FanDuel Casino Push Expands With Branded Live Dealer Studios

18 Jul 2022

FanDuel Casino Push Expands With Branded Live Dealer Studios

Gambling News

The FanDuel Casino live dealer studio first welcomes players with its ambiance.

Soft, blue lighting reminds online gamblers that they’re entering the brand’s space. Framed images of NBA and NFL players in action are outnumbered by FanDuel logos affixed to walls and nine dealer tables. Blue boundary lines mark the flooring that resembles a basketball court.

Standing just outside of the Pennsylvania studio with a Bonus.com reporter, FanDuel Publicity Director Kevin Hennessy tells her that the online gambling operator is launching its first branded studios so it can provide customers with a consistent brand experience. FanDuel Sportsbook players need to recognize this space when they come to play online casino games with live dealers, he says.

Hennessy explains to Bonus.com during the tour:

It’s a brand that they trust with their money.

The launch of this branded live dealer studio and one in Michigan emphasize the significant push the brand is making into growing FanDuel Casino.

FanDuel announced the Michigan and Pennsylvania branded live dealer studio launches today.

Just on Thursday, FanDuel hired a fellow New York company to create a marketing campaign later this year. Mischief @ No Fixed Address is expected to create an edgy, disruptive FanDuel Casino ad campaign that will defy “category conventions,” says Daniele Phillips, VP of casino brand strategy at FanDuel Group.

Specifically, that campaign is expected to highlight FanDuel Casino’s strengths in roulette, blackjack, slots, and live tables. It will reach FanDuel Casino audiences in Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia.

Hennessy tells Bonus.com:

Live dealer is an important part of building out our FanDuel Casino.

If sheer numbers illustrate Hennessy’s point, the Philadelphia studio underlines that commitment. FanDuel Casino had nine branded live dealer tables, while Boston-based DraftKings was in the No. 2 slot with seven. BetMGM, BetRivers, PointsBet, and Unibet round out the other online gambling operators with branded live dealer studios.

Part of the reason FanDuel Casino is getting special attention is that 50% of its players are women.

Hennessy says FanDuel wants to increase that audience diversity.

In fact in Pennsylvania, FanDuel Casino’s most popular game “almost flipped” from blackjack to slots because of women, he says.

Across the four states where FanDuel Casino takes bets, the app offers “hundreds of slots and table games that you might find on a casino gaming floor, including blackjack, roulette, and popular slots like 88 Fortunes and Wheel of Fortune.”

Meanwhile, the online gambling operator with the No. 1 US online sportsbook market share has an audience that skews male, Hennessy says.

That was before adding in branded live dealer tables.

For Pennsylvania’s FanDuel Casino bettors, the branded studio contains:

seven tables that are dedicated to blackjack
one table that features infinite blackjack
a final table that houses roulette

Branded studio visitors can also move on to general audience games, says Jacob Claesson. He’s head of North American operations for Evolution. That Malta-based vendor is the primary US supplier of live dealer services.

Overall, blackjack is the most popular live dealer game, he says, walking past several in the Philadelphia facility.

Conversely, Claesson tells Bonus.com that croupiers deal poker at one or two tables per state.

As Claesson, Hennessy, and the Bonus.com reporter enter the Lightning Roulette room, a live dealer energetically punches a button to create the next set of “lucky numbers.”

Standing between a roulette wheel and a dynamic screen backdrop bearing the resulting numerals, she reads off the numbers as “lightning” flashes down the room’s columns.

Evolution summarizes the game mechanics as so:

In Lightning Roulette, players can bet on the full range of Roulette bets just as they would in our standard European Live Roulette.

However, they also get additional chances to win through randomly generated Lucky Numbers and Lucky Payouts

Claesson explained that while most online casino players visiting the live dealer products opt for standard blackjack and periodically try roulette, Evolution wants to have a variety of games that interest gamblers.

After all, Evolution has “over 50,000 hands dealt per day,” he says. At this Pennsylvania facility that’s “one of the larger US studios,” 500 employees staff the 24-hour operation, he says.

They can’t all be working on the same game.

Hence, Evolution offers this non-branded Lightning Roulette game that welcomes players from all operators.

Evolution also offers popular games in unbranded forms, which is the way all live dealer offerings start out in each state.

Evolution’s studios reside in Connecticut, Michigan, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania’s legal casino market. Evolution serves West Virginia gamblers via a Pennsylvania live stream, he says.

The big three gambling states house branded live dealer studios.

At those facilities, croupiers move up to the branded studios after proving their mettle on the unbranded ones.

However, the more complicated games, like Lightning Roulette, require skilled dealers, Claesson says. They add their own style to their player interactions as they grow more confident.

As the trio exit the room, the dealer calls out to the players that the roulette wheel shows a zero:

Houston, we hit a doughnut.

FanDuel Casino gamblers play live dealer games at night and on weekends, Hennessy says. He adds that sportsbook users bet in the same timeframe.

So it makes sense that FanDuel Casino saw increased traffic during the Super Bowl, Hennessy says.

Because the live dealer experience includes everything from low-stakes play to VIP, those cross-over casino players learn the game at their pace.

Hennessy says:

Basically, they get a really great casino experience.

A lot of FanDuel Casino live dealer players even take the game on the road – to visit retail casinos. The online experience gives them the confidence, the table etiquette, and the knowledge base to play at a physical table, Hennessy says.

So some of those bettors may even venture into a retail FanDuel Sportsbook soon. There, they’ll see soft blue lighting and the same FanDuel branding they saw in the branded live dealer studio.