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A daily podcast delving into the biggest stories of the day throughout the sports betting and igaming sector.
Andrea McGeachin (00:01.358)
Hi, everyone. Welcome to another part of a near -surf takeover week, which we're all very excited about. I'm really excited about today that I've got an amazing person to talk to, which I'll introduce in a second after we talk about our sponsor, which is OptiMove, which is the number one CRM marketing solution for the gaming market. Fifty -six percent of the EGR Power 50 personalize their player experiences with this OptiMove. And as a special offer,
OptiMove are offering the new clients a free first month when they buy OptiMove. For more information and claim that free month, go to optimove .com and forward slash SPC. But there will be links left in this podcast episode description later on as well. So Kaz, known to me as Kaz as we've met, but your full name is Kazra Gharian. Look at that right. And I'm talking to you today in the UK because I find it...
amazing when we first met that you were born and bred just up the road where I was meeting you in Toronto and you're actually based in Nevada. A very exciting journey to where you are at the moment. So I wondered for those who don't know, and if you've not seen CUSP speak and you're at any location and any show, I tell you go and listen because you can't argue with data. You can't argue with research on data that's been given.
And Kaz, you do present it in a brilliant way. You don't lose us on the journey, which I love. I'd set you up on a pedestal, hasn't it? But could you just give us an insight of the Institute and how you got into this area of gaming research? Because it is fascinating.
Kasra (01:32.174)
It's very tight.
Kasra (01:44.782)
Yeah, would love to. So yeah, as you mentioned, based in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, currently Director of Research for the International Gaming Institute. And the International Gaming Institute pretty much is studying everything and anything to do with gambling. So whether that be responsible gambling, policy,
operations, whatever it is, we're pretty interested in studying it. We've got, you know, a lot of curious minds on hand over there. But the Institute basically has three main pillars we like to describe. So one is research, which is what I lead up. And then we also have two other pillars, which are knowledge and education and also innovation. So we have our International Centre for Gaming Regulation that is a
the world leader in providing regulatory knowledge and education programs. And then our Center for Innovation headed up by my colleague Dan Sol is probably the coolest program we have. I'll describe it like this. He has like this course where any student has a idea for a new game, whether that's a slot machine game or a...
side bet on a table game or something, they can come to his class and take that idea from just an idea into like a fully fledged prototype and then actually companies come in and bid for the best games and students lead the class with millions of dollars in licensing fees and stuff.
But yeah, that's our International Gaming Institute. I did my PhD at UNLV. I started there in 2019 for my PhD before that worked in industry for a while on the Las Vegas Strip. And how did I get to Las Vegas? It was actually got super into online poker at uni in England and went over to Vegas on a few trips. Really liked it, decided.
Kasra (03:46.286)
you know, being a poker professional was maybe not the best move for me. So I wanted to still be in gambling. So that's why I chose to study gambling.
Andrea McGeachin (03:55.854)
I love that journey story because it's real. It's not just, I decided to do it and didn't know anything about it in the beginning, that that journey in is a really smart piece. So if we talk about your research, and I've been party to listen to some of that, especially on the gambling and payments in Toronto. It's not just about payments at the moment, it's talking about where do you get your data from? Who's willingly giving you data to buy?
handle and use.
Kasra (04:27.886)
Yeah, willingly would be a strong word. I think a lot of the conversations I have with my peers, especially as a student, is the challenges in finding good data. I've benefited, even when I did my master's degree back in 2009, 2010, I benefited from having actual real world data, which is really meaningful for me. I particularly think you can learn a lot about actual...
Andrea McGeachin (04:31.598)
Ha ha.
Kasra (04:56.238)
behaviour, human behaviour from that tracking data is much better than like, you know, administering a survey and getting maybe a few hundred people self -report on their behaviours and their attitudes. I feel that there's rich insight you can get from actual data. So yeah, I mean, going back to my graduate programme actually at UNLV, I just so happened to live in this apartment building.
bumped into this guy in the elevator. I looked at his name tag, it said like VP of Marketing on his name tag. So I was like, you know what, I'll just strike up a conversation in this elevator, see if he has some data I could use. Next week, went over to the casino to meet with him. And yeah, before you know it, he was giving me access to all of his slot machine floor data. So that was like my first kind of foray into using actual data for research. And then more recently with my PhD,
a few individuals at the institute set up this payments research collaborative, which was sponsored by Global Payments and Sightline. And they kindly donated some research funding, Sightline donated some data. So that's the study, that's the data I worked with for my PhD research. And then more recently, you know, we've had started a collaboration with Axis .ai who are a slot machine cloud management platform. And
Also, I've been doing some work with the Department of Trust in the UK who have started to supply us with some open banking data, which is very exciting.
