before I get into my look ahead at 2017, let's appear lower back at my 2016 predictions made here on this website 365 days in the past. On the whole, I did okay, predicting a troublesome slog for each day myth sports, more consolidation in UK/Europe and that PokerStars' New Jersey launch wouldn't dramatically enhance the state's on-line poker market. Oh, and that i additionally envisioned that James Packer and Marian Carey would go splitsville, however in hindsight, that become in reality a gimme.
On the flip side, I erred once I anticipated Pennsylvania would join the united states intrastate online gambling ranks in 2016, in spite of the fact that one-half of the state's legislative our bodies did vote thumbs up on the plan. I additionally goofed via inserting faith in Australian politicians' capacity to respect truth and approve, as opposed to outright ban, on-line in-play activities betting. live and be taught.
BITCOIN EATS every little thing
the one largest construction in 2017 is already right here and growing to be in magnitude with each and every passing day. Bitcoin officially 'arrived' in 2016 because of adoption through some farsighted mainstream operators and even the united kingdom playing fee accepted that the floor became transferring under their regulatory feet.
Mark my words: Bitcoin is at last going to consume the whole global online playing industry and the primary classes of this meal are already being digested. reasonably apart from releasing gambling sites from the anti-competitive dictates of govt-imposed payment blockading, the blockchain know-how underpinning Bitcoin is impulsively making the position of gaming regulators obsolete.
feel of it: with the blockchain documenting each financial transaction, spin of a roulette wheel and roll of the cube, gamblers can act as their personal regulators, with any examples of shady behavior on full display for all the world to look and market forces punishing any operator stupid enough to think they could get away with it. There are lots of things that Bitcoin has been estimated to make redundant, but i'm guessing the theory of 'have faith' wasn't high on each one of these lists. Yet here we are.
Bitcoin has undoubtedly benefited from the reckless policies of important bankers, who've severely undermined self assurance in the durability of fiat currencies. With its finite volume hardwired into the expertise, Bitcoin is increasingly seen as a safe haven greater corresponding to gold than the totally speculative funding it as soon as was, and operators who save their loot on the blockchain will find themselves with further capital to gasoline growth plans.
PHILIPPINES LOSS IS ANTIGUA'S profit
it could possibly not have gotten lots play from the U.S.- and European-concentrated playing media, however this summer's election of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte had a seismic influence on the tremendous Asian-dealing with online gambling sector, and the fluidity of the circumstance will possible proceed in 2017.
Operators fortunate satisfactory to have scored one of PAGCOR's coveted new Philippine Offshore Gaming Licenses (POGO) are counting their blessings, whereas these whose purposes didn't make the reduce will should search out new jurisdictions to name domestic, now not simplest for licensing but also for hosting the immense enterprise procedure outsourcing (BPO) departments that assist these on-line operations.
As success would have it, Antigua is within the process of revising its gaming laws, with the express goal of attracting more online licensees. Antigua has a BPO labor force with a skill level equal to or surpassing that obtainable within the Philippines, and Antigua's leaders appear decided to craft a brand new tax and charge constitution in order to prove inviting for operators set adrift by the Philippines shakeup.
UK RESTRICTIONS forward
the uk government hasn't been too kind to its making a bet trade in fresh years and that i suspect greater abuse is coming in 2017. It seems very nearly certain that having a bet sites will face new curbs on television advertising, forcing businesses to position more effort into growing viral videos that get their message across.
changes additionally seem imminent on the fastened-odds making a bet terminals entrance, because the steady deluge of alarmist stories and dubious facts spewed by way of anti-gambling campaigners and the reliably hyperbolic daily Mail seem to have reached essential mass. The campaigners can also no longer get their preferred £2 highest wager but some colossal stake discount is coming, and perhaps a reduction within the variety of FOBTs per making a bet store as well.
Any success on this front will most effective embolden the outrage brigades, leading to calls for equivalent restrictions on the FOBT's on-line equivalent. They could not obtain an internet curb in 2017, however as we have viewed with the FOBT debacle, persistence will pay off.
CONSOLIDATION
The merger and acquisition mania that gripped the united kingdom market in the past few years will proceed in 2017, with everybody wondering why these loopy kids at 888 Holdings and William Hill can't admire that they're best for every different. peculiarly seeing that adding 888's proprietary software suite would permit Hills to finally tell Playtech the place to get off.
i can see GVC Holdings making a play for a further online-simplest operator, most likely taking a 2d shot at Amaya Gaming, until David Baazov returns with a third bid backed with the aid of magic beans and cereal box-tops.
whereas the M&A mantra is that scale is the handiest issue a good way to enable playing agencies to survive future regulatory shocks, I cannot assist noting that all the exercise includes public companies, whose good professionals and administrators award themselves big bundles of shareholder money for pulling off these offers, even with whether they make strong company feel.
