Cryptonews Podcast host Matt Zahab recently sat down for a chat with Matt Duea, co-founder of the popular betting brand Roobet.
Duea talked about the natural connection blockchain and crypto have with the gaming and betting worlds, and how he came to co-found Roobet.
He explained the difference between Web2 and Web3 gambling, touched upon the partnerships with Snoop Dogg and UFC, and told us why influencer gambling streams are so entertaining.
In this interview, Duea discussed:
- difference between Web3 and Web2 gambling;
- advancing everyday application of cryptocurrencies;
- official social casino of the UFC, roobet.fun;
- future of crypto gambling regulations: how regulations might evolve and impact the industry;
- blockchain and crypto integration: blockchain’s role in Roobet’s operations and supported cryptocurrencies.
You can read what the two Matts talked about below or watch their discussion above.
Ethereum Predictions (Don’t) Come True
Before Roobet became one of the behemoths in the space, Matt Duea was working a job that would prove indispensable to the creation of this betting brand.
He worked on a marketing team, a position that allowed him to meet and collaborate with various people.
“And when they had a new project kind of rolling up, that is how I got on board,” he said.
The position allowed him to educate himself about blockchain “full time,” and about its convergence with video games.
Speaking of which, Duea himslef was a gamer, so the concept of digital currencies was very familiar to him.
So in 2017, Duea became increasingly interested in blockchain, crypto, tokenization, and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and he started “poking around that whole crazy world of people exchanging and trading these virtual items.”
From then on, he went “full steam” ahead, exploring this industry and its community.
Ultimately, the marketing company he worked for joined with a blockchain company. “And we were doing all kinds of cool stuff as a marketing team, introducing these concepts to the world. And I was just enamored by it,” Duea said.
Interestingly, in 2018, “nobody cared,” he said. Even their company was convinced that NFTs on Ethereum would never work because it’s too expensive and too slow.
They were both right and wrong.
Ethereum did end up being very expensive.
“But I guess the thing that was wrong was people were willing to pay the gas,” said Duea.
Not Your Typical Casino
Asked to describe Roobet, Matt Duea said that it was founded by an online community with its online community in mind.
Before he joined the project, it housed a few house games and “a small, quiet, sleepy community.”
But the team worked hard to make it an active space for all involved. They often say that Roobet’s more than a casino – it’s a club.
It may not be the biggest, said Duea, but Roobet aims to be the best and the most fun.
And crypto made sense as part of this business. One of its benefits is that it provides a provably fair mechanism that helps everybody feel confident that outcomes can’t be manipulated.
Furthermore, per Duea,
“We don’t look like your typical casino because we didn’t come from that space. We came from the gaming space.”
The team merged the ideas of crypto, blockchain, entertainment, and betting when they were locked inside during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At that point, “I think nerds really stood out because we were the ones that knew how to play around and have a good time and engage with people socially online.”
At the same time, everybody else was “really paying attention to their digital selves.”
“It was like betting had a golden moment,” Duea said.
Roobet 2.0 Is Now Live!
Welcome to the faster, sleeker, and slightly purple-r Roobet pic.twitter.com/HdNGVuzi0c
— Roobet (@Roobet) April 1, 2024
Notably, their game Crash became a massive success. The world loved it, Duea remarked, and it became a huge part of how people got to know Roobet. “Many people associate Roobet with ‘the rocket game’.”
There is still a house version of Crash to this day.
The team continued adding house games, as well as “the biggest global providers.”
Moreover, Roobet provides a unique rewards system, trying to “stay true to our gamer, crypto-first type of mentality when it comes to product.”
The platform also accepts fiat in order to include as many users as possible.
Web3 Gambling vs Web2 Gambling
The major difference between a Web2 and a Web3 gambling platform is that the latter offers crypto support.
Roobet has “a fascination and a love” for all things crypto, blockchain, gaming, and internet culture. Odds are that many other operators will not share the sentiment.
Also, from a licensing standpoint, most can’t “really touch” crypto. Very few licenses today are willing to support a brand trying to innovate using this type of technology.
However, this is likely to change over the next few years as adoption increases, Duea opined.
Moreover, crypto is often being villainized and met with resistance to acknowledge its legitimacy.
It is not easy to set up all the licensing, and there needs to be constant communication with different regulatory bodies and constant monitoring of all business aspects and potential risks.
Furthermore, Duea remarked that it is difficult for Web2 brands – especially large ones – to adopt a new payment type overnight.
Even for Roobet, there were bumps on the road. For example, when they integrated Dogecoin (DOGE), there were commenters who laughed at the decision, asking whom it was for.
“Well, who it’s for is the Doge community. Who it’s for is the crypto community,” Duea said.
And while everybody can speculate about Doge’s intrinsic value, “once you’re done arguing over that, if you want to gamble it, come on over to Roobet.”
That said, Duea hopes that more platforms will adopt crypto as it becomes better understood and more popular.
This is relevant, he argues, because crypto would become substantially more accessible – not everybody has access to platforms like Roobet, but they do to many other platforms globally.
This isn’t an April Fools Joke, our $1,000,000 Raffle is LIVE 💰 https://t.co/7XsRShL1Qo
— Roobet (@Roobet) April 1, 2024
It is also important to Duea himself. He wants to see crypto technology more celebrated and less demonized. He also wants to see people make money, he added.
Besides, when people start using crypto for betting, they certainly pay more attention to it, because now they’ve got “skin in the game.”
Streaming Dopamine
Online betting is not going anywhere.
One of the noticeable examples is the emergence of massive streamers gambling millions in front of a captivated audience glued to their screens.
It’s gotten popular during the lockdowns, and it’s still going strong.
Duea opined that gambling content has become a form of entertainment. “Casino content is very entertaining to watch and similar to watching maybe your favorite steamer playing a video game on that last level trying not to die.”
It’s a form of a parasocial relationship, he added, providing a dopamine hit.
And it is unlikely to go away. Gambling and sports betting are actually becoming more familiar to many people.
Also, content creators can monetize it better than advertising or merchandise.
Locking Up Big Partnerships
Partnerships are “cool opportunities” for Roobet to be a part of “these very long-standing legacies” and the innovation they’re pushing for, Matt Duea remarked.
In April 2023, Roobet announced a $420,000 giveaway in partnership with their “Chief Ganjaroo Officer, Snoop Dogg.”
Snoop Dogg has a “classic approach” to business, Duea said, “old school” in many ways. He conducts business very straightforwardly.
And the collaboration with him is deeper than just a betting sponsorship.
“I think when it comes to crypto, entertainment, supporting creators, […] when it comes to helping people own their work and build platforms under themselves that allow artists and creators to feed themselves, long term, and build businesses – those are the things that we realized very early Snoop connects with.”
In July 2023, Roobet.fun became the official social casino of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) in a multi-year deal.
The platform finds the combination of the sport’s brutality and its origin stories interesting to be a part of.
The fighters are like real-life action figures, Duea said.
There are both betting and gaming elements there, he suggested. Fighters “go in, and they just don’t know what’s going to happen. […] And it really gets your adrenaline going just being around it.”
Making partnerships continues. Endorsements from big names, of course, help, said Duea, but it’s not enough to bring in customers.
“It is more of a trust-building thing,” he added. In the end, you must let the product speak for itself.
__________
About Matt Duea
Matt Duea is an entrepreneur and a co-founder of Roobet, a betting brand for the next generation of gamers, and part of the group behind Roobet.fun and Roobet.com.