YOGONET
In this exclusive interview with Yogonet, Founder and CEO Joe Asher discusses the strategy behind that growth, Boomer’s approach to customer acquisition and pricing, and plans to continue building an independent sportsbook network across the state. Asher also shares his views on the growing presence of prediction markets in the US betting landscape and why Boomer’s intends to remain Nevada-specific.
Boomer’s has now completed its first year of operations. Looking back, what has surprised you the most about the business and its performance?
We had hoped to have about 10 locations open after a year. We’ll have 16 open on September 1 for the start of the football season, and we’ll be at 20 by November. Obviously, we feel pretty good about that. The ability to sign up casinos and have us operate in their properties has been going ahead of where we had hoped.
I’d like to continue that growth, continue to acquire casinos and maybe some bigger casinos as we now move into the second year and establish ourselves as an operating company. Then, obviously, we want to continue to acquire customers at the B2C level. The next two months are very, very important with respect to that as we prepare to start the football season.
This is a big time for customer acquisition, so we’ve got a big push planned from mid-August through the end of September.
We’re talking about roughly double the number of locations you initially expected. What has allowed Boomer’s to expand this fast?
A big part of it is the technology and the ability to have just one or two kiosks at some smaller locations. You don’t need to staff it on a daily basis. Once you move past the setup and licensing costs, you have a very low cost base going forward. That’s clearly beneficial.
In terms of the casinos we’re signing up, we’ve tried to structure our deals in a way that aligns interests. If somebody signs up for a mobile account at a particular casino, we would then treat that person as a customer of that property when they bet on mobile. Therefore, the property is incentivized to help us sign up new mobile customers.
For us, it’s really about finding people who understand what we’re doing and are open to making a change. Some of our customers have been former William Hill customers. William Hill was an independent operation until Caesars bought it five years ago, and many are interested in working with an independent business again.
The other piece to it is that this is a relatively small business in terms of scale. It’s Nevada-only, and all of our casino partners matter to us. I’m not sure they’ve gotten that feeling from others. Structuring our business as a small, Nevada-specific business, as opposed to a nationwide or international enterprise, is something that resonates with customers.
There’s a heavy focus on residents rather than tourists. What have you learned about your core customer, the Nevada bettor?
The local customer can be a customer every day of the year rather than the tourist, who’s only betting with you when they are in town. We do get some tourists, especially at Ellis Island, which is very close to the Las Vegas Strip. But the fact that we’re a locals-oriented business allows us to really focus on things that are important to local bettors.
We try to do a lot of promotions focused on…..
