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A daily podcast delving into the biggest stories of the day throughout the sports betting and igaming sector.
Charlie Horner (00:04.642)
Ten years is a long time in business, and even longer in a sector like iGaming, which at times feels as though it's moving at 100 miles per hour. Adding political instability, the meteoric rise of AI, and changing user behaviours, it's almost impossible to guess what iGaming will look like in 2036. But that doesn't stop us from trying. Welcome back to iGaming Daily, supported by Optimove, the creator of positionless marketing.
and the number one player engagement solution for sports betting and iGaming operators. I'm Charlie Horner and today I'm joined by Dan Phillips, CEO of NEL Advisory, and Ian Custians, the principal at Casino Marketing Academy. Dan and Ian will be delivering a session at SBC Summit Malta on Thursday the 30th of April at 11am Malta time in conference room 2, all about this topic. So, Dan.
Thanks ever so much for joining us. Do you want to the listeners a little bit of a background for yourself?
Dan Phillips (01:07.498)
Thanks, yeah, thanks Charlie and thanks for having me on and looking forward to heading over to Malta in a couple of weeks for this event. Yeah, so my background briefly, running the industry now actually, it's my 30th year, which is a long time, but I've seen the ups and downs, so I think the topic is quite apt because as you said in your intro predicting.
10 years, sometimes feels like 10 minutes is difficult, but I came through early days of online gaming with Cora, NeuroBet and Galo. Everything is now the Entang Group. I had a number of years at Playtech helping them run their operations out of the UK. the last few years I've been mainly consulting, worked with some startup studios and now working with a number of companies on a number of projects. lots of things that we can talk about during this session.
Charlie Horner (02:01.294)
fantastic. And Ian, could you give us a little bit of an introduction as well?
Arjan (02:05.624)
First of all, thanks to SBC for the invite and look forward to go to the last SBC Malta. As I am from the Netherlands, I'm particularly happy that they're moving the show to Amsterdam. So next year we'll all see you in Amsterdam. I'm a marketing consultant. in both the land-based and in the online casino industry. So I've seen both sides of the industry where in land-based nothing much has changed.
they need to change radically to keep on their place in existence. And if you compare to online, I've been almost seen online since the start, what all changes have been done there is ridiculous and where we are now. So this was a very good topic, I think for Dan and for me to shine our light on and yeah.
We are not going to do that by ourselves. We need the help of a lot of people to do that. So I'm looking very forward to this panel, which is not a panel and a panel.
Charlie Horner (03:12.11)
You've set me up perfectly there, Ian, because I think it's a good starting point is to outline that this will be a session at SBCC Summit Malta, but it's not your traditional panel, is it? Do you want to give us a bit of an overview of what the session will look like?
Arjan (03:33.014)
Yeah, I think we, after some brainstorming, we both agree that both Dan and I can fill the hour of panel by ourselves easily in our view and our opinion on what we think it's going to do. But I don't think that will be that interesting. So we were looking very hard on finding, can we do it in a different way, in another way?
And I think the main change we made and we're going to pilot here because this is a test. could fail for the same reason as well. But I like doing things that are new. Setting it up as a big interactive panel discussion where then and I will more be the moderator of a discussion than the person presenting it. And so we are curious for your view and your audience.
where you think the industry is going in 10 years. yeah, that is I think the general setup. Dan, you want to do a pick up on that.
Dan Phillips (04:33.96)
Yeah, yeah, I mean, yeah, exactly that. And, you know, I think that, you know, I've got opinions, some strong ones. you know, I and I just, you know, going back and forth from this, I've already disagreed on a number of things that we think will happen in 10 years. Right. The only thing we know about a 10 year plan, even a three or five year plan is it's probably wrong. Right. However, there will be if you throw enough things out there, eventually, you know, some you will hit on something and what would likely happen.
So it's going to be about that, what we will look like in 10 years, but also thinking about what do we need to put in place now or start building up to to get there. So it's going to be very interactive. We're going to be working the room. We're going to be coming into the audience. We're going to be asking questions, putting people on the spot. No one in this industry, from my experience, is shy or, you know, is going to shrink away. So, you know,
But just be clear, it's going to be very friendly. It's going to be a good vibe. Hopefully it will be fun as well. We can have a little bit of debate and a little bit of banter. And I think hopefully we'll come up with a few good ideas. I think we've got a long list of topics, but we want the audience actually to help us drive that. So maybe at the end of this, you guys can put a shout out for if people want to send us topics or thoughts on what they think tenure looks like, we can incorporate that into the plan.
