The rush to the online

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28 by Cesare Antonini The rush to the online

Samuele Fraternali, director of the Politecnico di Milano’s Osservatorio Gioco Online e digital «Online and mobile are booming in all sectors, now we have to work on maintaining and retaining flows» During the other pandemic, that of Sars, e-commerce experienced a real boom; in 2020, in the era of Covid-19, will digital undergo a real acceleration? The two greatest experts Samuele Fraternali and Andrea Manusardi, analyze gaming in full health emergency.

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Once upon a time, there was the research on online and mobile gaming written by the pool of researchers from the Politecnico di Milano. A permanent observatory on the trend of this gaming segment that now is led by Samuele Fraternali. “Unfortunately, quantitative analyzes are stopped in 2018, due to the complex political situation and we don’t have new data, fresh from research - the director explains, but never despair - however we always follow the games but above all the Digital channel and all the markets connected to it”. The idea is to understand how online (and mobile) gaming is evolving in these lockdown months that have generated, in the meantime, greater collection, especially in March 2020: “All digital markets have seen an acceleration of the consumer towards these sectors in this phase of closing of retail – Fraternali explains - in fact, barriers of various kinds have fallen, pushing the user away from online markets such as digital trust, perceived and associated safety that was still very low or even the ability to move on the web. Many who thought live was always better than online and who had never tried these channels have been forced to do so and appreciated them. All these obstacles have been canceled. The consumer wanted or had to get used

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to digital”. Do you have an idea of the data? “We have had an exponential impact in some sectors. Surely, in gaming, without accurate data, a boost will be experienced in poker, especially in the casino. Bets, without events, have suffered a stop”. Once this “obligation” phase is over, when a pseudo-normality will return, will the consumer remain faithful to digital? “According to our forecasts, if you went from 1 to 10 in digital consumption in the so-called Phase 1, when we will return to normal life or something similar, we will see a drop but maybe you will spend 5. We will also return to the physical experience, provided that it’s like before Covid-19. In any case, the emergency will have acted as a driving force for the development of these services that the user will enable at various times in his life”. Specifically on gambling? “The reaction in these phases must be analyzed from product to product – Fraternali continues - obviously the games most linked to the physical world also suffer on digital. Others can be more faithfully and more easily replicated. Consumers of slot in the bars, for example, haven’t moved en masse to online gaming.”

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Andrea Manusardi, customer interaction & monitoring research manager at Doxa «The lockdown has accelerated processes now essential for gaming companies»

Covid-19 penalized, but didn’t stop, the basic work of an institution like Doxa. To better understand the topic of this special article, we asked Andrea Manusardi, customer interaction & monitoring research manager, at this research institute. What are the effects on the public gaming sector, which you follow very closely? “It is a situation that has impacted a lot and that will leave important consequences, it is an obvious thing for everyone – Manusardi analyzes - if we talk about the gaming market, the situation is not the simplest. By cutting all the games, there was a very serious cash situation. Everyone is trying to maintain liquidity, many companies are consuming their holidays or have taken measures such as unemployment insurance” Online gaming can comfort, but what will reopening be like? “With the recovery, the world of traditional games could recover fast enough. Online is strongly linked to betting and is highly dependent on the sport phenomenon. You can understand that without the championships, the markets and therefore the ‘raw material’ are missing”. Can multichannel be a solution? “For companies it is fundamental and now it will have to be increasingly used and pushed by the companies. At the restart, the stores will still have limitations and for this reason it is essential to lead and support the transition to online consumers, because not everyone has the same skills. There are still many users who are not so advanced from the digital point of view. For this - Manusardi continues - those who have a physical channel can use it to try to bring the player closer to digital. Physical and remote will have to integrate more and more and those who know how to do it better will have benefits”.