Bovada is a rebrand of the successful US betting company Bodog. Bovada are the largest gambling company in the United States, on Super Bowl day they process more transactions than a small bank. With a database of 10 million+ users playing sports, slots or casino the US.

The company rehired me to focus on developing an Asian focused sports betting greenfield market, still in its infancy. I led a global team of experience designers across 3 continents, in London, Montreal and Manila. The challenge was to localise platforms for the asian betting market using a standardised western business canvas.

Research was essential to the success of the project, localised ethnographic study was conducted via observation first hand in Macau, Manila and Hong Kong. Output matched with cultural diary studies, participants of which were recruited at scale fed a product development cycle. Key cultural takeaways from the studies revealed cultural differences in eye tracking when using apps, placement of content and touch-points with the brand outside of western betting.

In Asia betting and gambling is a core part of the culture and social framework. Children are encouraged from the age of 4 with games often held at birthday parties. The digital betting market was fed by forums. The more sensitive the business was to price the higher up it would appear in customer rankings behind the ‘Great Firewall of China’. Margin on the Asian market is the lowest globally, although it has the largest volume of users.

Wireframes were designed, prototyped and tested as a proof of concept to ensure they met conversion metrics.