He starts by diving into the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the gaming industry and how it has steered 888 Casino towards a cashless policy.
“As everything continues to go paperless and cashless, casinos are one of the last frontiers that take mostly cash payments. The land-based gambling industry will need to align itself with that trend. From my perspective, this is another symptom for the digitization of gaming. It would be another milestone to gain the ability to work in an Omni channel approach. 888 has a big e-payment practice that consists of dozens of people who are solely focused on the enhancement of the e-payments suite both locally and globally. This puts us in a great position to capitalize on this trend, not just from a payment perspective but from an overall digital platform aspect”. He said.
As to the issue of the pandemic accelerating technological innovation in the industry, he had a lot to say.
With the pandemic in full force, land-based casinos had to shut their doors and the online gaming industry saw a surge in membership unlike ever before. Sherman agrees to this and confirms the importance of technological innovation towards remaining relevant in the industry.
Moving on to poker, there is the question if the COVID 19 restrictions have affected the online poker industry? Also, with capacity limits and restrictions being lifted, would it be possible for land-based poker to grow and return to its former glory, or will the focus be more on online poker?
To these questions, he had this to say.
“The two feed off each other. The value in the end is with online poker. We have seen a renaissance of poker and our biggest value proposition is to connect states to a shared network. 888 is the only platform that operates across state lines and we want to create better ways all the time to play online poker. We have ways for people to pay in-person for tournament tickets, but we also ran online tournaments that had great success. We are looking forward to continuing this symbiotic relationship where land based feeds online operations. The demand has not yet subsided which shows us there is great demand for online poker”.
It is no news that 888 has been improving its game catalog and offerings to gain the trust of more players. This was all possible thanks to its partnership with several software providers with one of the most notable additions being the partnership with Playtech in February. This was done to add a range of Live Casino and random number generator (RNG) games to its platform from the developer.
According to Sherman, this is not a new direction as the company is one of the pioneers for Live Casino. In his words;
“888 is one of the pioneers for Live Casino since 2009 and we have recognized the potential of this success. We see it as an integral part of our growth story. We will continue to develop this proposition moving forward and I think there is much of this that can be done in the U.S. market.”
