Industry predictions for 2021: affordability and diversification

Clive Hawkswood, RAIG chairman

Clive Hawkswood, RAIG

2005 Gambling Act review

For the British gambling industry, the dominant theme in 2021 will obviously be how the gambling review shapes up.

The list of issues will be long, but I’d like to put down a marker on a couple of them. The first is fundamental and yet it seems to have been lost in the debate so far. Quite simply, it is the need to have agreed metrics by which the success or failure of any new regulation and legislation can be measured against, especially when it comes to safer gambling.

Nobody can question the amount of activity in this area. However, problem gambling levels have remained relatively static since 2005. Is that a success or a failure?  It strikes me that 15 years on and after 13 years of Gambling Commission licensing, there should be an objective answer. So, I hope this will be an opportunity for the government to set clear and measurable goals to avoid another decade of drifting from one worthy initiative to another without seemingly ever knowing how really effective they are.

Affordability

The second issue is that in a laudable attempt to make gambling safer, the government may easily overlook the interests of the vast majority of gamblers.  They have no lobby groups and for those enjoying gambling as part of their normal leisure activities, why would it even occur to them to take part in a consultation?

A case in point is the Commission’s consultation on, among other things, affordability. I will declare a vested interest here because I’m a director of a company called beBettor which provides an affordability solution for operators. However, it is non-invasive and provides automated checks. That is in contrast to some of the options being considered which could require a huge number of account holders, the vast majority of whom will not be problem gamblers or money-launderers, to justify that they can afford their level of gambling. The principle is admirable, but somebody needs to understand how this will be perceived by ordinary punters. We are constantly told that there is no public confidence in the gambling industry, and yet here we are expecting them to hand over every detail of their financial lives.  Be in no doubt that huge numbers will baulk at such requests.  It would be a terrible own goal for those in power if in seeking to solve one problem they merely created a different one.’

Andreas Koeberl, CEO, BetGames.TV

Andreas Koeberl, BetGames.TV

Back to the USP

Suppliers will need to focus on a clear USP again if they want to stand out. We’ve seen many delivering ‘slot number 3,000’ – which is saturating the market with content that does very little towards a clear long-term value proposition.

The market consolidation and M&A activity that we’ve seen this year, such as the interesting marriage of Red Tiger, NetEnt and Evolution – has no doubt exacerbated this situation further. Operators are already desperate for genuine innovation that can help them to drive acquisition and retention through having a differentiator. We’re seeing this especially in the live dealer vertical, where games have to be more qualitative and professional to offer any form of staying power.

Diversification and agility

2020 will go down as the first time the betting industry may have noticed that it is not totally invincible. Events from March onwards meant that operators and suppliers were forced to become agile again and reinvent themselves within days. We’ve seen great examples where this reinvention has worked amazingly well, and these brands will no doubt become role models for others during 2021.

As part of this, re-learning what we thought we knew about player behaviour is going to be key. After all, who thought that alternative sports such as table tennis could hold such impressive retention rates on accumulators even when mainstream sports came back? This has shown how much diversified content will be key, and I expect to see plenty of operators continuing to pandemic-proof their supplier landscape and content strategies.

Data, gamification and attention span

There’s going to be a continued demographic shift towards digital natives. As a result, – the oversupply of content and a decreasing attention span (shorter than a goldfish, according to Microsoft), are going to create massive challenges for the attraction and retention of players. We will therefore see a surge in investment towards data-driven complementary features that cater to gamification and the personalisation of the user experience.#

Players are not going to be willing to ‘spend’ five clicks on finding their betting market or favourite game. Machine learning will have a key part to play here, especially when it comes to bonusing. We’re already seeing this demand across sports betting in central Europe, where traditional tools like deposit bonuses are becoming less attractive. A recent example I saw was €5 free bets converting better than a €300 deposit bonus! Put simply, it’s going to be imperative that new content comes with complementary tools that can be planned around data analytics and the cross-selling opportunities that come with it.