6 July 2021
By Roger Jones
roger@TheCork.ie
Entertainment
As one of the most regulated industries in the world, it’s no surprise to see online casinos go through big changes on a regular basis. The latest change for online casino looks to focus on improving the player experience for one of the most popular forms of entertainment online in online slots, but with proposed changes laid out for advertising options too the list of potential changes continues to grow – but what are the big changes on the way?
Slots will look to slow down
Identified as being the game with the lowest rate of winning amongst all online casino offerings, slots still bring in a huge number of players and likely will continue to do so, but the proposed changes hope to slow slots down and aim to give the player more information about their playing sessions – from wins and losses to total time played. These same changes will also look to change how some information is delivered, services will no longer be able to play a noise or display a graphic for a win if the pay-out is equal to or lower than the initial stake, and operators will also have to remove all auto-play and turbo features that speed up the games and take all control out of play too. The hope is that this will help players most at risk of overspending or playing for too long gain more control over their play, and as these changes are to be introduced by October of this year, the results will start to show relatively quickly too.
Adjustments to online casino advertising
The other big change may look to come to advertising options. Last year it was already announced that there are hopes for a crackdown on celebrity endorsements on gambling and to have celebrities removed from these adverts as a whole, but a recent push had surveyed nearly 15,000 people in order to establish whether or not gambling advertising as a whole should be banned. Armed with the argument that things such as tobacco can no longer advertised, there is widespread support with over 70% of respondents suggesting they’d support a blanket ban on all gambling advertising as a whole. Whilst just a survey, and nothing planned to go into motion just yet, the huge number of changes seen over the past few years to developing healthier habits would certainly suggest that this advertising change could be on the horizon, and even go hand in hand with the recent UK announcement that junk food would no longer be advertised before 9pm too.
Whilst these changes are largely specific for example to one game type in slots, it is expected that similar changes will roll out across other games and services too in order to deliver much of the same. Online casinos will be expected to continue to change to new regulations and instructions from regulatory bodies looking to make it harder for at risk players to develop a problem, and to make online gambling safer for all parties.