Online casino to eat first: Five industry trends for 2025

The industry re-orients as casino-first

It’s long been peculiar that the online casino vertical has played second fiddle to sports betting, despite driving the bulk of industry revenue. Often relegated as a dusty tab on a sportsbook, the recent and sustained growth of the vertical relative to sports betting, and more importantly future growth prospects, will see operators place casino at the heart of growth strategies.

In 2025, casino will eat first, when it comes to product roadmaps, internal resource allocation and supplier relationships. The savvy operators have already made this transition, while the few at the back that haven’t been paying attention will need to quickly adjust, or slowly fade into obscurity, like the dusty sportsbooks hidden in the back of Vegas casinos.

Innovation from the edges

Despite the renewed emphasis and prioritisation on casino from the industry at large, 2025 will continue to see innovation largely driven from unregulated operators and adjacent verticals such as sweepstakes.

This comes from a combination of factors: challenger brands must differentiate by necessity, but also find it easier to do so due to a lack of regulatory constraints and legacy infrastructure. And it will manifest itself across the ecosystem, from game content, user experience, through to marketing.

Sweeps backlash: all mouth, but no trousers

Speaking of sweepstakes, while the debate around the hottest topic in the industry will rumble on this year (unfortunately for us all), the emerging industry will continue to thrive with little regulatory or legislative intervention. We have seen this before with the emergence of social casino, DFS, skill gaming and the lottery courier businesses in years past.

The history of gambling is the history of canny operators building businesses right on the line of compliance, knowing that regulators and legislative bodies move incredibly slowly to unpick these nuances, even when motivated.

Social moves on-site

I appreciate that ‘let’s make it social’ is something of a running joke in the industry, but hear me out. Taking lessons from the video game and crypto communities, the past few years have seen the rise of streamers, social media influencers, Discord channels and Telegram communities, deepening engagement with the new generation of casino players.

In 2025, operators will increasingly attempt to foster communities directly on-site, rather than outsource this increasingly crucial element to third-party platforms. This will present itself in a variety of ways, from live player counts and win tickers, through to user-to-user interaction in forums and site-wide chat lobbies, as well as group play and bet-behind-streamer functionality.

AI stays behind the curtain

Artificial Intelligence is the macro-trend of our times, and it is increasingly clear that recent developments are quickly ushering in the next paradigm of computing. This has led to a rush of hasty production integrations and startups, aiming to apply AI to every facet of the casino experience.

The truth, of course, is that AI has long played a significant role in the ecosystem, from algorithmically driven ad buying on platforms like Meta, through to on-site personalisation and harm prediction. Is 2025 the year it emerges into the spotlight? Are we going to see players meaningfully engage with AI-written slot reviews, or even play AI-generated slot games?

My sense is not quite yet – while large language models have proven incredibly useful as a tool for human content creators, in unskilled hands it leads to AI slop. And with hundreds of human-developed slot titles launched each month, and countless millions of human-written words published on affiliate sites, it’s not as if the industry is suffering from a lack of content to make this AI-led approach worthwhile.

Instead, expect AI to enable skilled creators – designers, artists, writers – to increase their own output without sacrificing the human touch.

Brendan Tinnelly is a consultant focused on online casino. Having supported some of the industry’slargest brands in digital marketing strategies, he is recognised for his expertise in leveraging paid socialchannels to drive growth.

Tinnelly’s insights make him a sought-after adviser for brands looking to enhance their online presence.