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What to Take from the Online Casino Gaming Industry in 2024 as a North East Small Business

ByDave Stopher

Jun 11, 2024

What to Take from the Online Casino Gaming Industry in 2024 as a North East Small Business

 

Online casino gaming, or iGaming in general, has become a major entertainment industry over the last couple of decades. Expanding to more and more markets, such as the US over the last six years, game developers and platforms have been empowered to compete harder and develop better and better entertainment products.

The North East may have the lowest small business count in England at 156,200, per a 2024 report, but competition is fierce – especially when you weigh in the larger companies knocking about. So, it’s good to draw some lessons from successful newcomers in a highly competitive marketplace. Here are some examples of how platforms have developed into more competitive entities, with lessons that can be drawn on by small businesses in many sectors.

Embrace the new payments landscape

Source: Unsplash

Core the online casino experience is, naturally, depositing cash to play on games then possibly winning money that you can withdraw. As such, payment methods become vitally important to the system. For a long time, players had to stick to the basics of bank cards and transfers, but there are many more options now.

Digital wallets have become very popular for making payments online, with the platforms offering a blocker between your details and the recipient. For similar reasons, seeking enhanced privacy and security, cryptocurrencies have also risen to the fore. The UK is one of the biggest crypto economies in the world now.

Bitcoin, in particular, is becoming the currency of the people, and having that extra tier of privacy when sending and receiving money online is very appealing. Many new online casinos recognise this and have either integrated crypto payment options or gone all-in on being pure crypto casinos. On the list of these new gaming sites, several of those with the best ratings only operate in crypto, but still offer the biggest titles and are licensed and regulated.

Innovate your product line

Source: Pixabay

For the most part, the core selection of casino games hasn’t changed in over a century. You get your slot machines and table games, with those table games being roulette, blackjack, baccarat, and craps. Moving into the digital landscape, where floor space isn’t in consideration, developers have been able to expand the selection greatly.

It began with the advent of live casino games. The surge in the popularity of live streaming generally helped live-streamed versions of blackjack and roulette become huge hits. As more studios got involved, to compete, new ways to play were invented. Now, the top games come under the banner of live game shows, with Dream Catcher, Monopoly Big Baller, and even Deal or No Deal offering new ways to partake in real money gambling.

More recently, a new form of digital casino games has risen to the fore. Known as ‘crash games,’ the premise is very simple: you bet and then watch the game character progress and eventually crash, with your aim being to cash out before the crash.

As the character progresses, the value of the cash out increases. The player can cash out at any time on the likes of Big Bass Crash or Aviator, so the crash games offer more control than a slot, but they still utilise randomisation to determine the results. Both live game shows and crash games are products of competition that have enhanced the industry as a whole.

New options continue to spring up in online casino gaming, with crypto payments, crash games, and live game shows being the most prominent right now. Making payments more secure and innovating by creating or bringing new products to the market are all strong lessons for small businesses in the North East to take on board.