Šimon Vincze: "We're redefining free education in iGaming"

Šimon Vincze is Casino Guru's Head of Sustainable & Safer Gambling. You may know him from his regular appearances at international gaming conferences and events, where he’s active both as a speaker and an advocate for Responsible Gambling. His main focus includes several key projects, such as theGlobal Self-Exclusion Initiative, the Casino Guru Academy, or his podcast Safer Gambling Talks.

In this interview, Šimon dives into one of those projects, Casino Guru Academy, and discusses it in more detail.

What is the main value of the Academy courses? How does the collaboration between Casino Guru and its partners look like when creating educational content? How is the Academy different from the competition?

Read on to learn more.

Q: You’ve already touched upon Casino Guru Academy in one of our Insider interviews, and you described it as a place where Casino Guru reflects on its experience and shares it with the rest of the world. Looking at it now from a new perspective, what would you say Casino Guru Academy is today?

In the beginning, our value mainly came from our experience with the global gambling market and handling player complaints, and this background allowed us to spot areas casinos might be overlooking. Of course, fairness and understanding of the players’ perspective were key when we created our first courses.

But Imust say that today, we offer content that goes one step further from our internal position, meaning we’ve developed courses in collaboration with experts from other areas related to iGaming as well. So, right now, we’re working with four such partners, and we plan to launch even more courses through these kinds of partnerships in the future.

Q: That’s great! And how do you think the gambling industry as a whole can benefit from the courses? For example, what are the main advantages for those who take these courses?

Well, Ithink that this ties perfectly with the previous question. The Academy has become a platform where expertise from various sources comes together, and the result is a set of educational and practice-oriented courses available to essentially any company with internet access.

As far as benefits go, since our courses are geared toward onboarding, they often serve as the first learning opportunity for iGaming professionals, and they’re learning them straight from industry experts.

However, the best part is that these courses are also enriched with global, real-world experience, so even seasoned professionals will find them useful. On top of that, I’d say our biggest strengths are the accessibility and practicality of our courses and, of course, a certificate for those who successfully complete them.

Q: I can imagine that the project changed over time in terms of your goals with it. So, what was your main focus before compared to your efforts with the platform today?

From the very start, we envisioned our courses as a cornerstone for learning for different sectors across iGaming. As Imentioned, we wanted them to be the foundation for onboarding, and so we tailored the format accordingly. In the early years, we focused mainly on producing the courses, and let me tell you, that wasn’t always easy. [laughter]

Today, however, I’d say our attention has shifted alittle more toward improving the quality of our content and expanding our reach. But of course, our core mission remains the same, and it’s just the scale and reach we’re aiming for that has evolved.

Q: Sure, and as a part of that evolution, there's been some updates that Casino Guru Academy went through. What were these changes all about?

Yes, it’s true that in recent months, we dug our heels into some very interesting improvements. We’ve updated all of our courses to a new format, and the result is a refreshed design, better navigation, and new engagement elements that help spark interest in learning.

Our thinking behind this change is very straightforward – we didn’t want our content to just be static text or video. Instead, we want our learners to be able to interact with it.

And another major upgrade is our new website, which now offers better usability and reliability. At the same time, we’re ramping up our marketing activities. We are excited to move forward and increase our visibility, boost all the key metrics, and work on more impactful collaborations.

Q: Now, let’s talk about numbers. Was the change you described driven by the fact that more gambling professionals were getting interested in the Academy? Additionally, how many learners have enrolled so far, and what’s the feedback like?

In the past four years, our metrics have been growing steadily. Consistently, but not rapidly, mainly because we hadn’t been investing in marketing all that much. At the beginning, we focused almost exclusively on creating new, high-quality courses.

Despite that, now we have over 25 iGaming companies that regularly use our courses. Altogether, we’ve got nearly 4,500 registered users and over 2,200 certificates issued, which is awesome, and we are really happy about our results so far, because they strongly indicate that we’ve got agreat product that finds its audience organically.

Q: What exactly are you trying to push forward thanks to refined design, website navigation, and content?

Ihave to be really honest here, offering free courses comes with its own set of challenges. You know, people often assume that if something’s free, it’s not high quality. I know, I know… shocker, right? [laughter]

But our training is quite the opposite – it proves that just because something’s free doesn’t mean it’s not very well-made. Now, all we need to do is to show that to our audience before they even register and start learning. The new website’s appealing look should help us do just that, to redefine free education in iGaming.

Plus, we put an effort into offering seamless experience for people when signing up and exploring the courses. We’re also working on boosting our traffic so that when someone searches for iGaming education, they find us – and they know they’ve found quality training that’s free and worthwhile at the same time.

Q: Which of the Academy’s courses are the most popular? And which ones do you wish people paid more attention to, and why?

Oh, that’s a good question. Our most popular course by far is Customer Support Essentials, which was also our very first. I think we really hit the mark with that one, because it delivers exactly what our target audience needs.

The second most popular is the course on bonuses, which is actually our most complex one. Rounding out the top three is our Safer Gambling course, created in collaboration with Gordon Moody.

Personally, I’d like to see more interest in the course dedicated to player complaints resolution, powered mostly by our in-house experts on complaints who managed to help the players retrieve more than $14 million dollars in the process. Itruly believe the know-how we shared in that specific course can save companies money and hugely improve their reputation.

Q: I'd really like to know what it’s like to collaborate with different partners on specific courses? What are their expectations, and what are yours? And does it ever happen that your positions clash on certain topics? And if so, how do you approach that?

Ifeel like every collaboration is a bit different, obviously. Especially since not all of our partners have experience with course creation. We try to find a balanced and fair approach where both sides contribute within their capabilities.

As far as I know, we haven’t had any major disagreements with partners yet. Internally, though – now that’s another story. [laughter] We’ve had several meetings full of heated debates, as you can imagine. But I’m sure we’ll find a way… eventually.

Q: In your opinion, what kind of value do partnerships bring to the overall creation process, to the Academy itself, and, most importantly, to the learners?

It’s safe to say that without our partners, we wouldn’t have gotten very far. At Casino Guru, we’re definitely not experts in everything. The partnerships bring additional integrity to the Academy, and a guarantee for our learners that they’re getting quality education in just 90 minutes. And honestly, we learn a lot ourselves in the process of creating these kinds of courses.

Q: Final question for you Šimon, are there any future plans or upcoming improvements for the Academy that you’d like to share?

Sure! I really believe the next 12 months will bring some exciting developments to the Academy. B2B marketing in iGaming is very diverse, as companies are constantly trying to outdo each other with creative campaigns. They’re used to having an experience when interacting with potential partners.

Affiliate sites, such as Casino Guru, usually don’t operate that way – we’re often the ones others come to. This gives us space to approach things creatively, and I’m really looking forward to seeing where that journey takes us.

This interview is part of Casino Guru Insiders, a series of interviews during which experts from Casino Guru share their unique workflow, reveal insider information, and offer an exclusive overview of experience packed know-how.