Case Study Report

Queen Casino Poker Room

 Introduction
Queen Poker Room is a company offering gambling products and games to
customers. Its portfolio conclude: Poker, Exchange betting, Sports book and Casino.
Queen Poker business idea is stated as “to offer a wide variety of top notch gaming
products in a secure and user friendly environment”.
The Queen Poker was formed on August 2014 and is fully owned by Queen, a
company with over 5 years of gaming experience that is quoted on Romania stock
exchange. The technical development of Poker was initiated in the beginning of 2014
and was inaugurated in Europe .
The Poker has experienced rapid growth. From having virtually no sales and only 4
employees in 2014, it has grown to have worldwide sales of ! 1 M and 15 employees
in 2018-19.

PESTLE ANALYSIS
PESTLE analysis show you an overview of the whole situation your business or
company might be in. Precisely, it is a bird’s eye view of the situations and the
scenarios that surround your trade and you business.
These factors affect the market in various ways and alter the way strategies are
thought of and made. P stands for political factors, while E stands for economic
ones. S describe the social factors in a country whereas T include all the
technological aspects of the market. L shows legalities of the environment and E
involves for the environmental aspects and its influence upon the nature of the trade
you’re in.
 P for Political
 E for Economic
 S for Social
 T for Technological
 L for Legal
 E for Environmental

The political factors involves all the politics that go on within a country and if any
external force might tip the scales in a certain way. They analyze the political
situations and the policies that a government may put in place for some effect. For
example, the fiscal policy, trade tariffs and the taxes are the things that a
government levies on the traders and the organizations and they greatly alter the
revenue that is earned by the companies.
 The economic factors take into view the economic position prevalent in the country
and if the global economic scenarios might make it shift or not. These include the
inflation rates, foreign exchange rates, interest rates etc. All can affect the supply
and demand cycle and can result into major changes of the business environment.

Social factors have to do with the social mindset of the people that live in a certain
country. This concludes the aspect of culture, age demographics, gender and its
related stereotypes, at times this analysis has to include the religious factors (when
pertaining to products or services of a different kind).

Technological factors taking in discussion that the rate at which technology is

advancing and how much integration does a company needs to have.

Legal factors have to do with all the legislative and procedural components in an
economy. Also, this takes into account for certain standards that your business might
have to meet in order to start production and promotion.

Environmental factors have to do with geographical locations and places and other
related environmental issues or factors that may influence upon the nature of the
trade you’re in.

Political Factors:
 Trading policies
 Government changes
 Shareholder and their demands
 Funding
 Governmental leadership
 Lobbying
 Foreign pressures
 Conflicts in the political arena

Economic Factors:
 Disposable income
 Unemployment level
 Foreign exchange rates
 Interest rates
 Trade tariffs
 Inflation rate
 Foreign economic trends
 General taxation issues
 Taxation changes specific to product/services
 Local economic situation and trends
 Social Factors
 Ethnic/religious factors
 Advertising scenarios
 Ethical issues
 Consumer buying patterns
 Major world events
 Buying access
 Shifts in population
 Demographics
 Health
 Consumer opinions and attitudes
 Views of the media
 Law changes affecting social factors
 Change in Lifestyle
 Brand preferences
 Working attitude of people
 Education
 Trends
 History

Technological Factors
 Technological development
 Research and development
 Trends in global technological advancements
 Associated technologies
 Legislations in technological fields
 Patents
 Licensing
 Access into the technological field
 Consumer preferences
 Consumer buying trends
 Intellectual property and its laws
 How mature a certain technology is
 Information technology
 Communication

Legal Factors
 Employment law
 Consumer protection
 Industry-specific regulations
 Competitive regulations
 Current legislation home market
 Future legislation
 Regulatory bodies and their processes
 Environmental regulations

Environmental factors:

 Ecological
 Environmental issues
 International
 National
 Stakeholder/ investor values
 Staff attitudes
 Management style
 Environmental regulations
 Customer values
 Market value

SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis is a tool for evaluating a company. More specifically, it’s concerned
with finding out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats that a company
or an organization faces. Strengths and weaknesses are internal factors, while
opportunities and threats are external. The purpose of a SWOT analysis is to help
shape the strategy of a company, in order to maximize the profits and growth of that
company – i.e. to compete successfully in the marketplace. In our case, we will use a
SWOT framework as a basis for further analysis of the key potential growth areas for
Queen Casino Poker Room.

Strengths
Queen Casino Poker Room’s main strength is its poker offering, with a poker brand
that’s among the best in Romania. There are some main competitors are known to
be Unibet, Expekt , Ladbrokes and Party-Poker. Queen Poker is almost 200,000
registered poker customers compare quite well with, for example, Unibet’s 100,000
Swedish poker customers.
Queen Poker is the largest and most dominant company in Romania with a betting
exchange, which gives them an edge. A betting exchange is basically an exchange –
much similar to a stock exchange – where people offer to other people odds on
various games. In a conventional betting conditions, it is the house/casino that sets
the odds towards the gambling audience. With a betting or gambling exchange,
gambling becomes much more dynamic, odds are better, and bets can be made in
real time. Betting exchanges have become very popular in recent years, and Queen
Poker ’s strong position here has positive spill-over effects in other areas, such as
poker.
Queen Poker’s claims to have the best product mix on the market, combining the
best poker room with the best casino. Having a broader approach than competitors
and being something of a gaming portal gives a competitive edge.
Queen Poker’s has relatively good product management routines, which gives them
an edge in controlling new product releases. It’s relatively easy for Queen Poker to
raise capital since it is listed on the Stock Exchange.

