Chances are you’ve already got a subscription to Netflix – the incredibly popular online video streaming platform which provides users with hundreds, if not thousands of movies and TV shows available for legal streaming. Alongside great classics such as “Breaking Bad”, the program also offers numerous original series that aren’t available anywhere else, such as “Orange is the New Black” and “Daredevil”, and it’s slated to release several original movies in 2016. It’s a very cool service that anyone without a subscription should seriously consider. But I’m not trying to turn this into a Netflix ad. The reason why I’m bringing it up at all is because only a few weeks ago Netflix went global and became available around the world. While up until 2016 the service was only available in some markets, such as the US, Canada and UK, since January 2016 the company is officially operating in almost 200 markets. With some exceptions (such as China, which Netflix promised to rectify as soon as possible), the whole world can now enjoy their service.
So that got me thinking. What would a global online casino look like?
Now, that’s obviously just a pipe dream. Online casino isn’t legal globally, and even if it was, it’d be impractical to just have one global brand, not when individual online casinos could be specialized with their selections of games and the bonuses they offer in order to suit the individual country. We’re talking about a purely hypothetical scenario – let’s say I was hired to come up with a concept for globalization by one of the big brands. What would I do? Well, first of all, it’s important to note that while to an outsider brands like Netflix or even McDonalds may seem global, they’re really not – it’s really just the branding and basic structure that’s shared. Each McDonald’s restaurant is owned by a different subsidiary which more often than not has little to do with the main McDonald’s company, which mostly profits on licensing. Similarly, Netflix is just a collection of smaller services banded together under the same name – that’s why certain movies you can watch in, say, Bulgaria, are not available in the US.
So a global online casino would need to be just a collection of smaller casinos branded under the same name… But the average consumer doesn’t need to know that. Special measures could be taken to unite the site a lot more than possible. To solve the currency problem, users could be required to buy chips instead of bet with money (with different prices for chips depending on the economy), and furthermore all progressive slots accumulate chips based on all players’ contributions from around the world. In addition, all games that are available in one region (say, slots by American developers) should be available to everyone worldwide. I could go on and on, but overall, the message is simple – if a global casino was to be created, it would have to take full advantage of said globality and provide everyone everywhere with a full, complete and truly global casino experience.