Andrea McGeachin (06:28.302)
Okay, so it would be true to say that you would welcome anybody's data if they could see what the kind of results would come out. It's a bit of an advertisement. If you've got data, share it.
Kasra (06:37.134)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll caveat that with the ideal approach would be data plus funding because you know, we're always looking for as a as a research industry, you know, we were really aggressive and competitive in terms of trying to apply for research grants, sponsored research projects from industry and stuff like that. And you know, we do need to pay our staff is just just me at the moment. So I'd love to have, you know, a couple of researchers.
Andrea McGeachin (06:47.406)
Ha ha!
Kasra (07:06.254)
on my team that would be awesome and the only way I can do that is if we get funding as well.
Andrea McGeachin (07:11.502)
So I'm familiar with some of the payment stuff that you've done from witnessing a being up on a panel with you, just the two of us, which was really fun day. And I know that when you went through that, you took us through a logical route and obviously we don't have time for the whole piece because the logical route allows us, the listener, to grasp what you're about to tell us in time in a nice sequence. But I wonder if you could just give me an understanding or...
give our listeners an understanding of the stuff that I was either confirming or a couple of challenges, but that would be down to did you have enough data on this area. On the payment side, because you brought out a few key things that people kind of thought were true, but you were confirming stuff. If you've got some insights you can share with us today.
Kasra (08:01.998)
Yeah, you know, I think I'll begin by, you know, I've done quite a bit of digging into the literature on how behavioral tracking data is being used. Now, what I mean by behavioral tracking data is pretty much any kind of human or let's say gambling behavior that is tracked via digital methods. I came up with that.
definition just now, hopefully it's pretty good. So yeah. Yeah. So I'd say that's kind of my definition for behavioral tracking data. And at least from the research side of things, and I'd say to some extent, the industry kind of things in terms of the RegTech side, the focus has been on what I'd call gambling behaviors, like bet level information that maybe online operators collect, which could be.
Andrea McGeachin (08:31.758)
It's clear to me. And I'm quite low with the scale of things to understand that. So.
Kasra (08:58.606)
the amount bet which games they play. They might also have some information about deposits and things like that because obviously people are depositing funds to the site to then gamble. What we've seen, at least, you know, I'd say this was true two years ago, it's obviously a fast -paced moving industry, but at least two years ago the large focus was on these gambling behaviors and we maybe saw less of a focus on the other sources of data that could perhaps be used for...
Responsible gambling or safer gambling, whatever you might like to call it. And if we look, I think there is rich data that could be made and maybe in the future there could be a more holistic system that kind of draws from all of these different data sources. For example, even when someone isn't a gambler, there's publicly available data on those people through like census data and things like that.
when they express an interest in gambling, maybe affiliate providers and other marketers have a clickstream data or advertising performance on those users. And then obviously once a user signs up, there's KYC companies, geolocation companies, collecting all different types of data about the customer. Once the customer then engages with the platform, they're using RG tools, they're depositing, they're using different payment methods, et cetera.
So once that engagement happens, that's when we're really getting quite a lot of information. And there's quite a lot of players, right? There's obviously the online operators, then there's like third party analytics providers, there's the payment service providers, and then there's even the banks who are seeing deposits and withdrawals on a constant basis, not only on one operator website or land -based casino, but across all of those operators the user might be playing on.
Andrea McGeachin (10:42.702)
Yeah, I mean, that's quite passionate to my end is that kind of conversations I have that how many people in the Western world or should we just call it the Western world or the developed world, whichever route is appropriate to call it is, yeah, cash is dead. Cash is not dead. I don't do very much cash. I went up first, walked into the American market between two and 5%. So does it? Yeah, okay.
