CROWDFUNDING AND CROWDSOURCING

FOR THE GAMBLING INDUSTRY

What will be the impact
of Crowdsourcing on the
gambling industry?
White Paper
April 2014
GamCrowd White Paper 2014
2
Outlook for the Crowdsourcing market
According to a 2012 report by Massolution called Enterprise Crowdsourcing: Market, Provider
and Worker Trends published on crowdsourcing.org, the market for services provided by the
crowd had been growing at over 75% per annum. In 2011, it was estimated that crowds it
was worth around $375m worldwide and was still growing at the same rate. Assuming that the
rate of growth has continued until now, the market is likely to be worth around $2bn in 2014 and
current statistics suggest that there are plenty of signs that that growth is continuing.
There are estimated to be around 3bn people online, and that number is expected to reach 5bn
by 2020. A growing number of that global online workforce are increasingly happy to seek work
through a crowdsourcing platform; either as their main source of income or as a supplementary
wage. The same crowdsourcing.org report suggested that there were 6.3m workers engaged in
crowdsourcing in 2011, and that number has been growing at 100% per annum.
CROWDSOURCING INDUSTRY REVENUE GROWTH
Source: crowdsourcing.org 2011 Source: GamCrowd prediction
141
2009 Year
US$
Million
Growth 53%
75%
75%
75%
75%
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
215
376
657
1,151
2,014
TOTAL NUMBER OF CROWDSOURCING WORKERS
Source: crowdsourcing.org 2011
1.34
2009 Year
Number of
workers M
Growth
165%
103%
2010 2011
3.1
6.29
CROWDSOURCING INDUSTRY REVENUE GROWTH
Source: crowdsourcing.org 2011 Source: GamCrowd prediction
141
2009 Year
US$
Million
Growth 53%
75%
75%
75%
75%
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
215
376
657
1,151
2,014
TOTAL NUMBER OF CROWDSOURCING WORKERS
Source: crowdsourcing.org 2011
1.34
2009 Year
Number of
workers M
Growth
165%
103%
2010 2011
3.1
6.29
GamCrowd White Paper 2014
3
As we will discuss later in this paper, some of the worlds most innovative companies such
as Amazon, HP and Netfix use crowd sourcing, not just to reduce costs but to create a
competitive advantage. This paper examines the opportunity for operators within the Gambling
industry to exploit the crowd.
Outlook for the Crowdsourcing market within the Gambling Industry
To date there is no actual data for the amount of crowdsourcing within the gambling industry
and anecdotal evidence is that it has yet to take hold. However, where it is happening it is
reported under generic industry groupings such as Media and Entertainment, which account for
about 20% of the global crowdsourcing market * (*Crowdsourcing.org)
According to The Economist magazine report in Feb 2014, the global gross win [=revenue?]
for the gambling industry is around $450bn and is expected to grow to around $550bn in 2018.
The TV business (including advertising spend) is a similar size to the Gambling Industry with the
Economist estimating its revenues are around $400bn, which is about a quarter of the global
Media and Entertainment industry, an industry that Crowdsourcing.org estimates to account
for 20% of the worldwide crowdsourcing market. Although the methodology for arriving at
these numbers is not ideal, a simple extrapolation suggests that the Gambling Industry should
be capable of accounting for around 5% of the worldwide crowdsourcing market. That would
put the potential market at around $100m in 2014. At GamCrowd, we cannot fnd much
evidence that the Gambling industry represents 5% of the market and thus we believe there
is a considerable opportunity for the industry to use the crowd much more. The opportunity
to fll this gap and drive further innovation and growth is why GamCrowd has launched an
online crowdsourcing and crowd funding platform and has recruited a crowd of gambling
professionals to act as our industrys crowd.
GamCrowd White Paper 2014
4
Suitability of Gambling to Crowdsourcing
The rise of crowdsourcing in recent years is an online phenomenon the arrival of web 2.0,
social media, cloud and mobile computing have all made it possible. lt benefts industries more
that deal in digital ideas and data. We believe that the gambling industry has a tremendous
opportunity to beneft from the economics of the crowd, probably more so than any other
industry.
