Leading suppliers have called for greater collaboration between industry and regulators around new technologies in order to lower the barriers they say continue to inhibit progress.
At a conference session at G2E Asia on Wednesday, Light & Wonder’s Managing Director, International Jamie Dorbian and Aristocrat’s Chief Revenue Officer Kurt Gissane also questioned whether regulators fully understand some of the technologies they regulate, pointing to advancements in cashless payments and facial recognition as examples of technology not properly utilized within the land-based gaming ecosystem.
“I think we could all do [a better job of] partnering with the regulators to work on the technology prior to releasing it,” Dorbian stated. “I think a lot of us like to be confidential with what we’re doing, and we’ll create a product that we think is going to work but maybe it really doesn’t. So, we can probably do a better job of partnering with the regulators when creating a product to get it approved.”
Dorbian noted that cashless payments were a part of everyday life given that most people pay for everyday items with their phone, “but if anybody’s tried cashless in some of the casinos across the world that have implemented it, it takes about 10 minutes to load your phone and transfer the money. It’s extremely complicated – and that is regulatory.”
Gissane described the industry as “heavily regulated a across the globe, not just in Asia” but said the barriers to entry in Asia were more prominent in this part of the world than elsewhere.
“That’s particularly true when it comes to online,” he continued.
“In this region, in Australia and obviously in Singapore and Macau, the tech is there but there are regulatory barriers. If there weren’t regulatory barriers, I think you would see more big tech companies come into our industry and trying to claim that space.”
ONLINE OPPORTUNITY
For all the regulatory challenges facing the Asian gaming technology space, operators in the Philippines are doing themselves no favors, according to Shaun McCamley, President of Euro Pacific Asia Consulting Ltd and founder of social gaming platform GameWorkz.
Speaking on the same panel, McCamley said many land-based integrated resort operators who have launched online platforms under PAGCOR’s PIGO scheme will struggle to succeed because they have failed to establish an appropriate inhouse team to oversee their platform.
“The technology is there and it is improving all the time but [there are deficiencies] in capability,” he suggested.
“Land-based operators in this region, from senior levels down, have very little understanding of how to operate their digital business. There’s no way to sugarcoat that. The way that pretty much all of the major properties throughout this region have set up their digital business is for that business is to fail and the reason they’re doing so is because they don’t understand how a digital business should be structured internally.
“Either they give their digital business to casino operations who think it is an extension of the casino floor, because that’s really all they know, or they give the digital business to IT because they think it’s an IT product. Some even give it to casino marketing who look at the digital business as a branding exercise, and it’s not.
“Until the operators understand that they need to structure their internal department as an independent department with professionals that have experience in operating a normal business, they will continue to fail.
“So, it’s not the technology, it’s the capability within organizations and the understanding that this is what they must be doing.”
McCamley added that one of the biggest mistakes he sees from land-based operators entering the online space is using white label operators to run their online business.
“They are under pressure from shareholders, they’re under pressure from their boards, to make their online businesses successful, so they give their business to a third-party provider,” he said.
“And by giving it to a third-party provider, you give away your most important asset. That’s your database. If you do that, your most important asset becomes a liability because you have no control over it, and it just causes big problems.”
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