So it becomes something which is evolving and fluid if you like rather than us controlling it completely.
Charlie Horner (06:06.581)
Certainly, yeah, we'll definitely encourage our audience to send some topic suggestions in. And I definitely agree with you, Dan, that iGame is certainly not a shy industry. There's lot of smart people, and I'm sure that an interactive space will be really quite suitable for a topic this complex as well. But I thought we would give the rest of the show to talk about some of the topics that might come up in the session and just give people a bit of a...
Dan Phillips (06:18.4)
Yeah. 100%. Yeah. Yeah.
Charlie Horner (06:36.237)
bit of a sneak peek of what they can expect. I think a nice starting point for this is the idea that we're in the TikTok generation, that everyone's attention spans are really short and that iGaming needs to adapt to that. So do you think over the next 10 years products and features will be not only changing by the minute, but be designed to be completed within a minute?
Ian, maybe you'd like to take this one first.
Arjan (07:07.095)
Yeah, I'm the proud owner of two species of this generation, being my 18 year old daughter and my 20 year old son. And I see them and I watch them closely on how they behave, how they act. And this is so very true, which is a, I think, the biggest breach in habits in the last couple of generations. And this is really new at that point.
And it's not a matter if do we or can we adapt to that. We have to because they don't have the patience to do things for a long time, which makes
traditional casino games, we come to that, old, boring, slow and boy boy boy, I'm not going to keep my attention here. And to be honest, I think we've already seen the first, the real first signs of that in changing games in the iGaming world, where the online, where the land-based industry was not able to innovate in any way.
Pardon, beg my pardon. But the online industry innovated with things like crash games. Crash games are way more instant gratification game, which happens within a couple of seconds. And within a couple of seconds, I can go from zero to nothing or from zero to a million and boom overnight. Bonus buy is the Gen Z invention for, because bonus buy is nothing else than just a slot game.
waiting for the bonus game but then we have the instant full featured palette and we have the instant win otherwise you can play for half an hour and wait until the bonus to hit but no boom bonus buy boom so the industry is already adapting maybe even without knowing it and these Gen Zers will be in their 30s and in their spending power age over in 10 years time
Arjan (09:14.547)
If we do not change with them, then we can close all doors.
Charlie Horner (09:19.905)
Yeah, I certainly think that the... no, sorry Dan, go ahead, go ahead.
Dan Phillips (09:20.968)
Yeah, no, not.
Arjan (09:23.134)
Okay.
Dan Phillips (09:24.566)
Thank you. I was gonna agree with all of that and I don't fall into the age bracket that we're just discussing unfortunately anymore but even my attention span now if I'm playing a mobile game, even a puzzle game, doesn't grab my attention, I move on within seconds, delete it, download the next one. I think as well there's so much content out there now, there is that FOMA, right? I haven't got time to waste on this. It's a bit like you start watching a Netflix series and it doesn't grab your attention immediately, I'll move on to the next one because there's so much there.
So I think that comes at the detriment and the cost to the studios, right? And to the content studios who spend lots and lots of money and many, many weeks, months and years developing content. So they need to think about how they're developing their content and how they either make it modulized or flexible to adapt. And it might not be the fact that you need to drop a game completely.
and then, know, bin it and then move on to the next one at that cost. It could be that the games adapt to the people, right? So the games are built in such a way that it learns from how I'm playing, right? And it adds in features to me. So it's always adding in new features. It might be those features are already backed up and they're on a shelf ready to go, but rather than give me everything at once, it's finally fed in.
And maybe this will come on to maybe we'll talk about AI machine learning and so on and so on, which I'm sure every panel and every discussion topic will. But that's where I think we can use that technology, right? So that you're not having to build and throw away, you know, the content studios, you know, and the smart people out there can still create, but just give people the bit or make it in such a way that you can develop and then get more from something that you would normally do. But I agree, whether it's
people's span becomes seconds, who knows? I'm sure there is a line that it won't go below, but I think we're not quite at that line yet.
Charlie Horner (11:21.644)
Yeah, certainly. think the rise of Crash games certainly coincides with that sort of shortening of attention spans. I think some of the most popular games globally are Crash games. And certainly a lot of the viral clips you see on social media are from streamers and influencers playing those Crash games. But how do you... And Dan, you've kind of touched on this. It does pose challenges for slot studios and content developers because...
Dan Phillips (11:36.17)
Yeah.