Which likely explains why, regardless of sitting on a money mountain that Sir Edmund Hillary would find intimidating, the privately held Bet365 has yet to look the deserve to entertain any acquisition performs. due to the fact that the business's properly shareholders, pros and administrators are the entire same people, there's little incentive to reward themselves with their personal money for doing a deal at any charge.
NEW MARKETS
Brazil will ultimately put its political turmoil in the back of it long sufficient to circulate its lengthy-delayed gaming law, but while international casino operators will have a container day bidding for land-based licenses, the on-line gambling part may be restrained to a single know-how business enterprise to a state-run monopoly. and unlike the eu Union, there is no common market court to which operators can make anti-aggressive appeals.
people desperately want India to legalize sports betting and other playing items but it's no longer going to take place in 2017, at least, not on the countrywide level. I think about a staggered rollout not not like the united states market, a protracted, tedious state-by-state procedure that creates the dreaded patchwork quilt of legally attainable options, with option shown to native operators.
Germany will cop to the inevitable and legalize online casino and poker items when it formalizes its new activities betting guidelines. The country's bought 1,000,000 refugees just in from the core east and the govt can use the entire tax earnings it will possibly get.
a couple of European regulated markets will make decent on their promise to permit go-border sharing of online poker liquidity, only to find that the poker enterprise in these markets does not get the major raise they expected. Poker will remain a key a part of full-spectrum on-line operators' product suite, but it's not the draw it as soon as become and certain in no way may be once again.
Australia is going to find that banning on-line on line casino, poker and in-play activities having a bet works in fact well... on paper. just ask China, where all online playing is banned, and yet by hook or by crook the total Asian-facing online playing trade caters to chinese language gamblers. The simplest factor Australia's ban will assure is jobs for life for the handful of people tasked with compiling the day by day lists of on-line gambling mirror websites that want blocking.
NEW items
The so-known as Millennial generation's disinterests in casinos' common electronic gambling providing hurried the appearance of new skill-based mostly video games in a couple of opt for casinos this year, and whereas the jury is still out on their means to attract a major crowd, or not it's hard not to peer extra of those forms of items migrating online.
not all operators will welcome this shift. In most instances, gamification will require clean eyes and ears, and it won't be effortless for many old college gambling CEOs to defer to the unproven opinions of some twenty-anything hipster.
at some point, one or two bolder groups can also try to enhance epic playing items with intricate storylines that mimic the large Xbox and pstitles, however for the arriving 12 months, the most we can expect is greater awkwardly superimposed social gaming-type 'missions' and reboots of historic arcade titles that do not require sophisticated controllers to facilitate gameplay.
eSports making a bet will continue to make inroads at mainstream bookmakers in 2017, but the industry might be rocked through an immense dishonest scandal which will convey more regulatory scrutiny. Like tennis, cricket and different activities involving solo athletes or small teams, there is much less effort concerned in 'turning' an eSports participant, and the relative adolescence of eSports players makes them more at risk of the entice of handy cash.
US MARKET
i'm repeating final yr's Pennsylvania-only intrastate playing passage prediction for 2017. there's just no other state in which the politicians — or, in California's case, the Hatfields & McCoys posing as stakeholders – seem ready to take that step.
As for what the election of Donald Trump as US president means for federal playing laws, I feel anyone who predicts what Trump will or won't do based on his previous statements is effectively rolling the dice. yes, Trump is a former casino proprietor who has advised sports having a bet should be felony, however he's also beholden to Sheldon Adelson, who believes land-based mostly casinos are the most effective variety of playing that doesn't unfold the Zika virus.
individually, I don't see any motion – pro or con – being taken on the federal stage involving gambling in 2017. Trump and the GOP have a long to-do record, like guaranteeing those uppity polar bears get what's coming to them for faking all these world warming deaths all these years. Any gambling strikes will should wait except after Trump's first state of the union handle in January 2018, when he informs the realm that the state of the union is "amazing."
JAPAN
There will be bloodthirsty lobbying efforts via on line casino operators to win one of the vital coveted japanese on line casino allows for. i suspect there may be two main licenses and one smaller hotel license up for grabs, and the recipients can be required to crew with a native associate.
The native associate requirement may not sit down well with the reliably cranky Adelson, who will make one or more insensitive feedback involving his lack of hobby in performing some native business a choose, with a purpose to dispose of Las Vegas Sands from competition. I feel MGM hotels will win one important license, while Melco's Lawrence Ho will get the other.
finally
With another 12 months within the books, I are looking to hope everybody reading this a gobsmackingly enjoyable 2017. Most of us received into the gambling industry because it became enjoyable, and it not ever hurts to now and again remind ourselves of this fact, and to soak up stride whatever thing events past our handle that could transpire over the arrival twelve months. next 12 months at present, I thoroughly expect to be writing my 2018 predictions from the deck of my lake residence within the Philippines. except then, chuffed new year, each person!
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