July 13th, 2009
Via PlayNoEvil, a report on an interesting development in the field of online gambling. In this case, instead of wagering on a real sporting event, Gextech is offering a virtual soccer (football) game called Fantastic League that players can wager real money on which is apparently going to be available via interactive TV from satellite provider Satellite Information Services Limited (SIS). As the article notes:
“…I’ve heard of a couple of variants on this with horse racing and dog racing, but a full sports game offers a lot more opportunity for interactive entertainment (and wagering) than a racing game.
Its kind of clever – players make wagers, the game runs a game simulation with nice graphics for highlights (skip the dull bits) and pays off at the end.
In some sense, the traditional sport business should love this as it may divert wagering attention from real sports to virtual sports – thereby reducing the temptation to corrupt the game as both professional football (soccer) and tennis have found.
Of course the real question is whether the game is fair or being manipulated by the providers…. an interesting question once money is on the line. It would also be interesting to see how gambling regulators react to these games.
The games are played as fixed odds events… it would seem to me that a parimutuel system (where players compete with each other) would make the most sense and reduce incentives for the providers to manipulate the games.
This type of game, as well as cybersports with wagering and original online gambling games, are three new interesting areas in online gambling that we are just beginning to see emerge. Game designs, as well as regulatory and security issues, are going to be very fascinating challenges for everyone involved… but the opportunity is potentially massive.“
This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 11:58 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
