Most of the apps on our phones are built to feel social. We can chat, scroll, follow live events, and can often see what other people are doing in real time.
Sports betting has moved from the counter to the smartphone, but open an online sportsbook, and you’ll notice that the experience hasn’t changed all that much.
There are still odds grids, bet slips, promotions, account balances, and casino lobbies full of games that users mostly play on their own.
That model is big business, but it’s also starting to run up against a different kind of user expectation.
Younger gamblers grew up in a completely different type of entertainment economy.
They’re used to mobile games and social casinos, as well as live events, progression systems, and multiplayer formats that consistently give users a reason to keep coming back.
There’s no question that mobile betting works. But the next challenge is what real-money gaming becomes when it stops treating the phone like a smaller betting shop and starts borrowing more from mobile games than from legacy gambling products.
It’s a question that Anton Backman has been watching from outside of the traditional gambling lane.
Backman is a general partner at Play Ventures, a venture capital firm focused on game studios, platforms, and technology.
Speaking to CasinoBeats, Backman said Play Ventures’ interest in gambling came naturally because of the firm’s background in mobile gaming. Around 2020 and 2021, the firm began seeing founders from its free-to-play gaming network exploring opportunities in “real money or real money adjacent” products.
“I think that convergence is something that has pulled us towards the gambling space over the past couple of years,” Backman said.
Many of those early products were real-money mobile skill games built around categories such as “Solitaire, bingo, bubble shooter, match three type of games,” which sat closer to Play Ventures’ existing world than to legacy betting.
It was that overlap that helped shape the firm’s view that real-money games could be built “from the ground up” with more inspiration from “the engagement mechanics of video games.”
Why Gambling Apps Still Feel Too Transactional
The shift Backman describes isn’t just about making gambling apps more colorful. It’s about applying parts of the mobile gaming playbook to products that have traditionally been more transactional.
In mobile gaming, social mechanics, retention loops, live operations, and progression systems are built into the user experience, giving users a reason to return and keep playing.
That’s very different from much of the online gambling experience, which doesn’t involve much interaction with other players, even when there are millions of other people using the same app.
“Placing a bet, playing slot games, it’s a largely isolated experience,” Backman said. “Everybody plays their own slot reel. There’s really no sort of shared experience with other people.”
Social casinos can feel so different because they make casino gameplay feel more like a shared experience.
“What really drove monetization, and what really still drives monetization in those products, is the fact that when you’re playing slots, you’re in a virtual room with other players,” Backman said. “There’s a chat with other players. You see what the other players are winning.”
However, it does raise an obvious question: if the core gameplay is so similar, why haven’t real-money casino products adopted more of those social mechanics?
Backman’s answer is that, in many cases, traditional products are so successful that operators don’t really have any incentive to change them. As Backman put it, “You don’t really want to mess with the product that generates all your profits.”
Crash Games Show Where Real-Money Products are Heading
Even if traditional casino operators don’t have much incentive to change right now, that doesn’t mean things will always stay that way. All we have to do is look at crash games to get an idea of where real-money products could be heading.
One of those games is Aviator, where all players watch the same event unfold at the same time. As the plane climbs, the payout multiplier rises in real time. While players decide for themselves when to bow out, the tension is shared.
Backman sees crash games as an early example of video game, mobile gaming, and social gaming elements being brought together in real-money products.
“I think Aviator and the other crash games are kind of the first clear example,” he told us. “Each time the plane goes up, it’s the same kind of experience for everyone. They all bet against that same event happening, which is in stark contrast to those isolated slot reels that people play by themselves.”
Players also get to see each other’s decisions in real time, adding to the game’s community feel.
“You see what other people are betting, you see when they drop off, you see how much they’re winning,” Backman said.
It also makes players feel like they are making a meaningful decision.
“What it gives the player is this idea of perceived skill, because you still choose when to drop off,” Backman said.
When you spin the reels on a slot, it lands where it lands. In Aviator, the player controls when to cash out. And that changes how the result feels, even though it’s still a chance-based game.
“When a slot reel goes off, you can’t really blame anyone else,” Backman said. “It goes how it goes. But in Aviator, technically, you can blame yourself if you didn’t jump out early enough.”
And that sense of being in control, even if for only a short time, is a big part of their appeal.
“You are kind of in control of your destiny in that game,” Backman said. “Those are very powerful motivators to find these games interesting.”
RTP is still important, especially for experienced slot players. But Backman believes newer real-money and real-money-adjacent formats show that entertainment value can carry more weight than legacy casino operators sometimes assume.
“There’s a case to be made that the players of these products actually care more about the entertainment value and what’s happening around it,” he said.
Aviator and other crash games may only be the first stage. Backman expects future games to incorporate longer-term goals, progression features, and social mechanics that give players a motive to return that isn’t just about the next wager. The idea is to create products that users visit for entertainment, not just to win money or recover from a loss.
