How Can Online Casinos and Sportsbooks Continue to Evolve?
Posted by Harry Kane on Friday, February 18, 2022
Since the turn of the century, there’s no doubt that the iGaming market and online gambling have exploded in the UK. What’s more, innovation continues to drive double-digit growth in today’s marketplace, creating a sector that’s unrecognisable from 20 years ago.
This rule applies to both remote sports betting and online casino wagering, with these dominant verticals (which together account for more than 93% of the market’s total GGY) constantly evolving while being adjusted to suit increasingly stringent regulation measures. Despite this raft of innovations, the question that remains is how can further innovation help to improve the iGaming industry in the future? Here are some ideas to keep in mind.
#1. The Emergence of Virtual Reality (VR) Horse Racing
In the digital age, one of the most appealing aspects of online gambling is its ease of access. After all, players can now access a host of online casino verticals from the comfort of your own home, while the use of live dealers and increasingly authentic gameplay has helped to replicate a corporeal casino experience regardless of your physical location.
While the circumstances are a little different when it comes to remote sports betting, even this niche has benefitted from innovation in the form of in-play wagering and micro bets. These markets enable you to place a large volume of real-time bets as the action unfolds, enhancing the typical sports viewing experience and creating more immersive opportunities to make money.
When it comes to sports such as horse racing, however, there remains a considerable gap to bridge between betting online and wagering in-person at a live event. The potential to achieve this exists in the form of virtual reality (VR) horse racing, however, which is becoming an increasingly realistic prospect online.
VR-inspired horse racing would retain the key competitive elements and innate flexibility of remote betting, while also replicating an immersive and three-dimensional viewing experience through your laptop, table or smartphone. In short, it would heighten the sports betting experience without compromising on convenience, as you took your seat in the virtual stands and wagered as individual races began to unfold.
This same principle can be applied to greyhound racing, which is enduringly popular in the UK and delivers even punchier and more thrilling races nationwide. In terms of accessibility, punters would wager on a particular runner in order to secure a ticket to the virtual race in question, before enjoying a genuinely immersive betting experience that can be enjoyed by anyone with a viable Internet connection.
Not only does this elevate sports betting onto an entirely new level and transcend the virtual realm to create an increasingly realistic wagering experience, but it also lays a foundation for other sports and disciplines to follow suit. From boxing and MMA to tennis and football, the notion of virtual reality betting could become a mainstream concept that helps punters to completely reimagine sports wagering in the digital age.
2. The Rise of Narrative in the World of Slot Gaming
In the iGaming market, there can be absolutely no doubt that slots are king. This is borne out by the numbers, with the online slots vertical alone accounting for more than two-thirds (nearly 70%) of the total online GGY in the UK.
Of course, there are several trends which have inspired the relentless growth of slot gaming. For example, slots are accessible and easy-to-understand games of chance, making them the ideal option for casual gamblers who are simply looking for a fun way to pass the time.
Remember, the average British gambler wagers just £133 per annum overall (or £2.57 a week), while most slots feature a minimum stake level of between £0.1o and £0.40 when you combine this with the fact that slots tend to offer competitive return-to-player (RTP) rates in excess of 96%, it’s little wonder that this vertical is so popular online.
Another key trend in the slot gaming niche is the blurring of the lines between various pop culture markets, through the development of themed titles that tap into iconic films, television shows and cartoons from across the globe.
Interestingly, this has also breathed fun and engaging narratives into the slot market vertical, arguably attracting a broader range of casual players over time. The most popular narratives have also spawned numerous sequels, creating franchises that help to hook players and generate casinos huge revenues.
These franchises could be improved, however, as many appear as a selection of disparate games with a single (usually character-driven) hook. Instead, developers could create interconnected sequels which chart a character’s journey and develop story arcs further, engaging customers across different types of games.
To understand the potential of this, look at the success of video game franchises such as Final Fantasy. There’s absolutely no reason why such successes cannot be replicated in the online slots vertical, with developers more than capable of further expanding their narratives and taking every opportunity to attract and retain casual gamblers.
This would also help online casinos to optimise the GGY generated by slots in the wake of any subsequent betting cap, with the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Gambling-Related Harm having proposed a maximum wagering threshold of just £2 in the vertical.
#3. Introducing Customisable Avatars in Metaverse Casinos
We live in the age of the metaverse, which throughout the history of science fiction has referred to a network of three-dimensional, virtual realms that are focused primarily on social connection. Meta (previously Facebook) has recently developed its own metaverse, of course, which comprises multiple 3D spaces that enable registered users to interact, learn, socialise and collaborate using their own virtual identities.
However, significant concerns have been raised about Facebook’s own Metaverse, particularly in terms of user privacy and who will own the virtual identities and avatars that participate and even spend their hard-earned money within the space.
