Interesting thread. While I represent one of the casinos here, some questions have always intrigued me:
"How much capital are you willing to hedge against highrollers/ whales? 500K is a far-fetched amount for the majority of us but in the crypto world where gamblers are willing to risk 6 - 7 figures, it's always possible to see them pushing their luck"
After all the setup costs I have around 350-400k of risk left for marketing and taking bets. To keep risk control in check we will create specific max bets for certain games adjusted to their payout structure. It's pretty straight forward for games like blackjack, roulette and other games. For slots with ultra high potential payouts (100,000x for example) we will have to drastically cap the maximum bet. It's gonna be a bit of pain in the ass, but better safe than sorry. Being able to payout legit winners is the only fair way to do it.
You can run simulations of variance for each game and bet sizing so it's fairly easy to know where the risk of busting is close to zero. And in the worst case I can always inject some more capital if required (I just want to avoid having a million dollar winner right after launch).
On top of that you can put a weekly max withdrawal into the T&C, which is a good compromise in case someone hits a really big win right at the start.
"Trust and money are always the hot topics in businesses. Do you meet your stakeholders in-person or everything is done through online meetings? Would your entire team be working remotely or there would be some sort of physical establishment?"
Yes I've known them all personally for a very long time. However, operations will be managed remote as no one is tied to a specific place.
Good luck with running your own casino but I will make a few suggestions that might help you.
1. Be cautious and avoid instant withdrawals initially because a new site always have some bugs and abusers can wipe the entire balance out in a few hours.
2. If you want to have a sportsbook you will need a odds provider such as sportsradar I think.
3. Instead of spending money on welcome bonus, focus on paying more to the people who deserve. Like give them more weekly, monthly bonuses.
4. Might as well start your own casino token because that solves your liquidity issues to some extent.
1. Thank you this is very well noted. Since the platform providers have hundreds if not thousands of clients, I do believe it should fairly safe. However, I will ask them again.
2. Correct, they have multiple providers that we can plug in from a third party.
3. I still didn't make up my mind how to manage welcome bonuses, as there's obviously a lot of abusers. Good point mentioning to rather spend capital and rakeback on existing players. It is very aligned with my goal of retaining users. We just need to make sure to find a good way to actually get them in the first place. Welcome bonuses are a great way to get SEO traffic and affiliates from all the bonus sites.
4. It's certainly an option as I see many others are doing it. However, I didn't check about the legal implications of that yet. Something that we have to explore in the future.
Currently I am setting up companies, applying for a license and recruiting a team to make this happen (Please don't apply, I only work with people I know).
Another reason is also that I don't know anyone from this industry. I hope to eventually connect to like minded people who are in the same situation or walked the walk already.
These things don't match up well. If you only work with the people you know but you don't know anyone from this industry, then how do you make it? You mentioned that you did many businesses around gambling, including affiliate system and poker. Did you want to say that you simply don't know anyone from the crypto industry and you are starting a casino with your partners that have worked in non-crypto gambling projects?
With the industry I mean the iGaming industry, specifically people who actually operate the casinos. I have plenty of exposure and contacts from being a professional poker player and poker/casino affiliate. I also invest in crypto since 2017 and have been trading fulltime since 2020. Thats why I said all the knowledge and experience from all my past adventures matches up, I am just lacking contacts to actual casino owners. I have no one to ask or guide me through how to launch and run a casino. I am just doing it, will probably make a lot of mistakes and figure it out along the way.
By the way, I have a question about Curacao license. Companies that have Curacao license, do they have office in Curacao and work from that place? Or is that just a license and they have offices in other countries?
You can incorporate a company there and get a license from there, but I think you can also incorporate in another jurisdiction. (I didn't apply for Curacao so I can't say this with 100% certainty). However, the way it works is that you are required to have an address there, a potential nominee director, secretary etc). Those people are local and do everything to meet the local regulation standards. The rest of the team who manages the day to day operation, marketing and customer support are not required to be there. This can be done all remote or outsourced if you want to. You don't have to live and work there, if thats what you're asking.