The online gambling industry has been extremely dynamic, ever since its birth in the late 20^th century. The internet casinos, sportsbooks and poker rooms have always tried to improve their service, using the latest technological improvements.

This post will explore three innovations that completely changed the online gambling industry in the recent past.

How CDN and Adaptive Bit Rate Streaming Changed Live Streaming

Most online casinos nowadays offer live games through high-quality video streams. Many betting sites provide their customers with broadcasts of various sporting events. Both are possible thanks to several technologies, but most notably Content Delivery Networks (CDN) and Adaptive Bit Rate Streaming.

The CDN is a cluster of servers that are located in different parts of the world and contain the same resource. Once the customer requests that resource, in this case, video streaming, he receives it from the nearest location. Such flexibility allows the online gambling sites to offer high-quality broadcasts.

The other key to the success of the live streaming services is the Adaptive Bit Rate Streaming. The technology splits the stream into small packages with a different quality. The CDN provides information on how strong the connection of the user is, so he is sent the package that suits him best.

Both innovations combined improved live streams dramatically and they are the reason they became accessible to customers from all over the globe.

HTML5 Changed Mobile Gambling Forever

If you go seven or eight years back in time, there weren’t many real money mobile gambling apps. Developing native software for iOS or Android was hard and expensive. Many betting sites, casinos and poker rooms couldn’t afford it.

On top of that, the quality was often questionable. The users had to download large apps that consumed a lot of their internet data. Simply put, mobile gambling was struggling at the time.

The whole industry changed completely with the release of HTML5 in 2014. The technology enabled each gambling operator to build a mobile-responsive website. That cut the cost dramatically and allowed them to support multiple platforms with a single version.

Thanks to the innovation, the page would automatically adjust to the phone or tablet of the user. The speed, design and data consumption were optimized to whole new levels.

As a result, almost every gambling site today works on mobile too and you can play poker, bet on sports or enjoy countless casino games. In comparison, most mobile casinos used to have a very limited number of games in the past. You would often find only 10-15 titles on the go and now there are hundreds in most mobile casinos.

Bitcoin Enabled Many Restricted Players to Gamble

There are plenty of countries where online gambling is restricted in one way or another. The USA is a great example, because it’s not technically illegal to bet on the internet, but processing payments with that purpose is.

That put most online gambling sites in a tough situation and many of them simply stopped accepting Americans. Those who still did were struggling to find convenient payment options.

That all changed with the rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. US players and customers from similar jurisdictions can use the virtual coins to fund their accounts and cash out their profits seamlessly.

What Comes Next?

It’s hard to predict the next big thing in online gambling, with so many technical innovations happening all the time. And yet, the rise of Virtual Reality might be the next step. There are already some games available and the technology is getting cheaper by the minute. It might very well change the industry for good very soon.