirJohnVonSlottys AMA and it seems very reaonsable, howeer his estimated budget of 3.5m - 5.5m seem fairly high. I am not comfortable to risk anywhere near this amount unless it's proven to show it works. Once I found a good marketing startegy (either paid promos, affiliates, agents, seo or ads), I think the budget can be increased just to scale.

He also mentioned that you need a team of 20 people to start with. I will keep it very lean and outsource or manage things on my own for now until we start acquiring players.

Currently the team consists of 1 VIP manager, 1 Operations manager and 2 Marketing experts. Before we launch we will setup our own customer support team (which will easily scale to 10-30 people), as this is one of the things we could do much better compared to the competition. (Most outsource it and get crappy service, our goal is to be top notch in terms of customer support and VIP/relations management).

It costs a lot of money to acquire a player. And rather than churning them, our most important objective is to KEEP the players we have. This works only if they get treated best and have no reason to go anywhere else.

The thing that makes sense to outsource now it the platform provider itself. There's no need to build your own games and tech stack from scratch if you have no experience. The cost for this is in the ball park of 20-50k and a % of your ggr. (it does range between 10-20% in most cases, depending on the game providers). You want to avoid the cheap ones that sell you a dream of your own software for 5-10k. I rather pick one thats established and trustworthy in the industry (has booths at all the major conferences, interviews online are available etc. - Not some random script seller on the forum for sure).

Quote from: bitbollo on June 01, 2025, 01:20:07 AM

I am curious to know and ask two main things. what are you planning for advertising? I mean still you haven't no idea for your marketing?
what did you mean exactly with a niche/target market? How and what have you identified?
Did you have specific target to catch for your casino? can you share more please?

For advertising the plan is mostly organic content creation, paid posts for influencers and streamers that don't promote gambling yet, but have an audience that could receive it well (Theres edge as the cost is cheaper, but you have to find them). Buying ads on multiple platforms to generate attractive ROI fast, that allows us to scale. Affiliates (direct and through networks) are the backbone of any casino.

In my previous affiliate life, I generated over 50k FTDs in Tier 1-2 countries. This is where I made first million from. I stopped a long time ago, but am always wondering what would've happened if I sent those players to my own casino. All of those FTD's were based on CPA (cost per acquisition), no revenue share. So I don't know how much those players were worth to the casinos. But given the fact they couldn't get enough of my traffic, I'm sure they were very happy.

Those strategies might not work anymore as the environment and social media, ads cost changed drastically. But I am confident in my ability to figure it out (again).

Regarding the niche/target market I mean that it makes most sense to start in one country or at best a few similar countries.

This way you can focus your branding tailored to your target market (In terms of name, domain, colors, language and games they like to play).

For example you could run a crypto casino and target everyone that has crypto. But those will be people from all continents and they all do like something different. The name, domain and design would be something generic as it has to appeal to EVERYONE on the world. Customer support will be shitty due to language barriers and translations. The game selection is scattered (some countries like live games, other like slots, another loves card games or crash games.

Now imagine you tailor it for 1 specific country. You get a domain and brand name that makes sense for their language. You do market research and see what games they like the most (some countries play 50% only crash games for example), what slangs they use. Ideally hire customer support in their native language so they can relate and understand the person at a much deeper level.

If you can build a place thats tailored exactly for this player, offer them the games they want to play, treat them well and resolve issues immediately, always honor payments fast and easy (as long as they don't break T&C), then why would they leave and play somewhere else?

Of course this strategy isn't proven to myself yet, but intuitively this makes perfect sense and thats what I am trying to pursue.

Quote from: bitbollo on June 01, 2025, 01:20:07 AM

What is your total budget?
Did you plan to have also sportbook or just casino games?

The overall budget I'm willing to put on the line, and be completely fine if I lose it and things never gain traction is 500k USD (lets say no players and no potential profit in sight).

I thought a long time about, and as trader I put money on the line so often for much less r/r. This is such an easy asymmetric trade if you're willing to put in the work and deal with the extra headaches. A bet that Im happy to take.

However, if things gain traction, I am willing to put in much more capital to accelerate the scale. I have a decent war chest to work with, so no outside capital is required.

Regarding offering Sportsbook and/or casino, we made the decision to offer casino only for now. However, market research is still ongoing and we might change it if the data says we should do so. (it's not easy to find the data, mostly you have to read reports of publicly traded casinos to get more insights about each market)

I hope this answers some of your questions and I had a lot of fun discussing them. If theres anything else, please ask. I enjoy this very much as it makes me think through all the stuff a little bit more.

Gm.

I've been following your thread from the beginning and I really appreciate your way of thinking, straight to the point, no hype, with real numbers and a grounded approach to risk.

I come from a digital marketing background with experience in performance campaigns, lead generation, and copywriting. I've also been in the affiliate space and involved in crypto since 2022. I run a small agency, but what you're building right now is exactly the kind of project I'm deeply interested in.

If at any point you need an extra set of hands for anything useful (research, testing, brainstorming, market mapping, support...), I’d be happy to help for free, just for the experience.
I’m not looking for a role or money — just exposure from the inside and a chance to learn from someone who clearly knows what they’re doing.

If that makes sense to you, feel free to reach out. If not, no worries .. I’ll keep following the thread regardless. Good luck with everything.

— Dario