Julia Panina, EvenBet: “We want to share our expertise in the form of an ebook”

Julia Panina tells Focus Gaming News about how EvenBet is providing operators with insights into online poker.

Exclusive interview.- Online poker can be a difficult vertical to crack for igaming operators, requiring a team with specific additional knowledge and skills. EvenBet has helped enough companies get it right, that it’s well-placed to provide advice in the area, and it’s now pouring that into a new ebook. Julia Panina, head of demand generation, caught up with Focus Gaming News to tell us all about it.

EventBet’s new e-book on online poker was created for start-ups and operators who have little or no experience in the vertical. As Panina points out, poker, as a game of skill, presents very different challenges to other online gambling verticals. Expertise comes with experience, and experience takes time

EvenBet has been in the business for 18 years, enough time to witness a fair few immature launches that brought operators problems that could have been avoided.

“It’s very important to understand that poker games are completely different from other online casino games,” Panina says. “Poker requires certain skills of the player, and the same can be said of the operator. Managing an online poker room requires unique skills since poker is a social game, and an operator has to build a safe ecosystem to provide certain conditions.

“This includes separating the sharks from the newbies and allowing newcomers to learn about the game. She believes that not all operators understand the settings this requires in the back office. Operators have to build a safe ecosystem.”

Operators’ mistakes in online poker

EvenBet’s e-book aims to help operators avoid some of the mistakes that can be made when expanding into online poker. The first mistake that Panina says operators sometimes make is the lack of training sessions. Secondly, some operators don’t understand the business solutions available, and this often results in operators wanting to build their standalone poker room rather than join an existing network.

“Sometimes creating a standalone poker room is not the best decision.”

Julia Panina, head of demand generation at EvenBet.

“There’s not enough understanding of what personnel have to be hired,” Panina says, noting that the most difficult person to hire is the professional poker room manager, who will know the mechanics of the room and can set it up from the start.

Other mistakes are starting with an unclear vision of customisation and design at the beginning of the process and issues with payment systems and compliance. EvenBet offers operators a solution to these problems thanks to its powerful back office and structured training sessions for operators. 

“We teach operators how to set up promos, campaigns, tournaments, how to make general settings for cash tables, how to manage player accounts, how to control anti-fraud activity, how to make custom analytics reports and how to control the whole management toolkit in general.”

“I hope our new ebook will clarify many questions about poker in the Latin American market.”

Julia Panina, head of demand generation at EvenBet.

Panina notes that EvenBet has particularly seen a lack of knowledge about online poker in emerging markets like Latin America. “Many igaming vertical representatives mention that if a company goes to Latin American markets, it needs to educate local companies and affiliates. The same is true about poker,” she says. EvenBet’s new ebook aims to do some of that work.

View the full interview with Julia Panina on the Focus Gaming News YouTube channel. Don’t forget to subscribe!