Gambling has been at the leading edge of the internet since the late 90s modern gambling
businesses are global, multi platform, multi language, multi currency and extremely complex.
The online gambling industry has been at the very forefront of peer to peer technologies,
social media integration, data analytics, SEO, social media marketing and affliate networks.
The advance of Bringing Your Own Device is transforming the land-based industry as is the
use of cloud-based systems to better manage those estates. There is a long history of start-
ups innovating within the industry and our experience at GamCrowd is that there is a healthy
pipeline coming through.
This paper looks at a number of possible uses that the Gambling Industry could make of the
crowd and aims to provoke some early experiments with crowdsourcing amongst managers.
In it we go through all of the various tasks that we believe, the industry could do better via the
crowd. We have included some background information which we think will be of help to those
that are new to crowdsourcing.

Benefits
Flexibility and scalability: The crowd allows you to turn on a huge army of workers at the
click of a mouse and turn them back off when you are fnished. They bring a variety of skills,
languages, perspectives and ideas and you can access them for as long (or as short) a time as
you need them.
Speed to market: Post a job on a crowdsourcing site and you will, if things go well, get
multiple proposals within hours. Per task workers are focused on delivering quickly and
effciently. lf you cut out the time taken to search for multiple options to get a quote, you can
get work done quicker. Also, crowd workers do not spend time commuting, sitting in meetings
or writing reports for their boss. They simply churn out the work. At GamCrowd, we have been
GamCrowd White Paper 2014
5
consistently delighted at the speed of turnaround of our tasks.
Reach: In a global business such as online gaming, the crowd can let
you operate every language and country that you target to the same
standard as your home market. The reach plus the costs will enable
new markets to be targeted that traditional methods would have ruled
out on cost grounds.
Originality: The crowd brings the benefts of diversity and localisation
to your business across many departments such as technology, product, content and
marketing.
Costs: Cost is often quoted as the number one reason for using crowdsourcing. It is a huge
beneft but in our opinion it is not the number one beneft. Costs are lower because you
only pay the cost of each task. Some of the costs you dont pay are management overhead,
property and IT costs and employment costs. Per task and micro task models usually assume
a set time per task and the crowd worker will only charge for a few seconds or a few hours of
work. You are unlikely to have to commit to a long contract with a consultant. The market is
also global and workers have to compete against cheaper jurisdictions; GamCrowd's brand
guidelines were produced by a young lady in Pakistan and we were delighted with the outcome.
We have used the crowd extensively to build our business and we have been amazed at how
little cash we have used to achieve some big results.
Types of crowdsourcing
Micro tasks: Imagine you want to check the position of your banner on all of your German
language affliates. You can create an online form quickly using a tool like Smartsheets.com
and offer a web based entry form for the crowd to fll out. You link the form to a micro-tasking
site and then offer to pay the crowd a few cents per entry. The crowd gets to work checking the
sites and answering your questions. Within a few days, the task will be completed at a cost that
may make it viable to perform many more tasks within a similar budget. There are many micro
task platforms out there; the most famous, Mechanical Turk which is owned by Amazon, only
allows US citizens because of money laundering concerns, however a quick search will yield
over 50 sites including one in China, Zhubajie" with a reported 4 million workers available to
help your business at a few cents per task.
Competitions: You want a new logo for a slot game - put a brief online and ask the crowd
to submit designs. You tell the crowd how much you are prepared to pay for the winning
design and get your team (or the crowd) to vote on all of the choices and pay the winner. The
GamCrowd logo was designed this way for a few hundred pounds. You could run a competition
with a $1m dollar prize like Netfix did to
develop a new algorithm for customer-
generated recommendations.
Per task: Ideal for anything from a simple
task like a mystery shop to a site, or testing a
registration process right up to a consultants
report. You publish a brief and a budget and
let the crowd submit proposals and bid on a
price. You chose the best proposal, deposit
GamCrowd White Paper 2014
6
the money with the crowdsourcing site and agree with payment on completion.
