Betting via virtual reality and smart home devices never took off and innovation in gambling has seemingly slowed. So what’s next and how do consumer behaviours dictate how operators innovate?
Walking 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 innovation, from immersive virtual reality slots to smart devices that promised a new frontier for online betting and gaming.
Experiencing these creations, 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’s 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 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-and-coming 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 online betting and gaming, these currencies promise fast-paced, low-fee transactions that also have the benefit of anonymity, clear advantages for operators and their customers.
But when it comes to blockchain, the technology underpinning crypto, 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 better than the technologies we’re using now?” asks Howard.
Though blockchain promises highly secure payments and transactions, impracticalities emerge when you use it for the fast-paced world of betting. Operators process a huge number of bets within a short space of time.
This places immense strain on a system that creates a new block for every transaction – not to mention demanding immense energy resources. “Blockchain is a question that isn’t being asked,” says Howard. “It’s providing an answer that we haven’t needed in terms of sports betting as a whole. But it does solve a problem with payments.”
Understanding customer needs
For innovators in every industry, finding the next big thing is always in tension with meeting the consumer where they are. Although cutting-edge technologies may become popular and widespread over time, the public tends to move through phases when it comes to adopting these new trends.
In Everett Rogers’ 1962 book, Diffusion of Innovations, the author charts five stages of technology adoption, with innovators and early adopters coming first and the late majority and laggards coming last. While innovators account for just 2.5% of the population, the late majority and laggards make up 50%.
For Rich Criado, former VP of product development at US-based Fanatics Game Studios and Penn Entertainment, understanding the customer’s readiness for change is key to setting the pace of innovation.
“In online casino there has been a lot of innovation in some areas and not so much in other areas – and a lot of that is due to the customer base,” he says. “If you look at mobile games or video games, those customers are more willing to accept big changes more quickly. Casino customers, not so much.” With VR headsets in the igaming industry, for example, there was a clear mismatch between the technology and the customers, he says.
“The average casino customer is not going to put this giant headset on, hook it up to a computer, charge it, all the things you have to do just to play a game when they could just play on their phone,” says Criado. “So, it’s an interesting technology, but it’s not really feasible for 99% of the average customer base.”
Incremental changes
This doesn’t mean that change and innovation can’t happen in an industry like igaming, Criado says, but rather that it often happens in stages over time. “I don’t think the innovation is going to be some big giant new killer app,” he explains.
“I think it’s going to be incremental add-ons to what you see today, then gameplay innovations will stack on top of that and then if you look back in five years’ time, you’ll see a big difference. But as you went through it, the change was very gradual.”
This has been the approach Criado has taken as an innovator in the young US market, introducing new features slowly over time and testing out what works with the audience. In some cases, this may be a multiplayer feature, in other cases, a crash game instead of a slot, or a new type of gamification.
“These little things start to stack up and then you become like the EU market, right? The EU market has way more advanced games than the US market,” Criado says. “Much more like video games: very exciting and engaging and flashing and beautiful graphics. I don’t think the US market is ready for that yet, but they’re getting there.”
Drivers of innovation
Although some emerging technologies have failed to take off in the industry, some technologies – most notably artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) – still have a wealth of untapped potential.
According to SoftSwiss’ latest iGaming Trends report, stakeholders rated the importance of AI and ML as 8.2/10 for 2025, particularly in applications such as personalisation, decision-making automation and detecting problem gambling. However, SoftSwiss notes that operators should be selective in how they apply this technology. “In igaming the goal is not just to use AI for the sake of it, but to apply it with precision,” the report explains. “To stay focused and avoid shiny distractions.”
Howard, whose OrbitalBet startup provides a customisable and highly adaptable sports betting platform for operators, agrees that AI and ML have huge potential. However, he says that legacy software often holds operators back when it comes to implementing it.
“With AI and ML, everyone knows that they should be looking at it,” he says. “You’d be wrong to ignore it. But it’s working out how to use it the right way and where it’ll make the most impact.”
A user-centric gaming experience
At major global operators, the trend towards personalisation has recently tended towards creating products that are uniquely flexible and customisable. At Flutter, for example, there have recently been trials in Colorado and West Virginia for a new betting product branded ‘Your Way Betting’. According to a spokesperson, the product utilises a “revolutionary new pricing model” that allows Flutter brands to offer customers “unlimited choice and flexibility in how they pick their lines”.
Entain, meanwhile, recently relaunched their own Bet Builder product in the UK at the start of the Premier League season, offering a more customised betting experience for customers. As part of the company’s BetMGM joint venture in the US, the company also acquired specialised analytics company Angstrom Sports in late 2023, allowing them to increase the number of betting markets they offer fourfold year-on-year.
This trend of acquiring forward-thinking, agile startups has also happened in the field of micro-betting, Howard points out. Back in August, for example, DraftKings acquired its specialist micro-betting supplier Simplebet in a deal believed to be worth up to $195m.
“I think that innovation probably comes from the startups rather than the incumbents,” he explains. “People try things at smaller places and if that looks successful the bigger companies can do it themselves or they acquire the companies that are doing it.”
Steep learning curve
This has also been the trend in the US market, which has been dominated by major land-based casino brands since new igaming markets opened up in states like Pennsylvania five years ago.
According to Criado, what was missing at the start of the US’ journey were features that boosted user engagement, such as tournaments, leaderboards, bonuses, free spins, progressive jackpots and other metagame mechanics. But these were all much more prevalent at this year’s G2E.
“I think the big players have received the feedback that we need to provide not only the base game but also the tools that allow operators to increase retention and increase engagement in their games beyond just the game itself,” he says.
However, Criado believes the industry still has a long way to go in terms of innovation. For example, igaming operators still haven’t worked out how to transfer the excitement and social atmosphere of a brick-and-mortar casino into an online setting. Although MGM and Playtech have taken a big step towards this by streaming live games from MGM casino floors in Las Vegas.
“I think whoever can figure that out and do it well is going to be a big winner in the next generation of operators and content providers,” Criado says. Whether that involves VR headsets remains to be seen.
Attracting a new generation
For Criado, who started his career at Disney and Carnival Cruise Lines, maintaining an outsider’s perspective is key to driving genuine innovation in the industry. He suggests taking inspiration from games like Fortnite, Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto, “who often do gambling mechanics better than gambling operators”.
Although this is much easier in a far less regulated industry, the product expert recommends looking at the experiential aspects of these games and where developers make money without changing the core gameplay, such as selling skins on games like Fortnite. Innovating in this way could well be key to the industry’s survival, particularly when it comes to attracting younger generations.
“Older millennials are starting to hit 40, and they’ve grown up with video games where they control the outcome. So are they going to be interested in a game where the primary gameplay is just pressing a button over and over again? Probably not,” he says.
Looking to the future
Creating a sense of control in a game of chance comes with its own challenges, of course, but it is possible. During his time at Fanatics, Criado worked on a game called Field Goal Frenzy in which players aim to kick at the goal on a virtual American Football field. To make the experience more interactive, the player can choose how far away they want to stand from the goal, with higher distances equating to a lower likelihood of winning but a higher jackpot.
“It’s not control over the mathematical outcome of the game, but it still feels like as a player I have more control over my overall experience, which is ultimately the key,” Criado explains.
This type of playful experiment could be the way for the industry to look forward, not just to new technologies, but also to new types of players and new generations.
While the audience may not be demanding this type of experience right this minute, it could be a crucial innovation when a new group of players starts exploring casino products in five or ten years’ time. “The thing that excites me the most right now is that the runway that’s in front of us for innovation is so great,” says Criado. “And we haven’t even started, to be honest.”
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