However, the concept of the metaverse is broad and diverse, with a number of particularly fascinating realms opening in the cryptocurrency space. Virtual worlds built upon third-generation blockchains (such as Decentraland) are completely decentralised, which means that virtual personas can remain anonymous and ensure that their most sensitive data remains private.
Interestingly, Decentraland allows inhabitants to purchase virtual land using native tokens, with the iconic games’ brand Atari having invested in two such packages during the last 18 months. They’ve subsequently built a casino featuring Atari-themed iterations of roulette and blackjack, which is open to virtual players and provides a truly three-dimensional gambling experience.
With similar virtual casinos springing up on different blockchains, the metaverse is clearly creating an entirely new and exciting dimension in terms of accessible and completely anonymous online gambling. Here, players will only be recognisable by their unique and customisable avatars, while they can use their native crypto tokens to wager securely and privately online.
Of course, we’re only at the beginning of this technological advancement, and there’s plenty of scope for further advancement in the future. For example, avatars could be evolved to create accurate depictions of our real visages, while advanced facial recognition software may also be introduced to allow the expression of certain expressions during gameplay. Similarly, there may be further developments in terms of haptics and gesture technology, enabling players to demonstrate and interpret body language in real-time.
This could have significant connotations in the world of poker, where the opportunity to read opposing players and identify physical tells has been lost when transitioning between off and online gambling platforms. In general terms, however, the cultivation of metaverse gambling and customisable avatars represent the start of something big in the iGaming space, while offering significant room for improvement when wagering online.
#4. The Rise of Micro Betting
In-play betting represents big business in the sports betting realm, with live and real-time wagers having created more immersive viewing experience for sports fans and connected punters to a much more diverse range of betting markets. In terms of the former, it’s thought that some 97.4% of horse racing audiences bet on the races that they watch, while 86.4% of boxing fans also wager on their favourites fights and match-ups.
Thanks to such high and sustained levels of demand, it should come as no surprise that in-play wagers currently account for around 35% of all online sports betting. This vertical has also introduced the term ‘micro betting’, which is often used interchangeably with in-play wagering despite carrying a slightly different definition. In fact, micro betting is a subset of in-play wagering, and one that’s concerned with the smallest possible outcomes and actions that comprise much wider events.
For example, while in-play betting in tennis typically involves backing the winner of the current or next set, those engaged in micro wagering will bet on the identity of the player who wins the next point. Similarly, snooker fans can already bet on the winner of the next frame or which player will compile the next strategy. However, new micro betting markets include betting on the colour of the next ball to be potted, creating a potentially huge range of options to punters in real-time.
Micro betting is definitely on the rise and unlikely to slow down anytime soon, particularly in the burgeoning US sports wagering market. According to JP Morgan, the latter will be worth $9.25 billion by 2025, with micro betting driving a significant share of this sizable marketplace. The trend is also catching on in the UK, and it’s definitely helping to create an increasingly immersive sports betting market and one that allows punters to make smaller but potentially rewarding wagers during the course of a particular event.
#5. Pushing Esports into the Consumer Mainstream
Prior to the coronavirus pandemic, the UK esports sector was growing rapidly as part of a much larger, global marketplace. To this end, it had evolved to represent just under 8% of the global market by the end of 2019, with the esports vertical supporting approximately £111.5 million in gross valued added (GVA) during the same period. Incredibly, a major global esports event could generate 238 full-time equivalents (FTEs) of employment and £12 million in GVA for the treasury.
During and after the pandemic, however, esports has grown at even quicker rate, thanks largely to its increased market presence and innate capacity for delivering data-driven consumer understanding and superior opportunities for in-game wagering. Because of this, participants and bettors can enjoy much fairer games and verticals over time, particularly in terms of the real-time odds and the rewards on offer.
There are further improvements that can be made in this space, however, many of which are also already being introduced through new innovations. Certainly, the further development and spread of low-latency 5G networks is set to bolster the esports market and increase viewership, while this will also coincide with the launch of cutting-edge, next generation consoles.
A larger number of sportsbooks are also set to offer esports betting markets (both ante post and in-play) to their UK customers, in order to capitalise on the type of innovation referenced above and the rapid rise in the global esports audience. In 2022 alone, for example, viewership figures are forecast to grow by +8.7% year-on-year to reach 532 billion, with the number of new and occasional viewers accounting for 271 million people within this audience.
This growth will create a burgeoning betting market for operators to cash in on, while encouraging them to develop new markets and competitive prices over time. Certainly, we’re bound to see new esports markets and opportunities evolve as the vertical shifts further into the mainstream, and this will undoubtedly be an exciting space to watch in the near and medium-term.