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Recognising reality At the start of a new decade, the iGaming industry in Asia is still seen as a land of opportunity, though companies are perhaps more realistic about the hurdles they may face, coming to terms with the fact that sheer market size is not a guarantee of success for all.
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n this edition of Asia Gaming Briefings, we dedicate our focus section to online gambling in Asia, looking at the outlook for 2020 and beyond. After a difficult year in 2019, with Cambodia shutting its door to the industry and the Philippines putting a moratorium on further growth, we take stock of the state-of-play, emerging trends and marketing tactics. Our first article delves into the potential of blockchain in gambling. The technology is attracting significant attention, especially for its uses in igaming, however, the land-based sector too is starting to take notice. We speak to Melco Resorts & Entertainment’s Global Chief Information Officer Avery Palos, who is widely recognised as being one of the leading figures when it comes to blockchain in gaming. He outlines some of the ways the technology is being trialled across the company’s integrated resorts and in particular discusses an ambitious project to use blockchain to help operators meet their responsibilities when it comes to responsible gaming. Our second piece tackles the thorny issue of marketing online services in Asia. A growing number of companies are using influencer marketing to attract highly social media savvy clients across the region. The practice is evolving from the use of a high-profile, celebrity name to a more nuanced and authentic approach, seeking characters who have more affinity with the brands and products they are seeking to promote. We look at the
Asia Gaming Briefings | January 2020
advantages of this approach to connecting with new players and the potential pitfalls. We also look at the general outlook for the industry after last year’s setbacks and how companies operating in Asia will need to adopt the best practices possible when it comes to their compliance departments, in the absence of any meaningful regulation on the ground. For our final article, we examine some of the trends in content provision across the region. We find that there are very few areas where online operators can argue that there is a one-size fits all solution. Instead there is a need for products that are increasingly tailored to individual markets. On top of that, within these markets, personalisation is also gaining in prominence. The use of jackpots and individual promotional tools is evolving quickly as improvements in technology and data collection allow firms to swiftly identify player preferences. Unfortunately, what isn’t discussed in these pages is the hope that these grey and black Asian markets will become fully regulated igaming jurisdictions any time soon. Hopes for incremental progress were dashed by Beijing’s dictat last year, calling on its Asian neighbours to help stamp out the scourge of online gaming, which it blames for rising social crime at home. In terms of regulation, attention this year is more likely to be focused on India, where individual states continue to test the bounds of the law when it comes to online skill-based gaming.
