The next frontier in i-gaming seems to be smartphones and mobile devices, with gamers and punters taking their chances from wherever they are and not just from in front of a computer or laptop.
This emerging trend was clear in the latest International iGaming Expo held a few weeks ago in London. This annual event attracts thousands of participants from around the world, not least from Malta where i-gaming has grown to be an important asset to the economy.
Though looking ahead, the basics of the industry remain as important as ever, and one of them is certainly internet connectivity.
"The gaming industry has a number of value drivers which have enabled it to grow into the industry it is today. One of these is secure and reliable links to the internet cloud for passing large volumes of data traffic. It is a main driver and a crucial one without which there would be no gaming industry in Malta. It is like running an electric motor without an electricity supply, it just does not happen," said Albert Zerafa, gateway and bandwidth manager at Vodafone Malta soon after his return from the IGE.
In terms of data links, in 2003 Vodafone Malta took a strategic decision that it must own the links from Malta right up to a central point in Europe and therefore decided to have its own submarine data cable between Malta and Sicily. Commissioned in 2004, this doubled the number of inter-national data links connecting Malta to the rest of the world.
Data traffic at the time was very small, in the order of a few tens of megabits, practically insignificant. This has grown significantly over the last six years and Vodafone Malta says it today provides in excess of 50 per cent of the data traffic required by the gaming community in Malta.
Last year Vodafone Malta increased its submarine cable link capacity from 2.5 Gbps to 10 Gbps and purchased a large capacity on a third-party submarine cable to be able to provide full resiliency in the unlikely event of a submarine cable fault.
"One of the drawbacks Malta had before 2004 was that all communication links between Malta and the rest of the world relied on a single submarine cable. Investors were aware of this and Malta lost investment opportunities due to this drawback. When Vodafone laid the second submarine cable, 100 per cent financed by the company, all of a sudden the whole investment opportunity landscape changed because there were diverse data routes towards Malta and the risk factor of running business from Malta reduced to a more acceptable level," added Mr Zerafa.
Vodafone Malta carries millions of minutes of international voice traffic coming from abroad destined to Maltese operators, be it the operator itself or competitors. Once it receives a call destined to another operator, it passes this call on the local links to the other operator so that it can terminate the call onto that subscriber. It also carries millions of minutes of voice calls from Malta to any country in the world. This traffic is seeing a continuous increase especially since international call rates went down.
In terms of technology, the fibre-optic submarine data cable remains the most important link between Malta and the rest of the world, an extremely sensitive link without which the i-gaming industry would not exist in Malta. The fact that Malta is in the periphery of Europe is a barrier that had to be tackled seriously for i-gaming to thrive.
"I think the investor looks at Malta in a holistic way and assesses the political climate, the good work the government has done and is doing on financial services regulation, gaming regulation, the investment in education to meet the needs of the industry and many other factors," argues Mr Zerafa.
"Being a relatively small place gives Malta the opportunity to focus and support the industry better than if one were looking at investing in a much larger country. Thus there are serious positive advantages that an investor considers. One can also mention the hard work the government has done to build this industry and the response of the business community in providing all the services demanded by i-gaming clients.
"In terms of ICT, one of the major contributors is the knowledgeable expertise in terms of human resources that Malta provides, and the support i-gaming companies find in setting, maintaining and operating their multitude of servers, routers and other hardware."
The last IGE provided some insights into the near future of i-gaming, something which Malta must be aware of to remain in the loop.
Besides the large number of stands showcasing a wide variety of products and services related to the gaming industry, this year the exhibitors and visitors had the opportunity to discuss the latest product launches through the innovative showcase forum. The widespread introduction of smart phones coupled with cheaper data rates and faster access speeds have sparked the necessity of the development of mobile version games. Such websites give the user nearly the same functionality as their normal version counterpart, with the added flexibility of being accessible while on the move.