You sure? Yeah. Okay. Let's go and have a look at some of the information that we've got. And we worked out that actually in some places it's about 8%, but in other places it's 22 or 36 % depending where you are originally. And what those customers were doing to actually enter the gambling market. So I'm actually adding to your point is that there's multiple sources of data that could actually give some answers that may be.
myself as a payments provider or an operator, we only have our bits. And actually getting to understand that behaviour across is really, really important. We try it, we share data with our operators. We call it the KYC handshake, but that's where it started life of understanding each other's KYC to be appropriate. But it comes into data sharing as well. And it's important because...
It's like in the UK, there's an affordability thing that there's things that we could give to an operator. I strongly want payments companies to embrace that. But are you coming across, are people, I might use the word willingly before, is it, if people are listening to you and go, listen, I want to take part in that, or is it still a real struggle to get operators to support and payments companies to support?
Kasra (12:31.022)
Yeah, I think I don't want to come off the wrong way here, but definitely. I mean, I think, I think, you know, you're seeing, you're seeing movements in places like the UK because the regulator is making steps to do something about it. And then obviously operators need to follow through because they want to be part of the regulated market. So a lot of the time this stuff does happen due to regulation, but I'm, you know, I, I,
Andrea McGeachin (12:36.59)
Hmm.
Andrea McGeachin (12:52.718)
Mm -hmm.
Kasra (13:00.686)
there are definitely jurisdictions and places and companies in the world that are going above and beyond what they're obliged to do. So I definitely want to make that clear. But yeah, other than that as well, I think this isn't easy. Like we can talk about like, you know, the ideal solution, yeah, bring in all these different data sources together. And practically speaking, this is very challenging and it requires a lot of resources. And...
Andrea McGeachin (13:11.886)
It's cool. That is cool.
Kasra (13:27.342)
you know, something like responsible gambling isn't a profit driver for a lot of these companies. You know, they have to balance responsible gambling with, or safer gambling with, you know, their profit driven objectives. And yeah, I think we can speak about, you know, sustainability, sustainable business practice, that kind of thing. I think that's a very important conversation. Yeah.
Andrea McGeachin (13:34.606)
Well, yeah.
Andrea McGeachin (13:49.038)
Yeah, it does help sustain profitability, that's for sure. Not lose it and have dramatic changes, but I do get your point.
Kasra (13:55.694)
visual.
Kasra (14:00.462)
Yeah, I guess in a business environment with like stakeholder pressures and stuff, it's sometimes maybe I don't work in a corporate environment, but I can only hypothesize in terms of the challenges that might be involved.
Andrea McGeachin (14:12.686)
Yeah, no, I mean, I work with in America a number of operators and the passion to do responsible gaming is such high positioning. But it's in the same sense, it's about not it's not just the operators data. It's the payments companies data. It's other bits and pieces of data that can be used. And if you're in the industry, come together and be together. And I do stand on a pedestal about it and I go on about it.
But when you were talking through the payments information that you had when we were in Toronto, there were some insights that you brought together that talked about just highlights of some behaviours that people were, they weren't shocked, but they were going, wow. So that's probably from your data that you used from Sightline, right?
Kasra (15:05.998)
Yeah, what we did with the sightline data was very exploratory because researchers at least had never had access to that kind of data to infer things about at -risk gamblers or markers of harm, if you want to call it that. So we took a very exploratory approach, quantitative or exploratory, where we were
trying to identify certain groups of people based on certain behaviors. And we looked at the literature in terms of the gambling behaviors, going back to those gambling behaviors, right? There were things like how often people bet, how much they bet, what's the volatility of their betting?
So we translated those gambling behaviors into payment behaviors, which wasn't all that complicated. Instead of frequency of betting, it was frequency of paying. Instead of volatility of betting, it was volatility of depositing, whatever it might be. We did some others as well, though, that might not be specific to gambling, like was the transaction declined? Why was it declined? Did they withdraw funds at a certain level?