Charlie Horner (11:50.157)
Slots don't necessarily always lend themselves to those short, snappy actions and sometimes you want to keep players in for longer sessions. So Ayan, I'll bring you in on this. How do you think slot developers can evolve to keep up with this? You mentioned earlier the bonus buys. Are there any other innovations that you can see on the horizon?
Arjan (12:15.284)
I wish I said I could because I can't. For so many years now I'm one of the SBC Jury for the awards in Malta and one of the categories they always give to me is slot game innovation. I think there were 15 entries which is already the first selection who passes on as an entry. yeah, sorry, within these 15 entries, one or two.
might qualify for having a slight innovation and the rest was just a copy of the rest. And I think there, that's an industry problem. Once in every X years, somebody by coincidence thinks of a new feature, hold and re-spin, re-spin and win. And then for many, many times we make...
variations of that advantage play with the growing stacks of this bonus, that bonus, that bonus. There is no game without it anymore.
All these studios, first time I did the jury for the SBC awards, I was surprised that there were three categories of game producers, small, medium and big. The big ones publishing more than a hundred titles per year. There were eight of those companies. So eight of those companies spit out once every three days a new game. Where is this going? I think game studios at this moment are just...
making as much as they can and throwing it up and see if it sticks. If it doesn't stick we'll leave it there. It doesn't even drop off we'll leave it there. So I hope that the game developers will see this as a challenge and really start. Okay where do we to start from the beginning? What are the characteristics of these groups? What do they do normally? What do they like? And let's see if we can make games upon that and not make the second the 300 variation of
Arjan (14:14.2)
the book of whatever shit it is. Sorry, I'm Dutch. I apologies for swearing.
Charlie Horner (14:17.996)
No problem. Dan, I'll just bring you in just before we go quickly for a break. Do you think that, off the back of what Ayan is saying, do you think that game developers need to take more risks over the next 10 years to try and find that next innovation, if that's the term that we want to use?
Dan Phillips (14:18.614)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dan Phillips (14:36.342)
I think the secret sauce that everyone talks about for why one game works and one game doesn't, no one's really got under the skin of that, right? Why are there still games around that have been around for 20 years whilst others die on the vine within seconds?
One thing I push for with my clients, whether they're on the B2B side or B2C, and anyone that will listen to me pretty much, is talk and share data with each other, right? You know, the operators, you know, keep everything so close to their chests, share some of that information, you know, with the developers so they can really see what's happening rather than the developers having to be out there. You know, I've been on the B2B side going in.
and asking an operator, know, what do your players want? And they're like, well, I'm not telling you, you you tell me, right? And then there is a back and forth. So I think that there's an evolution of that in terms of how operators and studios talk to each other and share information. Coming back to my previous point around learning about the consumer. So given the consumer that, if you ask the consumer what they want, ultimately they'll just say, I want what I have, right? Because they don't know either.
And sometimes it is a case of you throw a hundred things up against the wall and you know one or two stick and you know I'm sure when crash games first went out there, you know, it was just a thought that that you know someone had and And then it and then it gained some traction So so I think I think communication I think better use of the of the of the data to really understand and You know to let things evolve
And there's also another question is do the operators need 200, know, three, 400, you know, new games a month because, know, the operators, you know, themselves say, right, okay, we'll put it position one a top left and we'll give it five minutes and then it doesn't work. Then we move it because they've got so much, you know, sometimes it can be a case of, know, if you, you know,
Dan Phillips (16:37.538)
my kind of analogies up but if you go to a restaurant and the menu is too big it's off-putting right you rather have a menu of five things rather than five thousand things so maybe it's a little bit like that trim it down a bit then the then the consumers can explore we learn more from that rather than playing this game for 10 seconds that game for 10 seconds which will help us evolve the strategy
Arjan (16:56.694)
Talking about challenges for the future, do operators have this knowledge? Two of my clients, an online operator in Germany and an online operator in Croatia, they don't have any knowledge on what is played in the games and what is used in the game. They have the metadata and how much they earn on the game because the game developers or the aggregator, they keep all the data there.
These guys in Germany and Croatia don't have a clue on how a game is performing or they can see from a revenue stream which game is performing but not from a gameplay. So they're not involved at all. So I don't think that is, I agree with you that data is the solution but who owns the data and who should own the data in the future to take this forward because now everybody and I think especially the big game producers, game studios, they're sitting on top of their data.
like a chicken and golden eggs.