Per hour: Pretty obvious this one, and it can be used for simple or complex tasks.
Self-organised crowd sourcing: This is a new development that GamCrowd will be
supporting. You publish a project for the crowd to complete. Teams of crowd-workers come
together to create a proposal and bid for the task. They decide how the work and the fee are
split. You can expect real diversity within the group and this should make for creativity. This
area of crowd- sourcing would be ideal for developing a brand strategy, a product or building
an app.
Quality concerns
One of the biggest concerns for most companies before using the crowd to complete tasks
is quality control. Like any workforce, the crowd needs managing and your approach to the
project has a signifcant impact on the quality of the task. A well-structured brief and supporting
documentation always helps. At GamCrowd, we often attach our detailed (crowd sourced)
brand guidelines document to our design briefs to avoid confusion. Regular communication and
breaking the task into small components also help. However, you also need the help of your
crowd sourcing platform and ultimately a good crowd to ensure high quality.
Here are some of the ways quality is maintained in the crowd
You only pay if you are happy: There are a few exceptions to this rule but competitions, micro
tasks and per task work are all paid for once the buyer has confrmed they are happy. Even on
a micro-tasking site, where the task might be to complete an online form with 5 felds, you can
reject any entry that isn't correct. On a per task or competition crowd source the platform holds
the fee in escrow until the buyer confrms they are happy.
Dispute resolution: A buyer should always read the dispute resolution policies and procedures
on a crowdsourcing platform. The platform operator will adjudicate in any dispute. lt always
helps to do all the communications on the platform as it makes solving disputes easier.
Rating system: All good crowdsourcing platforms have a review system, often for buyers and
sellers. It works for eBay and it works for crowdsourcing. Many platforms allow you to access
the Linkedln Profle of sellers as well as their portfolio of work and credentials. The rating is the
most important thing for a crowd worker who will normally work extra hard and rework a task to
avoid a bad rating, and you normally just have to explain what you are unhappy about. lf your
brief was good you should not have any problems.
GamCrowd White Paper 2014
7
Crowd review: lf the job is cheap enough get it reviewed by the crowd or get it done twice.
Two reviews or even three of the same website will increase the chances of a good outcome no
end.
Lower risk: The lower cost reduces the risk of failure. if you put enough jobs through a
platform, the odd job which is only just acceptable and may need redoing later is small in
comparison to the benefts of crowdsourcing.
Potential uses of crowdsourcing for the Gambling Industry
Area Examples Complexity
Afflate monitoring Imagine you want to check the position of your banner on all of your German
language affliates. You can create an online form quickly using a tool like
Smartsheets.com and offer a web based entry form for the crowd to fll out.
You link the form to a micro-tasking site and then offer to pay the crowd a few
cents per entry. The crowd get to work checking the sites and answering your
questions. Within a few days the task will be completed.
1
Affliate policing Some affliates are using the crowd to trigger CPA payments. The best place
to police this is in the crowd
1
Affliate prospecting Use microtasking to build a list of all of the sports sites in a certain language
and a contact e mail address as a way of building your affliate network
1
B2B prospect listing Use microtasking to generate contact details for all your target companies 1
Content and sentiment
monitoring
The crowd is a great way to monitor forums and social media sentiment in
multiple languages and countries.
1
Social media building Micro tasks where contributors are paid a few cents per task can be used
to get customers to build lists of twitter users, you could build lists of poker
players by country or sports fans by language - very quickly using micro
tasks.
1
Competitive analysis Let expert gamblers and industry professionals review your site against your
key competitors in each market, provide a standard review sheet and a fxed
price per review and quickly build a database of valuable insights which will
help your product road map
2
Content generation A Korean betting blog will probably want to focus on the local interest of the
Korean based players in the English Premier league where as a Spanish site
will want to hear about La Liga frst, both will be in different languages. This
content can easily be broken down into small tasks and offered to the crowd
for expert production from a local who understand both SEO and betting on
soccer.
