As this blog’s reader will remember, my company signed a partnership with Gambling.com, towards the end of last year. The initial results of that partnership I’m confident will be availble for all to see before the end of next month.
Anyway as a result of this, I found myself yesterday at the International Gaming Exhibition, at London’s Earls Court. This proved to be a very interesting outing indeed.
Gambling has been a sector hit hard by the recession. Betting is something that most people only do with discretionary, disposable income, the very sort of income that tends to disappear with unemployment and recession.
Real world gambling had been faring particularly badly, with Atlantic city hit by a financial tsunami of increased local competition,partial smoking bans and lack of destinations. Las Vegas also suffered a decline, but not as marked as that by Atlantic City.
The big question was of course whether the need for new forms of tax revenue would mean a liberalisation of the US attitude to online gambling. The sentiment definitely seemed to be that it was likely that online gambling restrictions would be relaxed, but this would still take sometime to come through.
The vexed question of whether online gambling was cannabilistic on real world gaming was spoken about with reference to poker. Ten years ago it seemed like poker rooms were likely to phased out of casinos. Online poker though has been a phenomenon, bringing together social networking and gambling and has achieved such a level of popularity that it seems to have rescued competitive poker from the abyss.
As with other industries it was argued, online augmented rather than diluted the offline presence, and as future growth is predicted for online gambling this would be good for the sector overall. This is good news for the operators, but how can gambling, which can be seen as the ultimate disposable service industry contribute to online monetization as a whole.
Personally I think that we’re just scratching the surface here, and poker, fantasy leagues etc, do offer a great way of creating a social environment in which gambling takes place. With the success of the likes of Sun Bingo, and somewhat less so, Sun Poker, gambling I believe will becoming an increasngly popular way to monetise audiences.
Gambling will never be for everyone, but it will I’m sure be one of a variety of ways in which big media owners seek to draw and tie in their audiences into monetizable activity. Whether it be through Bingo, Blackjack or financial spreadbetting, there are enough gambling options to appeal to a wide variety of demographics.
Of course in this case I could be wrong, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
Rob, One