Pain in the app: Is Apple targeting gambling with its App Store restrictions?

Over Christmas 2018, App Store customers accrued a total expenditure of €1.2bn, with an additional $322m spent on New Year’s Day 2019. The figures are a testament to the almost unfathomable influence mobile apps have on the day-to-day lives of the consumer. According to data collected by Statista, global consumer spending on mobile gaming apps is set to reach $105.2bn in 2021.

There is almost no doubt mobile is the leading gaming vertical at present, but in an effort to retain its reputation for high quality content and consumer protection, Apple has clamped down on app developers in recent months to ensure their downloadable mobile content is of the highest standard in design, functionality, and of course the actual content.

One specific clause from January’s 4.2 update in the Apple Review Guidelines has hit egaming operators relatively hard in its requirement for apps to be “sufficiently different from a Safari browsing experience”, according to managing director of third-party app developer mkodo, Stuart Godfree.

The guidelines dictate that an app must include unique features, content and UI that elevate it beyond a repackaged website. Apps that do not comply face being restricted from the App Store, while even minor updates being pushed through normal app submission processes are facing the chop.

App update frequency is unique to each operator, but some are known to push through bug fixes every two weeks, which also face the strict scrutiny for updates that Apple has imposed.

Godfree explains: “Rejections can be hugely costly both in terms of resubmission work and time to market, not to mention loss of revenues, and can easily be avoided if an app is native and developed and optimised to respect the Apple Guidelines.”

Real-money gambling apps are more often than not wrapped versions of their mobile sites with minimal native functionality bar the occasional use of TouchID, meaning Apple’s move has caused a commotion within the industry.

As Chris Benstead, digital strategist at app development company Degree 53, points out, producing an entirely native sportsbook within an app would be extremely expensive, but he advises his clients to include as many native features in their mobile content as possible.

“We’ll look to enhance wrapper apps with native onboarding and native navigation,” says Benstead in response to questions on how to avoid rejection.” For example, if you’ve got an Android user and an iPhone user, they navigate through apps in different ways. An Android [device] has buttons on the bottom of the phone that will help users navigate around the app, whereas iPhone doesn’t.

“Those sorts of differences are quite bespoke to each platform so we can actually add on top of a website and create native navigation and elements those users would expect on either Android or iOS.”

Why us?

Overall, firms have been reluctant to divulge how their apps have been affected or what they are doing to remedy the issue, only that they have indeed faced rejections by Apple. One operator’s product owner, speaking off the record, told EGR: “There have been lots of rejections at Hills, BetVictor, Sky Bet and Ladbrokes Coral that I’m aware of.” In response Ladbrokes Coral said it was “making minor changes in order to comply with Apple’s current requirements”. The Stars Group also reported in its 2018 full year results that it had faced iOS removals in Q4.

Crucially, app developers and operators in particular have been mulling the reasoning behind Apple tightening the regulatory noose, and some have speculated that real-money gambling apps are being deliberately targeted.

As a result, EGR understands the Remote Gambling Association (RGA) has requested to meet with Apple to gain some insight into why gambling apps are facing such difficulties.

ASO (App Search Optimisation) specialist and founder of Sound Bet Media, Matt Balch, highlights the similarities between real-money gambling and ecommerce apps which offer native features like facial recognition and integrated registration page, and asks whether they are facing similar difficulties.

Meanwhile Benstead acknowledges that the apps belonging to Degree 53’s gambling clients have faced much higher scrutiny than those in other industries. “If you consider Amazon, the app at the moment offers the same experience as the website, the only native functionality is Touch ID or Face ID and it is allowed into the App Store without any issues,” he comments.

“If you look at a gambling site with similar functionality, but also additional features like push notifications or location services, it is getting rejected so Apple seems to be focusing more heavily on gambling.”

Apple has long been seeking and rewarding native app developers, particularly those that use Apple’s in-house development services, and this clampdown could certainly tie into this push for developers to adopt Apple’s development techniques and functions. But it is difficult to tell, particularly as Apple declined to respond to any of EGR’s questions on the matter.

What’s next?

In the occurrence of a “worst case scenario”, Benstead suggests operators direct their gaze to updating their web products in order to bring them more in line with the latest technology trends. One example he offers is the use of the relatively nascent Progressive Web Applications (PWA) which serve to develop websites in a more app-like manner.

The concept was proposed by Google back in 2015 and according to web and mobile app developer at Incredible Web, Kevin Farrugia, has gained popularity due to the relative ease of development, including eradicating the complications of building and maintaining a native mobile application.

“It’s making websites faster, more reliable and secure and it’s letting them use native functionality so websites can start leveraging push notifications which can be launched from the homepage,” Benstead adds.

Similarly, Balch mulls the idea that the marketplace is finally moving towards a native app mentality. “Ultimately, if operators want to continue to take advantage of the app ecosystem, they will need to focus on creating a premium app product experience,” Balch tells EGR Technology.

With respect to ASO rankings, sports betting and casino apps rank relatively low more often than not due to the slow loading times and lack of engagement that come with copying the HTML5 website template into a mobile app.

Balch highlights the poor-quality user experience that wrapped website apps often suffer, particularly slow loading times, daily crash rates and uninstalls. This will inevitably hurt an operator’s overall ASO score and ultimately affect an app’s ability to rank highly.

“For a couple of years now the iTunes and Google Play algorithms have included app performance as an ASO KPI. This is illustrated by each operating systems’ dashboard providing analytics around daily crash and uninstall rates,” Balch notes.

He explains: “Operating systems are really focused on quality of apps, including things like uninstalls and crash rates that are going to drive poor user experience. They are also starting to tangibly penalise developers either through rejecting them or via analytics that are displaying poor quality of the app.”

Last year the operating system pulled both Google and Facebook apps from its App Store as neither software met Apple’s rules on user privacy. So it might not be that Apple has a particular bee in its bonnet with gambling but rather it is trying to make an example of those that are not moving in the exact same direction as the tech giant. And in running one of two top mobile app stores Apple has a huge amount of power over general app development, particularly as iOS market share increases and Apple mobile device usage is up this year in a number of major western countries, including Canada, Spain, the US, the UK, Ireland and Germany.