2
Content monitoring Reward users or the crowd for monitoring competitor bonus and offer
strategy and have users and the crowd rate the offers. Find out what people
really think about the money back if Wayne Rooney scores a hatrick offer
Measure by country and by language.
2
Copywriting This white paper was drafted by us at GamCrowd, a copy writer ran an edit
and then we had someone create the look and feel using our crowdsourced
brand guidelines. Most of our online copy goes through a copy writer or an
editor.
2
Video monitoring Have data created from video clips of horse races or sports events, ideal for
professional traders or data feed suppliers. Use multiple sources to double
check the accuracy by exception monitoring
2
GamCrowd White Paper 2014
8
Video production GamCrowd had all of its videos done via crowdsourcing. We got the crowd to
write the scripts, then we used our crowd developed brand guidelines and a
brief to produce two original videos. We A&B tested them using a survey tool
and then chose the best one as the basis for the rest of our video production.
We still havent spent over 1,000 on video production.
2
Content creation Use an online form tool to collect a few sentances per photo on a set
of photos - they could be sports photos, promotional events or a poker
tournament. Give the crowd a list of key words you are targetting and let
the crowd create lots of unique content quickly and cheaply. Its an SEO
goldmine.
3
Creative design The GamCrowd logo was chosen using a crowd contest and then we has
the brand guidelines created along with templates for business cards,
presentations, letter heads etc. The total costs was under 750 and it was
quick too. We had over 100 designs to chose from for our logo.
3
FAQ generation Let the crowd loose on your site and supply both questions and answers,
multi language explanations of how your site operates. Many non gambling
sites use the crowd for customer services, allowing dedicated fans to
answer the questions of new comers. We are not sure this would work in
the gambling industry because negative emotion following a bad beat or a
loosing run could affect the answer given.
3
In country testing Testing locally throws up a different perspective, local bandwidth, hardware
and operating system choices and local tastes all differ. Regulatory
requirements, currency and payment processing requirements all differ and
the quickest way to optimise a product is to test it locally by locals who
understand gambling. The launch of online casinos in New Jersey generated
complaints that the sites were too European orientated one 0 or 00 on
your roulette wheel anyone? Local testing would have alleviated a lot of these
issues. If the Europeans didnt get New Jersey what chance do you have in
India or South East Asia?
3
Product optimisation The access to a global workforce of gambling experts allows you get diverse
opinions quickly and effciently. You can have the mock ups of your proposed
registration process or your new bet type optimised by experts before you go
into build.
3
Research and
development
The crowd is ideal for fnding out information, they will look in places you
havent even considered. Whether it is data for a business plan or for an SEO
strategy there are plenty of ways to get the crowd doing your research.
3
Software testing Have your software tested by developers with an understanding of the
gambling sector you are in. They exist and are out there allowing you to scale
your testing team rapidly. Finding testers with betting or gaming expertise
is always a challenge - we are getting new registrants every day with these
skills.
3
Translation The gambling industry is global and operates multi language and multi
currency, there is no reason why every CRM e mail, FAQ, offer letter cannot
be translated quickly and effciently into every language you support by a
native speaker who is also a gambling expert or customer
3
Crowdsourcing If you new to crowdsourcing what better way to learn than put up a task for
someone in the crowd to manage a crowd based task. If they are working in
the crowd they will know their way around and would happily bid to manage
a large micro tasking project, how about getting someone to build you several
lists per country of Twitter followers
4
Idea generation A crowd contest to fnd the best new app may yield a winner in the
competitive mobile space.
4
GamCrowd White Paper 2014
9
Problem solving You have a big problem, why not offer a big prize and allow the crowd to
suggest ideas. You can also look at self organised crowdsourcing where the
crowd organises itself into a team and decides how to solve the problem and
how to divide the compensation. You only pay if the problem is solved. Netfix
offered $1m for a new customer algorithm that was only awarded if it was
10% better than the old one.
4
Regulatory monitoring You probably monitor the key markets but could you use the crowd to warn
you of changes in regulation in far fung places.
4
Use case generation Have the crowd generate and edit the use cases for your software
development project allowing the crowd to infuence how new features work.
