TECHNICAL CHALLENGES

52 NOVEMBER 2014

Technical Challengesfor the GamblingWorld Are old technology solutions holding back the

gambling industry? Peter Bertilsson, Presidentand CEO, Metric Gaming, thinks so.

With technology advancing at an

increasingly rapid pace, the “older”

industries are failing to keep up –

gambling in particular. This

resistance is due primarily to a

combination of already high margins (i.e., “if it ain’t

broke…”) and a lack of regulatory flexibility,

discouraging most operators and suppliers from

investing in and embracing the latest technology

available. As a result, the social gaming market has

emerged as the new pioneer of cutting-edge

development in intuitive and fully scalable software

and – most importantly today – Big Data

functionality.

Remarkably, many large gambling companies still

rely on mainframe and MS-DOS, and believe .NET

solutions to be modern, which means their

technology (or lack thereof) is ultimately steering the

business strategy ship. Old technology solutions do

not enable quick or efficient system changes, in sharp

contrast to today’s leading video and social game

companies (e.g., Zynga, Mojang and King), whose

major game successes might last only a year or two

before new games need to be developed and put to

the market – particularly to keep up with the latest

devices (next generation smartphones, tablets,

phablets, etc.).

For the real money gaming operators, however,

today’s smartphone boom has caused serious

headaches. Old technology is simply ill-equipped to

adapt to the current mobile app culture, resulting in

incredibly clunky mobile offerings based on pulling

architecture, requiring users to scroll endlessly,

continuously refresh pages and generally suffer

through slow response times. Those companies able

to embrace the latest mobile technologies are

therefore quickly pulling ahead.

But perhaps the most overlooked technology in the

gambling sector today is the ability to harness Big

Data. The gambling industry is sitting on one of the

largest databases in the world when it comes to high

net worth customers, but barely a handful of

operators have actually embraced true Big Data

functionality, relying instead on conventional,

outdated business intelligence (BI) software and

hoping that will be sufficient. The entire industry

therefore needs to wake up and smell the coffee at

the internet café, so to speak.

Indeed, the gambling sector should be leading the

way in Big Data development, as it would benefit the

industry enormously. Again, however, existing,

outdated systems render it virtually impossible to

transition to these latest technologies without huge

up-front costs and resource commitments, causing

many companies to miss out on the most important

tech developments in decades. Consider this – as of

2003, the world’s entire data collection – dating back

to the Mesopotamian “cradle of civilization” – was

estimated to total approximately five billion GB of

data. In 2013, the world was generating five billion

GB of data every ten minutes. In a year, we’re

expected to be doing that every few seconds. Despite

its potential enormous value for business strategy

and development, the vast majority of this data is

completely unstructured and unharnessed. Indeed,

Gartner Inc. anticipates that by 2015, only 15% of the

Fortune 500 will be effectively exploiting big data to

competitive advantage.

But what exactly is “Big Data”? It is not simply

historical information, even if it is “big”, or the

analysis of structured data, or batching technology.

The concept entails real time, up-to-the second

individualized analytics that create on-the-spot

business decisions and marketing techniques. For

example, a gambling operator may wish to offer a

specific bettor a specific bonus or promotion,

uniquely tailored to that bettor’s specific habits, all

customized to maximize the efficiency and

effectiveness of every marketing dollar spent.

Without the right technology, this type of targeted

marketing is impossible.

Thanks in large part to today’s leaders in social

gaming – who are handling millions of concurrent

users and database requests in real time – many new

technologies are emerging that offer fast, cheap and

highly effective solutions. Many tech departments

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TECHNICAL CHALLENGES

NOVEMBER 2014 53

nevertheless still shun these opportunities, preferring

to stick to the old software and architecture with

which they are far more comfortable and familiar.

Today, however, companies will no longer be able to

afford relying on their old systems and failing to

capitalize on Big Data, as technology continues to

advance at a dizzying pace. “Big Data” as a term is

itself already somewhat outdated, as the concept has

evolved to mean not only massive, structured data

volumes, but also the analytics that come with it –

creating real-time predictive power based on that

data. In short: to know what your customers want

before they do.

Evolution from conventional Business

intelligence to Big Data to Big Data Analytics

Almost no gambling companies today are

embracing Big Data to implement real-time

predictions as a driver of business strategy and

marketing, using it instead (if at all) as an advanced

BI tool focusing on historical data.

I therefore believe we are long overdue for such a

highly profitable business – gambling – to embrace

the cutting edge in software and technology, and to

take advantage of the Big Data tools that are now

widely available. The industry should take a cue from

the social-gaming sector, leveraging

cloud storage with low-cost, super-

efficient broadband capabilities (while

all sensitive data can remain in secure

locations governed by secure

transactions). The old excuse that the

latest technologies are unsafe,

unsecure or not properly regulated is

simply no longer valid. I would

therefore urge the gambling sector to

cut ties with the old technology and

embrace the new, which will result in

far more profitability in the long term.

Customers now expect the latest and

greatest in modern mobile gaming and

technology, and today they are only

getting it from

social gaming

with very few

exceptions. It is

high time for the

gambling

industry to start

catching up.

Peter Bertilsson, President and CEO

Metric Gaming

Metric Gaming is changing the face of

interactive, live sports betting with SuperLive,

first-to-market wagering software offering

hundreds of opportunities to bet on ‘real time’

in-game events as they unfold in real time.

www.metricgaming.com

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