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TECH AND INNOVATION
W alking around the floors of ICE London half a decade ago , visitors were greeted with sweeping visions of the future . Suppliers ushered journalists into back rooms to showcase their latest cutting-edge creations , from immersive virtual reality slots to smart devices promising new frontiers for online betting and gaming . Experiencing these innovations , it was easy to picture a world where our everyday reality was just one of three , along with the augmented ( AR ) and the virtual ( VR ). Where the blockchain offered a new era of transparent gaming and where every household owned a smart fridge equipped with the latest betting apps .
These days , however , many of these trends have fizzled out without a trace – and it is hard to avoid feeling that the industry may have scaled back its ambitions . Have companies really lost their appetite for burgeoning technologies , or are they simply taking a more measured approach to exploring the trends of the future ?
MAKING THE CASE FOR INNOVATION
Matt Howard , partner at consultancy firm Propus Partners and CEO of sports betting startup OrbitalBet , believes there are clear reasons for the death of many of the hot trends of the past decade .
“ What it always comes back to , for me , is what is the improvement you ’ re gaining or the problem you ’ re solving by building this new product feature or using this new technology ?” he asks . “ If you can ’ t answer that question , to be perfectly honest , then you ’ re probably not in a good place to start throwing money at those things .”
For Howard , the short-lived excitement around VR is a case in point . When Google first launched its Google Lens headset back in 2017 , many people
HAS THE INDUSTRY LOST ITS TASTE FOR CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGIES ?
Betting via virtual reality and smart home devices never took off and innovation in gambling has seemingly slowed , writes Imogen Goodman . So what ’ s next and how do consumer behaviours dictate how operators innovate ?
expected widespread adoption among mainstream consumers – and not just hardcore gamers . Within the gambling industry , development teams looked for new ways to integrate this up-andcoming technology into their products , including VR headsets on their stands at major trade shows and conferences .
“ Unfortunately these things didn ’ t take off in the way the world expected them to ,” says Howard . “ Perhaps with the VR and AR stuff , the industry wasn ’ t necessarily asking for them . People weren ’ t sitting at home thinking that these were things they wanted to do with gambling .”
CRYPTO AND BLOCKCHAIN
But not every new technology is ultimately deemed a bad fit for the industry . Other trends have proved to be a lot stickier – but only as far as operators are really in need of them . One of the best examples of this is cryptocurrency : a trend that has boomed both within the industry and outside of it .
Since 2019 , Bitcoin – the largest and best-known cryptocurrency – has risen in value by more than 2,500 %, while numerous jurisdictions like Malta and Japan have incorporated crypto into their financial systems . In the online betting and gaming world , these currencies promise fast-paced , low-fee transactions that also have the benefit of anonymity ; clear advantages for operators and their customers .
However , when it comes to blockchain , the technology underpinning cryptocurrency , the use cases are far less clear . “ Loads of companies have looked at whether we should build an entire platform on blockchain . But what ’ s blockchain doing ? Why is blockchain
14 • ISSUE 137 • ICE 2025