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“Market opening and evolutions”
The opening of the French gaming market is on the way. The first phase of “regularization” to which we have just assisted is probably only the beginning of a long process which can only be beneficial to the players, to the actors, and generally, to the French economy.
Italy or the United Kingdom are already quite advanced on this way and others, like Spain, Portugal or Belgium, will follow. The methods and specificities may differ from one country to another, but the process is overall the same.
Beyond these processes which, as we already said, are more a type of “regularization” than a real “opening”, another phenomenon of a greater depth is to be observed on a world level:
- Internet and mobile telephony obliged the Governments to adapt their legislations. Many countries did set up or are preparing the legal framework making it possible to authorize and better control the gaming operations using those access modes. Several countries, also seeking to decrease their “cost of operating” while increasing their incomes, privatized their gaming operations or entrusted their management to private organizations.
- For the past ten years, the technological modifications are done at an accelerated speed. But for the past two years, the rate/rhythm has further increased: the infrastructures are even lighter (one speaks about “cloud computing”), mobility is not any more a phantasm but a reality and products like the Ipod or the Ipad came to modify further the practices of us all.
- Third and last but not least, the behaviors also changed: the social networks, the virtual worlds offer to all an open window on the world and on themselves consequently causing a material change of behavior. But with the change of behaviors, the modification of contents and economic models (entertainment is “free” in more and more occurrences) will be the real major upheavals in the gaming world in the years to come.
These evolutions by themselves have nothing special if taken one by one. But the fact they are moving forward at an accelerated path and all together at the same time is quite unique. The difficulty and challenge is thus even bigger for gaming operators, whether public or private, to adapt their offer, their technology, their behavior and their own economic models to continue to attract their customers and satisfy them.
LudWin Group |
