VIGE 2017 – RECAP FROM E-GAME SPECTRUM | Innovation Talks

The first ever gaming exhibition in Vienna took place last week – the Vienna International Gaming Expo (VIGE 2017) organized by EEGEvents - Part of EEG. Our media team attended the event and we have prepared short recaps about the seminars from the first two days of the expo. We also had the chance to talk to some of the speakers, all of them experienced professionals and visionaries from the gaming industry.

The second day of VIGE2017 finished with discussions about all the latest trends and innovations in the gaming industry. Representatives of almost every new technological flow were present, discussing the fast development and the need for these innovations.

In the first conversation Valéry Bollier from Oulala Games introduced to the public the Daily Fantasy Sports, also known as DFS. According to Valery using the big data and making the fantasy sports as realistic as possible is what drives the attention of the players. The company Oulala as Valéry pointed out uses over 70 different types of statistics in order to make the results thus turning the DFS into a new type of a prediction tool.

The main advantages of DFS to other games in the sector as Valery pointed out are that it's a game of skill and it's also a marketplace, which means that players compete against each other (usually they play against the operator). And finally, DFS have a very loyal client base. 

In an interview for e-Game Spectrum we asked Valéry about how DFS should be regulated and weather it can be completely banned for under aged. 

As soon as a game is monetized it's obvious that it should be banned for under aged and that we should have legislation. The issue we had in Europe was that by default the main legislators were considering DFS as a type of sports betting. This is something we couldn't agree.  We are very happy that Malta was the first one to launch a skill game license a few weeks ago. We were the first company to have a B2B skill game license allowing us to offer to all our partners iGames covered by our license. So it's important to know that without good legal framework all the new trends and not only DFS will have problems to grow. We need the ecosystem to be fully working. 

Do you think that in the future fantasy sports will be able to displace sports betting?

According to us DFS is the sports betting of the new generation. The new generation don't like playing against the house, they want skill games and social games. Naturally they will turn to DFS because it's answering their needs. In 5 years 50% of our customers will be the Millennials and the challenge for our sector is to adapt to their needs. The business model of the iGaming sector is not adapted to them. DFS is one of the new types of business models, because we are a market place, we are not playing against the customer. They are playing against each other and we only organize this.

In the next part of the panel Konstandina Zafirovska from BtoBet talked about the omnichannel and what the companies can achieve with it. She explained that the main principle of the omnichannel strategy is to bring the same gaming experience via every different channel thus creating a unified betting engine. The important thing is to differentiate the betting content according to each channel and to learn how to analyze customers' behavior. 'Making personalized offers to the customers helps you reach them on a psychological level', Konstandina stated.

In an interview with Konstandina Zafirovska we asked her weather at some point there might be a negative reaction from customers about the collection of their data. 

The operators have to follow the gaming regulations and of course if someone wants to play they have to provide the data. Additionally to this many of the players have to submit their passport and this means that they sign terms and conditions according to which this data will be used. This data belongs only to the operator, it's kept by them and is used only for interactions with the client. It cannot be sold or presented to a third party or other players, which means that there is no danger of violation of the collected data.

At the end of the talk the BtoBet's CEO explained that the model Artificial Intelligence + Recommendation Engine equals the Real Innovation. 

The last speaker in the panel was Angelo Dalli form Bit8 who talked about the future of lotteries and made predictions about the future of the industry in five years and also presented the completely new concept for lotteries.

Author: Hristiana Petkova

Associate Editor