Egaming industry predictions for 2017 - part 7

Dario Arruda, CEO of XCaliber (Cherry’s B2B Technology arm)

Security in egaming will become one of the hottest topics  – We’ve seen some major disruptions in 2016 and I’m sure this trend is going to continue next year. Some operators have been under siege at times and tech leaders will be putting more emphasis and effort into securing business continuity. For the past few years, the focus has been mainly on product development and expanding into new markets, but security is vital too. Operators have to make sure they are able to cope with attacks and protect themselves as well as their customers.

The continuing adoption of omni-channel strategies – Mobile growth will have been included in these predictions for the past few years and it will continue going in its upward trajectory in 2017. Some companies have been slow to the party when it comes to mobile and they can’t afford to wait any longer. Mobile is certain to become the biggest revenue stream for operators in the future and adopting an omni-channel strategy will be imperative for those that want to boost player engagement. It’s something we have put a lot of effort into at XCaliber and we will continue to do so.

Messaging and real-time engagement will be a key battleground – Customers are rightfully becoming more demanding and expect the very best when it comes to the overall experience within casinos or sportsbooks. This comes from the fact there are more cross product experiences now. Players from traditional console gaming are also getting involved with egaming, so operators need to closely consider messaging and real-time engagement if they want to excite and hold on to these customers. The importance of personalisation will continue to grow.

Andrew West, head of poker at Unibet

Bots become a bigger topic of conversation – Bots are better than humans at most FLHE formats, and are arguably now better than us at NLHE heads-up Sit & Go. Other formats aren’t safe – players have found bots with millions of dollars of high stakes winnings on even the biggest sites. It won’t stop there. Bots will continue to improve and sites will need to improve at catching them.

Online poker to show green shoots –  For the first year in a long time, there’re reasons to be optimistic about poker. Legislative progress is one thing, but liquidity sharing discussions between the closed countries is probably even more important. In fact, at the time of writing, four major sites are up year-on-year (Adjarabet, MPN, Unibet, Winamax), compared to two at this stage of 2015 and 2014. What’s more, new sites are coming, with Luckychewy’s and Phil Galfond’s the most well-known. Who else might be rebuilding their site for 2017?

Legislative progress – This year we’ve had more (non-US) movement than ever, and in 2017 I’m sure we all hope for the trend to continue.  Is it time for something solid to happen in Sweden or Holland?