Look into the history of any successful online industry and you’ll see a story of innovation fuelled by growing consumer demand.
From e-commerce to online banking to online gambling, the businesses behind these industries have share a common trait: a constant urge to innovate, involving the incorporation of the latest technologies into their own services.
The online gambling industry has been around since the first days of the internet in the 1990s and it hasn’t stopped innovating. From the basic, early offerings to today’s high-powered, glamorous online casinos, the gambling industry has been a continuous innovator and technology adopter.
Here is the latest innovation taking place in the online gambling industry.
Mobile innovation
While most of the online gambling industry’s growth in the first couple of decades took place on desktop, growth has been fuelled in the last few years by the move to mobile. Like e-commerce companies, online gambling operators understand where the winds are blowing: on to people’s smartphones and tablets. The top online gambling sites and gaming manufacturers have responded accordingly. Gaming developers like Microgaming and NetEnt now develop their games with mobile screen dimensions in mind. All the top online gambling sites, from online casinos to online sportsbooks and online bingo operators, either have a mobile gambling app or mobile-optimized website that can be accessed from a smartphone browser, check some of them in here.
Blockchain
Blockchain is best known as the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, but it is also much more than that. Online gambling companies are just beginning to understand the power of Blockchain technology to transform and clean up the industry. As Forbes has noted, Blockchain can solve problems associated with the online gambling industry. For example, it could store records of all games and bets, their results, and the amounts that were won and paid out. As a result, players will always have access to the transaction history, enabling to confirm that the system paid out in full and that the odds weren’t rigger. In other words, Blockchain can improve online gambling’s reputation, bringing in new audiences that might have been reluctant until now.
eSports Betting
Sports betting has been popular for about as long as sports have been around, and the sports betting market is now worth trillions of dollars thanks to the growth of online sports betting. The latest development in sports is what is known as eSports – competitions in the gaming arena. Savvy online bookmakers have caught on to this growing area. Many sportsbooks are now partnering with eSports and gaming operators to penetrate this market. A number of top online sportsbooks offer betting markets for eSports tournaments. It’s only early days, and this segment of the online gambling market is only going to grow.
Virtual Reality
Virtual reality and augmented reality are no longer the future – these technologies are already here. VR, in particular, is set to become a major part of the online gambling market. The launch of VR headsets like the Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR, and Samsung VR, has brought virtual reality into the gaming sphere. The next step is for VR to enter online gambling, and a number of developers have already begun working hard to make this a reality. For example, several early-stage VR casinos have already launched. NetEnt, one of the world’s leading online gambling manufacturers, is among the big names to have brought out some test versions of virtual reality slots. It won’t be long before VR slots, VR poker, and other virtual reality games become staples of the online gambling experience.
