Next Generation of Online Gambling Will Be More Social, Engaging, and Targeted, Panel Says

Posted by Glenn Baker on March 10th, 2024

NEW YORK - The future of online gambling will be more social, more engaged with players, and more targeted to individual interests, an industry panel said Thursday.

At the Next.io conference on Internet gambling and sports betting, panelists said online gambling, still in its infancy after 10 years, already needs to change and evolve to survive.

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These will include efforts to engage bettors with the gambling company's brand, cater to bettors' preference for social media and collaborative activities, and provide an experience tailored to bettors' interests, among many other initiatives.

The next generation will need to be different," said Jonathan Dubile, vice president of U.S. operations at Playtech, a maker of online gambling and sports betting software. We need to innovate.

Seth Scholl, CEO of Las Vegas-based Fifth Street Gaming, plans to launch a Latino-themed online social casino in about two weeks, using the jefebet.com platform, which means "boss" in Spanish. He also renovated the Lucky Club Casino & Hotel in North Las Vegas last year as Hotel Hefe's Ojos Locos Sports Cantina y Casino.

"Shamefully, this market is underserved. "There are 64 million Latinos and their buying power is .5 trillion. This is what I have been practicing for 15 years in land-based casinos.

This is much more dynamic than simply opening a site in Spanish. We've built topfinlandcasinos.com that speaks to the language, the culture, and the influencers."

Customers of the social casino purchase virtual currency to use on the site, he said.

Justin Park is CEO of Betty.ca, a Canadian online slots site for women. According to him, 40-45% of the site's business comes from women playing slot games.

The site's customer service team is composed entirely of women to facilitate communication with customers, he said.

Men answer with a single word: "Yes and no." They don't even say "good-bye." Women are much more chatty."

The company also said it has noticed that many of its female clientele are looking for instant entertainment at their convenience, in between work and family responsibilities.

The average age of Betty.ca's customers is between 30 and 40, which suggests that there is still a desire for traditional gambling products, but offered in novel ways that fit where customers are now, he said.

Oliver Bartlett, vice president of gaming products at BetMGM, said one of the challenges in the future of online gambling is matching customers' interests.

Currently, we have over 3,000 games on our site," he said, suggesting that algorithms and artificial intelligence might be able to help navigate such a broad menu.

As for the industry in general, he said, "We need to find ways to get the right content to the right people at the right time."

Ed Andrews, CEO of Resorts Digital Gaming, said that customers will increasingly demand "such a personalized experience."

Carolina Pelc is CEO of BeyondPlay, which produces player engagement software that incorporates multiplayer gambling and jackpots.

Online gambling needs to recognize "the importance of community and shared experiences - people playing together," she said.

Doubilet said the core gambling products, including slots, will maintain essentially the same characteristics.

"What we will innovate is what we plug into that." A new generation of players is coming."

He used the example of the hypothetical player who, after five years, no longer wants to walk around a casino floor looking for a particular slot game. Instead, they might wear virtual reality glasses or headsets and say, "I want to look through the goggles and play here."

Perk adds. That's where innovation really matters." That's what change is all about."

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