Charlie Horner (17:58.124)
Yeah, it's a conversation that's going to be a driving debate over the next 10 years. I and Dan will take a quick break and we'll come back and we'll talk about tax regulation and the black market.
Charlie Horner (18:13.031)
Welcome back to iGaming Daily. Dan, one of the big topics of conversation that we focus on a lot on iGaming Daily and particularly in the last 18 months has been the issue of tax and regulation because I think this has been a transformative decade for the industry in terms of regulation is opening up globally but it is becoming a lot more stringent particularly across European markets and we're seeing tax rates increase.
particularly in the UK and the Netherlands. How do you think this landscape's going to evolve over the next 10 years? Do think it's going to continue getting more stringent? Do you think it's going to get better, more inclusive? What do you think?
Dan Phillips (18:58.134)
I think over that 10 year period, I don't see any change from the current, you know, increase in tax and increase in harsh regulations, probably for half of that period at least, right? I think whilst, whilst nations and governments have bigger for them, bigger, bigger concerns and bigger
budget deficits to meet, this industry will always be low hanging fruit for their rights. So we'll be that, you know, the political hot potato that no one wants to catch and say, right, you know, we'll give these guys a break. So personally, I don't see any any change. I see increased pressure if we're talking about the UK and Netherlands, certainly in terms of tax increases, also, you know, increased protection on responsible gaming element as well, which is obviously important. And we'll get on to that. And that's one of our
on our list for when we meet in Malta for short. I hope though, as we look at a 10-year horizon, which is the purpose of this, that there's more inclusivity from operators into regulatory discussion and not afterwards, right? And not with a token, know, white paper that gets kicked around and no one really listens. But you have experts from the industry setting this. I'm working with at
at government level at the first stage, not at stage three, five, seven, 25. That's what I would hope to see within 10 years, that there's some serious lobbying to help get us there. I'm having conversations with people right now and that feels like it's, people are open to that, but how we get to that and whether that needs to be from the C level of the big tier one, B2B and B2Cs.
or whether there's a sort of groundswell. So my short answer is I don't see much change in the next probably five years, but hopefully within 10 years, yes, we do see change. Maybe we can come onto black market as a separate point, but that's what I would see in the short term, short to medium term.
Charlie Horner (20:56.299)
Fantastic. Fantastic. And Ian, I'd love to get your perspective from the Dutch market because that's another market that has just been very, very harshly hit over the last 18 months in terms of the regulation and the re-regulation of that market. How do you assess this question?
Arjan (21:03.733)
Yeah.
Arjan (21:10.869)
I'll try to be brief because I can talk for an hour on this and the stupid things we've done here. I see a faster recovery not because we are back into arguments, not because we can talk sense into them, because we've lost our share, our voice at the table. We've been too greedy on one side, too silent on the other side, so we are completely overtaken by public opinion.
The responsible gaming part in the Dutch market has not been in my opinion done in the right direction or not as good as it should be. So it was an easy prey and with easy prey if you're being punished the only thing you can do is sit still while being shaved. On the other hand.
I think next year already the Dutch politics and the Dutch finance ministry will see holy fuck we screwed up because we're now having non-gaming tax anymore. So from a financial point of view I think there the change will come because also the UK with a 40 % of gaming tax on online idiots it will drive everything directly to black market and the UK will miss out on a lot of gaming tax.
Nettles misses out on a billion euro revenue in gaming tax yearly that goes to the black market. So as soon as we and maybe we should not do that ourselves but let the politicians see guys this is what's happening when you increase taxes. So decrease.
One country in Europe is doing good. Which one? Estonia. They lowered gaming tax. They made a slight mistake for the beginning of it, but they lowered gaming tax. Why? Because then they have a good basis for online casino companies and land-based casino companies to put their business there.
Arjan (23:07.591)
So I think the need for money and every government needs a whole lot of money will force the gaming things down earlier than we can win our voice at the table back.
Charlie Horner (23:21.545)
Yeah, and talent is certainly looking at establishing itself as a hub of iGaming with that move to lower tax. Exactly, yeah, but we've all referenced it already. The more regulation that comes in, the higher the taxes go, the debate naturally goes towards the unregulated sector, the black market. Now, it's a line that we all come back to because it's true.
Arjan (23:28.511)
Brilliant plan.
