Egaming industry predictions for 2017 - part 3

Marcus Brennan, CEO, BetBright

Disruption – The market is too same same with little significant differentiation between products; everyone is selling the same pizza based on packaging and price. This means promo war and red ocean marketing where the water is full with the blood of sharks eating each other. Enter disruption. Technology will enable innovation and differentiation and new blue ocean marketing and retention channels will emerge which can only be capitalised on by those in control of technology. Operators will build unique games and channels and truly differentiated product which they can market relatively competition free in clean blue oceans, the rest will be left swimming in a blood bath. This will lead to the dawning of the value of technology ownership. Once one operator does it all properly it will be like Google arriving on the search scene. This will begin in 2017 and be the theme for the next three to five years and it will lead to near panic for the ill equipped and the visionless.

New models of entertainment – Straight browse and play/bet will begin to become old, and new models which overlay greater engagement and entertainment value will begin to emerge. This happened in poker. First you could sit and play but then tournaments came and gamified the experience and straight sit and play became old. We will see acceleration of change in 2017 which further blurs the lines between old gambling and new entertainment.

Consolidation – Related to technology ownership, innovation, new models and disruption consolidation will accelerate but not in large scale dinosaur deals. We will see the dawning of the critical importance of technology ownership and control to be able to play on the new stage and acquisitions will accelerate as operators seek to own and control their technology and innovation destinies.

Chris Welch, CEO, PKR Technologies Ltd

Consolidation will continue to be driven in part by rising costs. The increasing complexity and cost of running multi-jurisdiction licences, together with markets like Australia closing to casino and poker, will lead to more deals with the big getting bigger. William Hill will at some point in 2017 become part of this trend although my crystal ball  doesn’t tell me with who. Ladbrokes Coral will take some time to bed in and the threat of government action on FOBTs remains a concern for those with shops, but Jim Mullen is a safe pair of hands and this will turn it around. Over at GVC, Kenny Alexander is known to have one more big deal in him and I see it in the stars for 2017.

eSports betting continues to expand. As sportsbooks look to grow in an ever competitive marketplace, eSports will become ever more mainstream with younger segments of the market.  Personally whilst I can understand the attraction of football betting the idea that you bet on teams shooting each other in a virtual world is to say the least mind-boggling. It’s taking a while for the major sportsbooks to catch on to the trend and actually understand it enough to run profitable books on it, after all to price a market you need odds compilers who understand their “ Fanatics” from their “Evil Geniuses”, but for younger punters this is real entertainment worth a punt.

Donald Trump will announce a federal bill to open the US to all forms of online gambling to generate millions in vital tax dollars that currently leak overseas. Ok I admit this is a long shot  but then so was Trump for President. Trump is a deal maker and whilst the right wing of the Republican party and vested interest from some land-based operators may influence his thinking, he is very much his own man and from a business perspective and a tax perspective it really is a no brainer. Plus if the Mexicans won’t pay for his “wall” perhaps tax from a properly regulated online gambling market in the US can…you heard it here first!