Weaknesses
Queen Poker lacks a clear growth strategy. It has a clear strategy when and where it
has to be decided which new market to enter, but there is no “global” growth strategy
that involve the entire company. Queen Poker is smaller than some of the main
competitors – such as Unibet and Expekt.
Queen Poker invests as much in marketing as these two companies, but there still
are economies of scale in the business. Margins are higher if a company is big. To
put another way, Queen Poker has less muscle and endurance than the bigger
competitors. Queen Poker has a weak lobbying organization. Some of Queen
Poker’s competitors, most notably Ladbrokes, have chosen to fight the Romania
gambling monopoly heads up, which has given them a lot of press and attention.
Queen Poker’s main opponent – has a very powerful lobbying organization and
excellent connections to politicians. Queen Poker is geographically spread out, with
the management and customer support in Romania, some management and the
tech department in Stockholm, and the manager and technical support staff in
Romania. This structure has to do with legal issues, but it makes running the
company somewhat more complicated.
Queen Poker is in constant need of new and skilled labour. The lack of human
resources restrains the company’s growth. Queen Poker does not use affiliates. For
many of Queen Poker’s competitors, affiliates generate a substantial share of
revenue (PartyPoker: 34%, Parbet: 80%). By not using affiliates, Queen Poker
restricts its growth. At the same time this is pure decision, since revenue has to be
shared with affiliates, which lowers margins.
Opportunities
Currently Queen Poker has a relatively good and growing (100% 2014-2018) market
share in Romania and Finland. For the analysis of the opportunities. Queen Poker
can realize we implement the theory of the “Core business”, basically meaning that
the closer the new activity is to the core business the more chance it has being
successful. Maintaining the Bain & Co model of the probabilistic and we focus and
examine new products and services, geographical markets and customer segments.

New product and services

Queen Poker has the edge of having one of the highest quality and best online poker
and casino. The opportunity is to enhance the gaming portal image and adding new
related products towards the same customer group, which is mainly male 20-30
years old.

New geographic markets

Queen Poker’s attitude towards entering new geographic markets is to do it heavy,
building strong brand recognition within the segment. To do this they launch strong
market campaigns, and go in physically through throwing events and being present
in the market so that the customers get a feeling that they exist and aren’t just a
online-gaming site.
Currently they are about to enter Poland with the same marketing strategy. Queen
Poker is at this time in the position where they feel that they can’t manage more than
one market launch at a time because of the HR restrain problem of finding suitable
people managing the different markets. Therefore Queen Poker’s current strategy is
to launch country by country, while many competitors don’t share the same view and
instead approach a more portfolio examination towards the business launching in
15+ countries at the same time. Besides Poland new interesting markets could be
Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Greece, Spain and Portugal among others. If Queen Poker
is not ready to make a full-scale launch in these countries they could consider
marketing there through affiliates. Basically, affiliates are companies or individuals
who agree to bring customers to Queen Poker, if they in return get a share of the
revenue their referred customers generate to Queen Poker. Using this method
Queen Poker could minimize their fixed marketing costs in these countries.

New customer segments

The average customer in European casinos is said to be a 4910 year old lady,
meanwhile the normal customer of an online gaming site is as stated before typically
a male 20-30 years old. There exists a tremendous large customer segment that has
not yet been approached nor seduced into a variant of online gaming. We believe
that it is possible to launch a product or service that could be appreciated and used
within the typically casino segment. A product that lately has been mentioned as the
next rocket or new success is bingo, which we can see a great potential in bringing
back to life and make popular.
Threats
Volatile Market
It is always important to stay updated on the market and the way it is developing.
Internet gaming is a new market and very volatile. You can’t predict the popularity of
Internet gaming in a few years since it is a new thing, and even if it may have passed
the “fling-stage” it is still not impossible that the market will start to decrease in a few
years.

Competitors
In such a lucrative business as the betting industry is it is hard to always stay on top
of the competition. You need to foresee your opponent’s moves and capitalize on
making the same move before them. Other, bigger, companies can swoop over
Queen Poker and, because of their ability to do more advertisement, steal Queen
Poker’s customers. The are many competitors in Queen Poker’s market. When
people choose what gaming service to use they often try it out first after seeing an
advertisement, but what makes them continue using a service is, in Queen Poker’s
case a variety of things that Queen Poker needs to have.
 Better poker software than the competition
 A good support to answer any questions that might arise
 Better or a more broad selection of sports betting
More customers, because, specific to the online poker world, the more customers
you have, the more customers will want to play.

Suppressed margins
Probably the main threat toward Queen Poker comes from suppressed margins,
resulting from new entrants in the online gambling market and increased
competition.

Legal Structure
The legal structure in for example Sweden, Queen Poker’s main market, is a threat
to the company’s future growth. Queen Poker is not free to advertise the way it
would like to in Romania, but is forced to advertise from England. On a global level,
few countries have liberalized their gambling legislation, so the risk of being run over
by the authorities exists in other countries.