Charlie Horner (23:48.255)
But I think a lot of people on the other side of the debate, you know, it's like the Simpsons meme, say the line, say the line, and then you say the black market and everyone sort of goes into raptures. But it is true that the black market is a growing and persistent threat. How do we see that argument and that debate and that fight going over the next 10 years? Do you think it's going to be a bigger threat as some of these markets continue to go down the route of...
higher regulation and higher taxes and what do we do to combat that? Maybe Dan you'd like to go first.
Dan Phillips (24:24.605)
Yeah, I mean, short answer is yes, this is a threat now. It'll be a threat in 10 years. It'll be a threat in 50 years, right? Every block that you put in place, everything you try to do, someone will find a way around it. So it will be an ongoing battle. What I think, and one of the potential questions for our session will be which new markets will emerge and regulate and do it better, right?
that we can leave from and that'll be a discussion for the room. don't know the answer to that, but we'll throw it out to the room. Which operators will work closely enough to make that happen? Which operators will actually disappear, arguably, because of this? And maybe there'll be a new breed. You when we spoke about earlier on, before the break around, you know, product features, the ones that have that product innovation will thrive regardless.
But I think this is a, as much as you can say, well, that we want the governments to go and do something about it. If we have more influence with the setting of said regulations and helping them do this, we can provide the tools back to whoever the regulator or the enforcer is to help them do this, to help them identify because it's people looking to hunt this down that don't really understand it. So maybe let some of the industry in to help hunt them down.
give us powers within reason, guess, but give us powers to work with them to be able to do it. So, you know, make us the, you know, the police for one of a better, for one of a better phrase. I take that on one further and say maybe the technology can advance within within 10 years, right?
We focus a lot of time on products, is great, and PAMs and payment solutions and blah, blah. But focus on hunting down these things and blocking these VPNs or whatever people are using. People tell me it's almost impossible to block a VPN. When you look at someone like Sky, so if I'm in Spain,
Dan Phillips (26:25.366)
I can't access my SkyGo from the UK, even with a VPN. Not that I would do that. But if I did try, for example, that gets blocked and it says, can see that you're outside the UK. So there is technology out there. I appreciate that there are VPN IPs that can be blocked, etc. And then kind of more open up. So for me, it's twofold. It's the industry having more influence to be able to hunt these people down and call them out.
and to be able to focus on them because we know and we can see it. And secondly, the technology to be stronger, whether it's geolocation or whether it's identifying, you know, source of funds or maybe it's coming back to the payment processes and how they process it. It's pretty much every part of the industry, right? It's not like anything. We don't need to do one. There's not one magic bullet. It's doing it across the piece. So.
Hopefully when we get to the session in Malta that you know, we'll throw a few of these ideas out there and there'll be some experts You know in you know in the room who can say no, that's a stupid idea or you know, you know, what about this? All right And yeah, maybe we can maybe we can start something today and we can say right this session was where it all started And in ten years time, it's all gone right and then and then we can take credit for it
Charlie Horner (27:42.366)
Fantastic, yeah, well hopefully. Arjan, do you have any other ideas that could kickstart this fight back?
Arjan (27:48.821)
This is where I fully agree with Dan and this is where we hope that the audience, the biggest panel in the conference history will, I learned a little bit of Trump, They will help us in talking about these questions because the current solutions are there. IP blocking is there. Follow the money.
give the payment providers a hell of a time if they provide to any of the blood market is there. Content, everything is there. Regulatory easing up on licensed operators can be done. So all the tools are there. And for some reason, we as industry cannot get everybody to act to do that.
If MasterCard would be punished for supplying non-licensed operators, I think half of your problem disappears. Let's pretend that it's not there, it is there. I don't have the answer and I hope with them that the rule will help us in formulating a good statement, good prediction on that here.
Charlie Horner (29:07.56)
Well you heard it here first, the biggest session in conference history and the moment, the biggest panel, yep indeed, and the moment where we will kickstart the fight back against the black market so there you go. No pressure guys, but yeah you can join Dan and Ayan at their session at SBC Summit Malta on the 30th of April at 11am Malta time in conference room 2.
Arjan (29:12.692)
Biggest panel, the biggest panel.
Dan Phillips (29:27.193)
Ha
Arjan (29:28.315)
Hahaha.
Charlie Horner (29:37.214)
And please do get in touch with the gentlemen because as they said, you can get involved in this debate and there's plenty of topics that we can tackle on the session. But that just leaves me to say, Ian, Dan, thank you ever so much for joining me today and enjoy the session. Good luck with it. And yeah, to our listeners, thank you ever so much for tuning into today's episode of iGaming Daily and come back tomorrow to keep up to date with all the latest global gambling news.