Egaming industry predictions for 2017 - part 6
In the latest of a series of articles leading up to the New Year, lawyer Giulio Coraggio and Fintan Costello of Revenue Engineers predict the big themes for 2017
Giulio Coraggio, partner, DLA Piper
International poker sharing liquidity will happen – After years of delay, it seems that 2017 will be the year. The great news is that also the UK is expected to be included in the international liquidity which will open liquidity to the whole dot.com market. I don’t know whether this will suffice to return online poker to its former glories, but it will certainly help.
Acceleration in local online gaming regulations – If international online poker liquidity happens, it will be the first time that an arrangement between European gaming regulators is translated in actual benefits in terms of increased offering. This scenario might put some pressure on other European gaming regulators such as those of Germany and the Netherlands to speed up the adoption of their online gaming regulations to avoid to remain behind the pack of other European countries.
Privacy compliance a top priority – The EU General Data Protection Regulation will introduce sanctions of up to 4% of the global turnover of the breaching entity. This would be a massive amount in the case of gaming operators. In a market where the customisation of the gaming offering and profiling are becoming exponentially relevant, a considerable amount of work will have to be done in order to comply with the terms of the European privacy regulation which introduces obligations that are completely new.
Fintan Costello, managing partner, Revenue Engineers
VR will have little impact in 2017 – I’m expecting virtual reality to continue generating plenty of headlines but not take off until a killer must-have game is launched. In order for VR to go mass market ideally the game will be made for PlayStation, which is at the right price point for broad adoption. From a gambling perspective, I’m expecting zero to little impact on the market, players will be very slow to adopt due to hardware constraints and the lack of a meaningful upgrade in play experience.
Growth of eSports – Bookmakers who specialise in only eSports to make a significant impact on the market and be the ones who capture the lion’s share of the massive market growth. The specialisation allows them to deliver a more focused and suitable experience to eSports fans that traditional bookmakers will find impossible to match. The growth in eSports will continue at pace in 2017 driven by a lot more exposure of eSports on TV.
Consolidation – I expect to see the affiliate market consolidation to continue at pace. As the biggest affiliates grow in size the average deal size will also continue to grow and I believe we will reach the point where we will see at least one mega merger among the largest affiliate companies. I also expect to see a super large affiliate buy a medium size operator or to get bought by a top tier operator.