Is Live Streaming the Next Big Thing for iGaming?

Posted by Harry Kane on Friday, January 15, 2021

In the year ending March 2020, online gambling recorded significant growth as it rebounded from the contraction it endured during the previous September.

More specifically, the market’s GGY increased by 8.1% to £5.7 billion during the reporting period, evolving to account for an impressive 40% of the overall industry in the UK.

There are numerous trends that continue to drive this growth, despite the regulatory and legislative challenges facing operators in the current climate. In this post, we’ll appraise the rising prevalence of live streaming and ask how this is impacting on iGaming in the UK?

How Live Streaming Has Taken the UK by Storm

In case you hadn’t noticed, the concept of live streaming has taken various industries by storm in recent times.

Historically, of course, this market was driven primarily by the video game niche, as live streaming helped to create a large number of gamer communities and boosted revenues significantly in the process.

However, the landscape has changed considerably as live streaming technology has become increasingly accessible and in-demand, with 2020 in particularly witnessing a sharp rise in the number of live cook-alongs with celebrity chefs and even real-time musical play-alongs.

Live streaming has become particularly popular amongst independent ventures and startups, as this technology provides them with an affordable and effective way of engaging potential customers online.

As a result of the continued evolution of live streaming technology (and as businesses in various markets have begun to understand the benefits of applying this), the sector is now growing at a rapid pace and expected to generate more than $70 billion in revenue by the end of 2021.

Live Streaming and iGaming – A Marriage Made in Heaven?

Interestingly, the relationship between live streaming and iGaming can be traced back to the turn of the century, when poker was enjoying huge global popularity and events such as the World Series of Poker were streamed in real-time throughout the world.

At the same time, dedicated poker television channels began to spring up across the globe, as broadcasters and event organisers sought to capitalise on the growing demand for this type of content.

However, the live streaming of poker tournaments began to decline in line with the sector’s GGY, while the rollout of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA) in the US in 2006 also made this an increasingly unprofitable endeavour.

The regulatory climate has largely shifted during the last 14 years, particularly in large iGaming markets in the US, Europe and the UK. Several states now permit online poker and casino gameplay stateside, for example, while nations such as Spain, France, Italy and Portugal have struck liquidity sharing pacts that have empowered iGaming growth across the board.

In the UK, it was the 2005 Gaming Act that laid the foundations for the £5.7 billion marketplace that exists today, while the video poker niche also recorded unexpected growth of 2.7% in the year ending March 2020.

While this hints at a potential resurgence in the demand for live streaming within the iGaming sector, we should also note that virtual sportsbooks have also made this technology increasingly accessible to customers in recent times.

Of course, not every online bookmaker offers live streaming to its customers, while some will only make this service available for specific sports and events.

However, those that do have become increasingly preoccupied with providing access to a reliable and high-quality stream, and one that enhances the online betting experience for paying customers across the board.

In many ways, the demand for live streaming has grown in line with the rise of in-play betting, which has opened up a diverse range of brand new markets and allowed sports fans to add a new dimension to the traditional viewing experience.

By streaming events and matches in real-time, betting sites have also been able to target a growing audience of spectators who like to bet on outcomes and (in some instances) showcase a form of support for their favourite teams.

For example, figures suggest that 97.4% of horse racing fans like to wager on events as they unfold, while this particularly betting niche saw its GGY rise sharply by 28.2% to nearly £653 million in the year ending March 2020.

Similarly, 86.4% of boxing fans like to wager on matchups in real-time as they watch, while the corresponding figures for tennis and football enthusiasts come in at 81.1% and 76.8% respectively.

There’s a clear takeaway here; as embracing live streaming technology has enabled operators to fully exploit the trend for in-play betting while targeting potentially larger audiences of sports fans throughout the UK.

Can Live Streaming Become a Key Market Driver for iGaming?

Clearly, there’s an existing relationship between iGaming and live streaming technologies, and one that operators have been able to leverage successful at various times during the last 20 years or so.

However, the industry will need to embrace live streaming in a more comprehensive manner if this is to become a true game-changer for iGaming operators, particularly in terms of the democratisation of the technology.

The reason for this is simple; as while brands have used in-house live streaming technologies to build niche audiences across disciplines such as poker and horse race betting, we’ve yet to see universal applications used to target a critical mass of people.

Make no mistake; the best and most successful streaming platforms tend to be agnostic, as this creates the opportunity for developers to build communities and engagement across a variety of games and applications.

In the case of iGaming brands, this would create a pressing need to make all iGaming and sports betting verticals available through live streaming over time, whether this involved allowing users to watch others play at tables or watching your favourite football team while accessing in-play betting markets.

At present, this type of universal application simply isn’t accessible, while attempting to create this would probably require players to choose a different streaming platform depending on what content that wanted to stream in real-time.

If gambling operators were able to build this type of technological infrastructure, they could ultimately identify a way of optimising the potential of live streaming technology and make this a key driver of market growth in the future.

This would also create the ideal vehicle to attract the 18 to 35 age demographics, which could become increasingly influential over the course of the next 10 years or more.