Online gambling trends in 2020

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STICPAY

4 min readFeb 19, 2020

STICPAY as a payment system is widely used in the regulated gambling field. Being a technological company, we are curious how technology changes the industry. Here are some findings on this topic.

Virtual Reality

On the market, some online casinos provide an authentic gaming experience where players can explore the virtual casino.

Advantages are:

VR technology gives players the chance to enjoy all the experiences of their land-based casino without leaving the house, staying within the comfort of their own home. Online gamblers are able to play face-to-face with their opponents
Players are also able to chat with other players — social gambling. A lot of positive users comments on forums showing that they enjoy playing and talking with people around the world.

Possible disadvantages:

Expensive for some users: for VR online casino users need to buy the VR equipment (such as headsets, headphones, sensors, controllers etc). In average it costs $400+
VR is very immersive

Nowadays, we know players who have VR technology such as: Microgaming with a virtual reality roulette game based on Oculus technology, online casino software provider NetEnt with VR games Jack’s World VR and Gonzo’s Quest, SlotsMillion VR, others.

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning

Firstly, the development of AI influences the customization of games for users. AI analyses players’ preferences in terms of game selection and offers a personalised welcome page with suggestions according to their preferences. It can help users to save time for searching for the right game.

AI can also be used in areas such as customer support. Some casinos already use chatbots to give the answers on queries.

Two of the most interesting ways AI can be applicable in online gambling are:

Protection against cheating users: AI software that can track cheating players and detect fraud by analysing patterns, which helps operators to prevent frauding.
Detection of gambling addiction: the system can potentially detect players’ behaviour and stages of gambling addiction.

More Blockchain casinos

Blockchain technology is already being utilised in the casino industry, and there are some decentralized betting platforms on the market. Blockchain casinos and bitcoin casinos are different platforms. Bitcoin casinos could not be built on blockchain technology. It could be a standard technology casino which accepts crypto currencies as a payment method.

But blockchain casino are operating with a crypto platform, an open-ledger decentralised system which gives the industry such advantages as:

actions are proceeded very fast and anonymous
information of transactions is stored in a public smart contract and transparent, users or operators are not able to manipulate data
independent auditing of game fairness as everyone can see that slots are randomly generated right in the code of smart contract of casino
there are also miners, independent participants in process who validate actions of users and operators what adds more transparency and decentralization to the process and results of games

However, crypto currency and blockchain as technology are a regulated industry and blockchain gambling platforms should be cryptocurrency licensed.

The issue why it doesn’t grow so fast is that, at the moment, there are not so many blockchain developers in gambling industry and still, in many countries, crypto currencies and blockchain status is not clear from the regulators’ perspective.

Social and Mobile Gambling

Players can accept challenges, play community slots, participate in discussion boards, chatting in VR. 2020 should also be the year of improvements in mobile gambling. Still, many online casinos offer only browser-based mobile games while more than 60% of traffic is usually mobile.

Telegram app for online casino

Developers can use Telegram API and source code to create Telegram-like messaging applications on Telegram platform free of charge. There are several casinos who made Telegram gambling bots for the Telegram audience community.

Telegram Messenger went further than all other messengers in protecting the users data from giving it to 3rd party and made all actions end-to-end encrypted. The app became a platform of networking for many gamers, traders and blockchain experts.

Huge community, good usability for building app and easy authentication processes are the main advantages for online casinos. For users are benefits that they can do slots, read news or send messages at the same time.

It’s still a know-how within iGaming software companies but there are a few online casinos built on the Telegram app platform.

Here are the main trends list once more time: