Dear Santa

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Jackpots and free-to-play may be very different propositions, but Wilson judges both against the same unromantic measure: whether they produce value for the operator.

For free-to-play, that process can begin before the customer has committed money. “It’s about building muscle memory, providing achievable incentives to players and gamification,” Wilson explains. By lowering the barrier to participation, a free-to-play game can provide an accessible first interaction with an operator, while repeated play builds familiarity and creates a reason to return.

The format, however, cannot simply be copied and pasted from one market to the next. “We’ve found that the more localised the offering, the better,” Wilson says. “We’re talking about building anything from sumo wrestling to Love Island, as well as the headline sports. Ice cage fighting has been a popular one in a certain market for us.”

About Dear Santa

“It was still very much a trading kind of UX,” he said of Kalshi at the beginning of the year. “The actual product offering has come a long way.”

Andrew Gonzalez, founder of prediction market infrastructure startup ParlayX, believes the ability of small teams to provide liquidity is one of the sector’s defining features. “Anyone can be a market maker,” he said. “You have these two- or three-man shops.”

Jefferies described market makers as the ecosystem’s “liquidity backbone”. They post executable bids and offers, manage inventory and provide prices when customer activity is heavily weighted to one side.

About Dear Santa

“If you look at our land-based casinos, it’s table games, slots, in some cases bingo, and on some evenings, poker. But there are also restaurants, entertainment. It’s an afternoon or evening out. And as I understand from our German guests, it’s a more entertaining evening or afternoon than in some German casinos.”

The company’s offering in the south does not differ markedly from elsewhere in the country, though – the base offering remains the same: “We always have slots, we always have table games like roulette and blackjack, and we always have at least one restaurant, sometimes two.”

Casinos in Holland are not limited to a maximum or set number of slots, either – but Petra says the operator is careful not to overwhelm players with too much choice.