Egaming industry predictions for 2018 - including bespoke platforms and consumer protection

Andrew Daniels, managing director, Degree 53

1. Bespoke platforms – More and more operators are looking to move their services over to their own bespoke gaming platforms as they grow and develop products further. There’s a rising demand for fully customised technology to take control over the gaming services and rely much less on third-party software. A bespoke platform can significantly cut down operational costs and give more freedom in terms of what the operator can offer to its users. Having full control over the gaming platform could really help the company grow its services, address customer demand and scale up the business to be able to roll out new features. It’s a big decision and doesn’t suit every operator, however, it pays off in the long run.

2. Business intelligence – Gaming operators are very data-driven as there are so many different transactions taking place on a daily basis. This information is important for tracking user patterns to customise offers and bonuses, as well as monitoring problem behaviour and financial risk. This is why it’s essential to invest in business intelligence systems to ensure all this data can be processed and analysed as efficiently as possible for daily operations. Using data streaming to track real-time events will be even more prominent, as it allows to process smaller bits of data quicker and enables the business respond to the events taking place on-site. This can include capitalising on customer behaviour by offering new bonuses, preventing fraudulent activity and problem gamblers. Having a robust business intelligence can further help to develop machine learning systems to process this data automatically and help different departments utilise it efficiently.

3. New regulatory requirements – It’s a big year for compliance changes with both GDPR and GAMSTOP coming into play in 2018. Operators may have to reduce new feature output to deliver these within the timeframe. There will be a bigger push for clarity over where and how customer data is used, as well as providing reassurance about its storage and security to the public. There’s also more focus from the regulators to  prevent problem gambling and help users notice this behaviour. Operators will need to implement a number of self-exclusion features to protect these players.

Clive Hawkswood, CEO, Remote Gambling Association

1. My first prediction is more than that, it’s close to being a sure thing. Unless we can successfully shift the debate on consumer protection, 2018 will be twelve months of being beasted by government, politicians, the media and assorted regulators. To say we are currently a soft target would be a massive understatement. The knives are being sharpened and will come out in large numbers once the outcome of the DCMS review is published. Gaming machines are front and centre in that, but advertising and wider social responsibility measures are not far behind.

2. There will be a collective panic that none of us are ready for the introduction of GDPR in 2018. Everyone wants certainty and nobody is capable of providing it. The Article 29 Working Group is still consulting on key areas of GDPR and partly because of that the ICO guidance can only at best be partial. As is often the case when danger threatens we will be looking for safety in numbers and producing our own guidance before inviting the ICO and Gambling Commission to contribute to it.

3. Reflecting that every cloud has a silver lining, the online gambling market despite all these headwinds will continue to show comparatively strong growth. If the UK as perhaps the most mature market can still achieve double digit growth then we must be doing something right.  The knowledge and experience of being successful in regulated markets will deliver dividends as more potentially lucrative markets such as Brazil and, dare we say it, the USA open up.