4
Business plan reviews If you are about to launch a new venture, crowdsourcing will enable you to
get your business model reviewed independently by someone with expertise
in the sector of the industry and the market that you are targeting. Because
you will only be paying per task you could get two or three reviews and look
for a consensus.
5
Crowdfunding Crowdfunding is a form of crowdsourcing. Gambling operators should be
using it to support and invest in innvoative start ups, hopefully you will buy a
stake in the next Betfair or DoubleDown
5
Due diligence Looking to acquire a company or enter a JV in a country that you dont have a
presence in? Why not recruit local experts to mystery shop their venues and
recruit the crowd to carry out a full sentiment and competitive analysis.
5
Idea evaluation You have an idea a beta test and a target market. Why not expose the idea to
the crowd in that market and get their feedback, either by asking managers
who are working in those markets or by running some crowd based surveys.
The ability to access people with country and product specifc knowledge
is important as is the need to speak to customers who gamble or use the
product.
5
Product development If you have a market area that you wish to target why not post the problem
on a crowdsourcing site and have some people that know about the specifc
market pitch to provide some ideas. It could be by country or by sector,
so you could ask someone for a sports betting product you want to offer
globally to fll a gap in your range or a country specifc gambling product such
as a slot machine idea that is topical in Germany. You can pay for several
completed reports and compare the ideas of people that are close to these
markets or you can run a competition and only pay for the best idea.
5
GamCrowd White Paper 2014
10
SEO The opportunities in SEO are endless. If you are a multi language sports
betting site you can run huge chunks of your SEO tasks in the crowd. Using a
combination of per task experts and micro tasks they act as a force multiplier
for your team. Say you're entering a new country with your sports-book
and want to get to know the major players, the Hollywood keywords, the
most proftable middle phrases and where the links are fowing from. lf you
publish a well written brief, you can use it to get every competitor and affliate
site reviewed in a matter of days. Use the crowd to extract meta data and
title tags, and use tools to help understand the strongest link sources. You
can even have your contractors use resources like Google Insights to get
search volume and trend data. Post a list of all your new keywords and your
competitors on a micro-tasking site and let the crowd tell you where they rank
and who is advertising against them, run the tasks at different times of the
day and fnd out who stops bidding after 5.30 UK time. Use sports fans who
speak the language and you can launch with an SEO strategy which benefts
from a quantum leap in resource for less than your normal budget. Match it
up to a crowd sourced affliate and social media strategy and a small team
can quickly expand into a new country.
5
Software development This is a complex area and a betting or online casino site is not normally
where you expect fnd open source developers, but a paid distributed base
of coders could improve your speed to market and platform fexibility. lt could
also lead to a reduced reliance on 3rd party platform providers.
5
Making the most of crowdsourcing as a business
We believe that most companies in our industry will have a head of crowdsourcing and most
departments will be using crowdsourcing to reduce their costs and increase their scale of
operations within a few years.
However, before companies can start making that sort of investment we would expect them to
start small and learn just how powerful crowdsourcing can be.
GamCrowd as a sector specifc platform is a good place to start and can support a large
per centage of the industrys needs. However there will still be tasks that are better suited to
other platforms that have recruited different crowds and that operate using different selection
mechanics.
lf you want to get started why not post a simple crowdsourcing job on GamCrowd's market
place and ask someone to run a simple microtasking project for you. lf they need experts from
the gambling industry they will probably build a team within GamCrowd, if they need large
numbers of unskilled people they will use other platforms. Risk a few hundred pounds and see
if you get value; it is a quick way to dip your toe in the water for the same cost as a seminar or a
training course.
Good luck. We hope you discover the power of crowdsourcing soon.
GamCrowd Limited is an Appointed Representative of Resolution Compliance Limited, which is authorised and
regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FRN 574048). GamCrowd is a registered trademark of GamCrowd
Limited. All rights reserved. GamCrowd's registered offce is Palladium House, 1-4 Argyll St, London W1F 7LD
The Financial Conduct Authority does not regulate crowdsourcing activities