So there were certain payment -specific ones we looked at as well. And yeah, what we found were like about 12 % of the population we looked at at least exhibited atypical behaviors from the rest of the population. I think there was one cluster defined as a very kind of high deposit frequency cluster, but they withdrew a very small amount of money. There was another cluster that...
had a very high volatility in the amount they deposited. And then the other cluster was characterized actually by a large volume of deposits and withdrawals while they deposited a huge amount of money, which might be an indicator of harm, if you want to call it that. But at the same time, they withdrew almost 70 % of the amount they deposited. So they're actually quite winning quite a lot of money, perhaps, and withdrawing that back onto their card.
Kasra (17:05.902)
So yeah, so you can definitely glean some interesting stuff from this data.
Andrea McGeachin (17:11.278)
I remember when I first joined this industry, I was at UCASH and being going to a bingo service provider, online bingo in the UK and walking in and showing my age notes back in 2007. But even in 2007, there was a whole host of people sat at long desks, completing, filling checks and stamping. And I remember saying, why is that? That's like going back into the industrial revolution period. What's going on?
And it was the profile of a UK bingo player that they might put £20 in, win £50, I want that £50 back. I might put another £20 in straight away, but it's the behaviour piece of what I want from that piece. And I remember seeing things like that in the profile and that could go into, well, where does that come into responsible gaming, say for playing and behaviour for, is that the way to market, et cetera. And that whole business from, as a payment person,
of the money coming out and what people do with it once they get it is an interesting game because 40 to 75 % of what I get in a payout into my wallet goes straight back into the industry. But not necessarily to the operator that gave it them in the first place. Primarily the operator that gave it them, but not necessarily that. So these are the kind of things that this is why I, as I say, we only have a short space of time that your...
Kasra (18:20.878)
Mm.
Kasra (18:25.998)
Yeah.
Andrea McGeachin (18:38.574)
information is starting to feed and I do think it's the early days but it's got so much so much to be done I think Kaz because
I'm sort of talking on your behalf here, but I'm actually talking on the industry behalf, if I may, even though I'm a tiny part of the whole ecosystem, is that the more we can get information together, the better we can be from a regulator point of view, from a growth point of view, sustainability point of view, a market, areas that have, some have quite severe measures put on the gambling and others a bit freer.
But the more we can get together, the better. And when you've got an independent institution like yours trying to help with that, I really think it's important. So I'm going to reiterate to anybody who's listening here. If you're at an event or follow CAS on LinkedIn, go listen, understand it, and let's try and be supportive. I know you and I have already got conversations about what we want to be able to push forward because I've, cash is not dead and it's not a dirty subject. It can be traced.
Kasra (19:48.462)
Yeah, definitely. Thanks for that sales pitch by the way. It means I don't have to talk about myself, which I don't like being British obviously.
Andrea McGeachin (19:48.878)
So I will excuse me. Go on. Sales pitch. Yeah, the sales pitch.
Andrea McGeachin (19:58.882)
I think it's a passion. It's a passion that I believe that everybody that's part of this ecosystem and so much is thrown at the operators, but we service providers also have to be part of it. And that's why this Takeover Week is all about responsible gaming and the ecosystem and the larger group of people, which is why I wanted to bring your chat into it.
Kasra (20:24.91)
Yeah, yeah, it's awesome that like the payment side at least I've definitely started to see obviously yourselves at Neosurf and others starting to show real interest in this area. I think it's really important to kind of be the spearheads in this.
Andrea McGeachin (20:39.822)
We could have patted each other on the back, that'll do. But I do, my closing piece, you just had a small insight into somebody that I met, watched the data and was really could see the future in it and fascinated. And I love the way you present it as well. So if you're at an event and you see this guy's name, go and listen, take the time out to go to that session. I want to thank you. I thank you for not just coming to this, but thank you for your passion and clarity, because it's really cool.
Kasra (21:08.078)
Bye.
Andrea McGeachin (21:08.878)
And I really appreciate you coming to this Takeover Week. It's been really cool. Thank you.
Kasra (21:12.782)
No, thank you for inviting me. This might be my first podcast actually, so thanks very much. No, appreciate it. Yeah, if anyone wants to contact me, I'd be happy to provide email address, LinkedIn, what have you, but yeah, very open to connecting with anyone. So thanks very much. Appreciate it.
Andrea McGeachin (21:17.294)
Is it? It's cool.
Andrea McGeachin (21:33.038)
Thanks, Cass.