Online gambling features in top trends

Delivering an interesting perspective on the impact of internet gambling on the industry as a whole this week was a report from Spectrum Gaming consultancy which identified 21 major trends in the casino industry for 2011.
Online gambling featured prominently in several sections of the report:
–     A shifting competitive landscape in the United States in which pari-mutuel operators become more aggressive players in casino gaming and online gaming, and lotteries compete against commercial operators to become online gaming pioneers.
–     Convergence of mobile Internet and social networking trends will present new opportunities for casinos to expand their gaming product variety and reach while enhancing the immediacy and geographic targeting of marketing efforts.
–     Efforts to overturn the US prohibition on sports betting outside of Nevada, Montana, Oregon and Delaware will increase due to the inevitability of Internet gambling in the United States.
–     European online operators and suppliers will aggressively pursue US commercial and tribal partners in anticipation of online gaming in the US.
–     Internet gambling will continue to grow in the US as it becomes more accepted globally. In the absence of Federal legislation, state and tribal governments will begin to push the envelope harder and litigation may resolve the legality issue before legislation does.
–     Regulators and lawmakers throughout the world are developing new regulatory structures to identify, discourage and combat the use of casinos for money-laundering, which is itself a worrisome trend for law-enforcement professionals.
–     The growing interest by tribal operators to identify opportunities and become early participants in online gaming in the United States.
–     USA broadband providers will become advocates for Internet Gaming legalization efforts in the US, due to increased usage of their products as result of I-Gaming.
Michael Pollock, Managing Director of Spectrum commented that the list this year includes new trends:  “You can attribute that large freshman class to the growing complexity of gaming. As the landscape expands, more molehills will inevitably rise up. An occasional molehill — such as this new-fangled Internet — threatens to erupt into a mountain.”
The full report can be viewed at www.spectrumgaming.com/trends

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