At Betty Gaming, slots are Queen. So the New York-based operator drove that point home with the launch of its slots-only online casino in Ontario, Canada, in February. According to Co-founder and CEO Justin Park, Betty’s unique take is the company’s way of serving a market traditionally underserved by online operators: women.
Park shared that and more with guest host Benjie Cherniak on Episode 70 of The Betting Startups Podcast in June.
He explained that women playing slots drive half of the US’s real money online casino TAM (total addressable market).
As he sees it, those players are underserved by industry incumbents, the DraftKings, and FanDuels of the world.
Those products are fantastic, Park added, but they’re sportsbooks that happen to offer casino games. It’s that dislocation in the market Betty’s aiming for.
Park said:
Betty is casino only, no sportsbook. We only offer slots. No poker, no blackjack, no roulette.
Slots: Loved by Women & Casino Accountants Alike
Launching an online casino minus the traditional table games may seem suspect. Still, the choice aligns with Betty’s attempt to build a “friendlier and safer online casino experience for all slot lovers.”
Although the company launched in 2022, the idea took root years earlier as Park worked on previous ventures.
It all started, he told Cherniak, with an email he sent himself in November 2017 that read simply, “betting products for women.”
Then, at a conference in 2018, he first encountered the idea that “all the money” is in Casino.
Those two threads, he said, stuck in his head and, with the help of his cofounders, eventually became Betty.
During the research phase, they interviewed casino players, including over 200 women, Park said.
During those interviews, they found two main categories of gamblers:
- Men who bet on sports and play blackjack and poker
- Women who play slots
Interestingly, Park said they found 97% or 98% of those who play slots only play slots.
With data showing that slots drive about 75% of casino TAM (online and brick-and-mortar), they figured they were onto something, Park added.
He said:
It’s not like they’re a niche player; they drive the market and meaningful revenues. And that’s when the light bulb went off. There’s something big here.
Betty Gaming’s Women-Led Online Casino Experience
As Cherniak noted during the show, often in male-dominated spaces like the gambling industry, it’s female founders who recognize the service gaps.
Without that female leadership in place, he asked how Betty maintains authenticity.
While Park quickly pointed out that one of Betty’s five founders is a woman, he acknowledged the leadership’s limitations.
Park said:
I obviously am not a woman. I’d give myself an F- when it comes to being a woman. But I would give myself an A- on being a cultural anthropologist.
He said many of Betty’s foundational insights came from the customer base.
The company has also worked hard to operationalize gender diversity, Park added.
He said:
Of our non-engineering headcount, 66% of the team are actually women. Furthermore, anything that the customer sees visually has been designed by a woman. And every piece of content that you read, either on the website or customer support, all of that has been written by women.
All of our customer support agents are women. There’s nothing that you experience that was not produced by a woman. I mean, the back-end technology, yes, there are a lot of men building it, but the actual experience itself, it’s female-led.
Betty Gaming’s Efforts in Ontario Are Starting to Pay Off
According to Park’s podcast appearance, the effort is paying off.
He said Betty took its first bet in Ontario in February, shortly after a $5 million seed round led by Karlani Capital, a tech-focused operating fund.
Park said:
I have an amazing team. I give them all their credit for this. But we went from no code, not a single line of code, to building our own platform, getting it certified by GLI, getting a license from the AGCO, and going live in, I think, seven or eight months. It was an insanely quick execution. It was awesome.
Although Betty had only operated for about three months, money was starting to flow, Park added.
He said:
We’re generating meaningful revenues now without even really trying. We’re not putting in much marketing. All we’re doing right now is focusing on the product …
It’s going really well.
Bonus emailed Park about Betty’s plans beyond Ontario, but a response was not immediate.
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