Exclusive interview with Casino Elite

A new online casino has recently appeared: Casino Elite. Gambling Club had a coffee with Sébastien Couckuyt, CEO of Casino Elite, to learn more about the latest casino on the Belgian market and their plans for the future!

First of all, congratulations on the launch of Casino Elite. Can you introduce yourself to Gambling Club readers? Tell us about your career path and what led you to work in the online casino sector?

I started working for the online gambling sector in September 2011. At that time I moved to Malta to work at Unibet for the Belgian and French market. I then returned to Belgium in 2012 to work at Gtech in partnership with the National Lottery. I participated in the launch of Score and I also participated in the launch of the online part of the National Lottery.

Then I worked for Ladbrokes Belgium for 3 years, before joining Alexis Murphy to work at Betfirst for 6 years. During this period I worked on setting up the internal operations of the online casino, sports betting etc.

My experience at Betfirst allowed me to discover all the facets of an online casino, whether it be marketing, advertising, working with affiliates, but also the fight against money laundering, responsible gaming, etc.

I recently joined Casino Elite as CEO because I wanted to use my experience to take on a new challenge.

What prompted you to launch into the online casino market in the current context, just after the marketing restrictions?

I honestly believe that advertising is not everything, and that it is the user experience that makes the difference. For us, the platform must above all be attractive and modern, we really want to differentiate our product. Our decision well before launching the casino was to create our own platform, and to be able to modify and evolve it as much as necessary to always be at the top in terms of user experience.

In terms of advertising, acquisition is mainly done by PPC (via Google) and I am confident. I think that advertising must be authorized and be able to be done within a legal framework. This is what allows players to be redirected to the legal offer.

“I am aware that, culturally, online casinos are still poorly perceived, but I hope that this will change over time. Ideally, I would like to see one day a greater acceptance of casinos in the sponsorship sector, as we already see in other sectors, such as football with leagues sponsored by well-known brands.” 

Are you satisfied with your launch, did you have to overcome obstacles to be operational on time?

We have the freedom to be a small casino. So we didn’t really have an official launch date. Of course we had a date in mind but everything went well for us.

Obviously we overcame a small technical obstacle due to the total creation of our platform but we easily managed to overcome it. The creation of the platform took us almost a year.

What can Belgian players expect when playing at Casino Elite? How does your casino stand out?

As I said before, we developed our own gaming platform instead of going through a third party. This is what makes all the difference and allows us to offer our players a smooth experience at all times.

On our site, players will be able to find a wide range of providers and many B+ license games. Registration and connection are super fast thanks to ItsMe and we have the widest selection of payment methods such as Paysafe, Payconiq, Bancontact, Skrill, Neteller, Apple Pay, etc. Instant withdrawals are of course available in partnership with BNP.

In addition to all this, we offer a friendly interface, tournaments and a loyalty program.

You already offer a wide range of games and different providers, can you give us an overview of what awaits us and if new providers arrive?

Many new providers will arrive in the coming months, including Evolution via softswiss.

We are also working on direct integration with Synot, Gamevy, True odds, and many others, we’ll leave you the surprise! 

How do you choose your game providers, what is important to you?

What is important to us is mainly the features or functionalities offered within the games, and of course, that the provider is authorized in Belgium.

Then we look at whether the provider can offer price drops, offers buy-in bonus possibilities, and other features such as mega wins etc. I will also add that we work primarily with Belgian providers such as G1 and True odds.

Security is important to our readers, how do you ensure the security and reliability of transactions on your platform?

At the level of account creation and to connect we offer ItsMe, one of the most secure methods to date. For compliance we work with partners in particular for the fight against money laundering. This allows us to check in a few seconds the people who can or cannot play. It also checks if the person is on the list of known terrorists, or if they are part of the entourage of a public figure (politician, etc.). Being part of the entourage of a public figure does not prohibit playing in a casino, but it must be reported.

The verification is done at each login because the lists are constantly updated.

At the level of player security, we work with a Liège company specialized in security. This has allowed us to set up all the necessary security to protect our customers’ data, we also have a dedicated DPO and we have a DPA for each provider where it was useful. And we also respect the GDPR. For the protection of banking data we work with AIP, also a renowned name in terms of compliance.

We are ready to face any situation.

Are you making extra efforts to protect your players, or are you simply going to comply with the law and not go beyond it?

Since Belgian law is not strict enough for our taste, we have decided to go further than that. For example, I think that there should be centralization of self-exclusion, that a self-exclusion in a casino should have the value of an EPIS list. We should generalize this self-exclusion to all operators.

How do you manage problems related to gambling addiction?

This is something that will be implemented soon. We are thinking of implementing an AI such as Mindway AI to help us. But we will also monitor what people deposit to fight money laundering as effectively. From €2,000 of deposit over the lifetime of a player’s account, we have a signal and the player is obliged to provide his documents.

Then we also set internal limits, so as to request additional information (pay slip, etc.) to justify deposits, still within the framework of the fight against money laundering. It’s a practice that we are almost the only ones to have implemented.

The ban on non-targeted advertising makes it more difficult for Casino Elite to gain market share. How do you meet this challenge?

By offering a better product! And by offering all possible providers in Belgium as well as all legal payment methods.

Is affiliation still an option for Casino Elite or how do you plan to gain market share on the Belgian B+ market?

We already work with Gambling affiliation and we have affiliates.

Thank you for this pleasant discussion Sébastien. Gambling Club wishes you good luck and is looking forward to the arrival of a new face on the Belgian gaming market!