Industry predictions for 2024: Smaller games studios face the music as player props expand

Vladimir Negine, founder of aggregation platform St8.io

Operators will no longer mix regulated and grey markets

The huge fine levied against Entain over historical allegations of bribery at a formerly owned Turkey-facing business came with another condition: that the operator must leave several other pre-regulated markets over the next 12 months. This will accelerate a major shift in the composition of regulated and grey markets in 2024.

The process is already underway. The sentiment among several brands – including some that are fairly well established – is that they are planning to move their strategies towards pre-regulated markets, because they’ve found regulated markets simply unsustainable in terms of expenses and profitability.

The flip side of this is that larger operators with a strong presence in regulated markets have a great chance to consolidate. Smaller upstarts don’t have the scale to compete in these jurisdictions anymore, and sometimes even the tier one operators struggle, as we’ve seen with Kindred’s exit from the US. With jurisdictions like Romania increasing costs for operators, incumbents can feel relatively safe in their positions.

The result will be a move towards a segregated online gaming industry, where a handful of huge brands dominate the regulated space, while competition everywhere else becomes even fiercer.

The AI revolution will take time

These prediction columns are normally the time to assert that some new technology is going to completely transform our industry over the next year. We’ve seen this story before with VR, blockchain and more.

Right now, AI is the hot topic everyone is excited about. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big advocate for finding ways to integrate cutting edge tech into real world businesses. But I think we are still some way off a true AI revolution.

Yes, we will see some interesting use cases around personal assistance, customer support and risk modelling. In other areas, I’m not convinced it will have a significant impact in 2024. Take the example of AI-powered recommendation engines, which pledge to provide deep personalisation and unique casino lobbies for every player. That’s a great vision, but the reality is that operators are not quite ready to give away control of their lobbies when there are other commercial considerations to take into account, like which providers they have on the best revenue share deal.

In short, this is about profitability and utility. Yes, AI will impact our sector, but it isn’t going to turn things on their head overnight.

It’s becoming harder than ever to succeed as a games studio

These last few years have been something of a golden age for games creators. Hundreds of small studios creating innovative new titles managed to grab a little slice of the pie. Some even found ways to quickly scale and challenge the established giants of our sector.

But the tide has begun to turn. Fierce competition and increasing costs have seen a number of studios – some of them well established – quietly close down operations recently. Sadly, I predict more will follow in 2024.

The challenge many studios face right now is that it is hard to innovate at a time when loyalty and rewards systems are already so entrenched, and only genuinely forward-thinking operators are taking the time to integrate something new.

That said, there are still opportunities for studios to stand out from the crowd. As aggregation becomes more granular, there’s a chance to act upon more detailed data and provide operators with the type of bespoke promotions and unique tournaments they love. This, alongside high-quality content and world-class account management can still be a winning combination.

Nick Cockerill, VP of product at Stats Perform

Player prop experiences will go even deeper

Shots, passes and tackles prop markets have been around for a couple of years now, but 2024 looks likely to be a year where we go even deeper into the detail of the beautiful game.

It’s already happening. A quick look at a Sky Bet market page over the last few months of 2023 and you might have noticed several betting markets you’d not seen before: player of the match, chances created, expected goals, player blocks and aerial duels.

Markets like this are appealing because they provide bettors with more ways to think about their favourite players or teams. It makes every aerial dual electric, it makes every blocked shot (that would normally lead to groans) fascinating and player of the match markets create game-long interest and make props betting more accessible to the mass market, entertainment-led bettor.

Crucially for sportsbooks and pricing providers, these markets can be scaled to thousands of games every year with accurate, reliable, low-latency data.

A calendar year with a major tournament like Euro 2024 always drives innovation and experimentation. We believe deeper prop markets and tools that help bettors think are low hanging fruit.

Interactive features in sports betting will become the norm

Sports betting continues to provide hundreds of millions of sports fans worldwide with rich entertainment. It gives sport lovers the ability to think and take opinions on what might happen. Get close to the action, the players and the moments that make sport so entertaining.

2023 saw numerous interactive features that helped bring bettors closer to the action added to many sportsbooks. For example – real-time highlights, deep player and team statistics and richer bet builder experiences to name a few.

In 2024, expect the demand for queryable APIs and interactive features that turn traditionally passive (but still hugely entertaining experiences like live streaming or browsing data to research a pre-game or in-play bet) into something far more active and engaging which is on-demand, and curatable when the customer wants it.