About this app
How to play Mr Bling
I’d like to thank our leader, Calvin Ayre, for giving me an opportunity to write about the gambling industry, but also for creating a platform that spoke to a different side of the industry, and wasn’t afraid to reveal uncomfortable truths when necessary. I’m excited to see what comes next in his campaign to wake the world up to the power of Bitcoin SV.
Bill Beatty, our Editor-in-Chief, was my guiding light. I learned to think of journalism, the gambling industry, and even life, in whole new ways thanks to him, and I’ll always count on him as one of my mentors.
But I couldn’t have accomplished half of what I did without all of my colleagues, past and present. Our talented team of writers, editors, web site development guys, production team, on screen reporters, Human Resources, Accountants, everyone. It took the whole team to make sure we put up the latest news and opinions every day, and everyone deserves their fair share of the credit.
What is Mr Bling?
Online casino is ultimately in the business of entertainment – and keeping players entertained means continuing to give them something that feels new. With consumers facing an abundance of competing ways to spend their time, repetition risks making it harder for any entertainment product to hold their attention.
While thousands of new casino games reach the market every year – with research suggesting the number of releases is growing by around 10% each quarter – volume does not necessarily equate to variety. Developing something genuinely different means taking a risk, while the industry’s familiar practice of reskinning existing games, or adapting mechanics and concepts that have already proved successful, offers a much safer commercial proposition.
For James Curwen, chief executive at Yggdrasil, the tension between the industry’s need for fresh content and the commercial realities of producing it goes to the heart of the challenge.
About Mr Bling
Using data collected primarily through Chrome’s incognito mode to exclude personalised search histories, the KVA identified several autocomplete and pre-fill search queries that directly suggested illegal gambling platforms to users.
Examples included phrases like “online casino zonder Cruks” (online casino without CRUKS, the Dutch self-exclusion registry for problem gamblers) and “beste online casino buitenland” (best online casino abroad).
KVA expressed concern over the potential manipulation of Google’s autocomplete function by unauthorised operators and websites primarily set up to redirect Dutch consumers to illegal gambling offers.