“One could argue that is also a healthier reason to spend time on these platforms,” Backman said.
Midnite Shows How Challenger Brands Can Compete
Play Ventures’ investment in Midnite is where you can see Backman’s thesis at work in the actual betting market.
The firm backed the UK-based sports betting and casino platform early, before it had become one of the more closely watched challenger brands in the market. Backman explained that Play looked at Midnite through its “mobile gaming lens,” focusing on early engagement signals, founder quality, and the team’s outsider view of the UK market.
“They were two U.S. guys building for the UK market, kind of taking that out-of-the-box view into building a challenger brand,” he told us.
What interested Play was that Midnite’s founders were asking basically the same question Play Ventures was already asking: which mechanics from mobile and social gaming could be brought into real-money gaming? “At the time, it was all just ideas, really,” Backman said.
Backman described Midnite as one of the fastest-growing challenger brands in the UK, but he doesn’t believe its success comes down to any one feature.
“There’s really no silver bullet, even though it would be great if there were one,” he said. “It’s really just all these small things, just trying to make them better.”
It’s those small improvements that matter most when challenger brands compete with larger operators that have little incentive to change and rely on older technology.
“They’re going up against incumbents with 20-year-old tech platforms that aren’t as agile,” Backman said.
Backman sees Midnite’s advantage as more than its product. It’s also the platform’s ability to move faster across technology and marketing. Companies like Midnite are taking a page from mobile gaming and consumer app marketing rather than following the affiliate-heavy playbook of traditional bookmakers.
That includes paid social, mobile ad networks, faster creative testing, and AI-supported marketing workflows. But Backman believes Midnite is only beginning to explore what could make the product stickier over time.
“We think now that we’re starting to scratch the surface on some of these meta game elements and longer-term progression and social features,” Backman said. “Then that will take the company to the next level.”
Sports Betting’s Next Battle is the Casual User
The influence of mobile gaming shows up differently in sports betting apps than in online casinos. Backman said he’s seen some of the clearest examples in the U.S., especially among the newer daily fantasy operators like Underdog and PrizePicks.
“A lot of that core premise has been taking a sportsbook that largely looks like a spreadsheet nowadays and [making] that experience more casual,” he said.
The goal is to make the product easier for users who want to bet small amounts on a major game without having to navigate dense interfaces designed for experienced bettors.
“For the casual bettor who wants to bet a bit of money on the Sunday game, [it is about] really dumbing down that UX, making it easily understandable,” Backman told us.
Backman said that kind of experimentation has been more common in the U.S. than in Europe. In the U.S., newer DFS 2.0 products have had more room to experiment because many of them were operating in what he described as a “pre-regulated fashion.” In contrast, licensed sportsbooks faced much stricter rules.
That helps explain why much of the startup energy in the U.S. has gone into DFS 2.0, sweepstakes, social sports betting, and other formats outside traditional sportsbook licensing, rather than into launching another licensed sportsbook against DraftKings and FanDuel.
“You rarely see a new startup going after the OSB [online sports betting] opportunity in the US,” Backman said. “Partly because it’s also so expensive, but also because [it is] highly regulated, difficult to get in, difficult to maintain a license, and it’s hard to differentiate.”
Backman sees potential in DFS 2.0, sweepstakes, prediction markets, and social sports betting, but he doesn’t believe their current growth is all about product innovation.
Prediction Markets, Sweepstakes & DFS Still Face a Product Test
Backman applies that same product test to prediction markets, sweepstakes, and DFS 2.0, but with a healthy dose of caution. He does see real potential in these categories, but he’s not ready to treat them all as a major breakthrough, either.
“I think we’re really in the early innings still,” Backman told us.
The question is whether these newer formats are creating something truly different, or mostly using regulatory loopholes to repackage a sportsbook-style experience under a different structure.
“They’ve arguably so far just been building a similar product to a sportsbook, capitalizing on the same user motivation, but doing it in a fashion that’s sort of regulatory arbitrage for the company in many ways,” Backman said.
When speaking about prediction markets, he sees the trading-versus-betting language as especially important. While calling it trading rather than betting is a marketing choice, it can also shape how the product is presented and how regulators ultimately view it.
“The wording is very important in the context of Kalshi and Polymarket,” Backman said. “The semantics around this play a huge role for them.”
But he still expects regulators to look more closely at what these products are in practice, not just at how they’re technically structured.
In his view, the bigger, long-term opportunity is not the prediction itself. It’s what can be built around it.
“You kind of have an opinion on something, you’re willing to put money behind that opinion,” Backman said. “I think that’s what they still remain at their core.”
The challenge is turning that basic impulse into something more social, closer to how video games moved from solo play to shared experiences.
And that’s where the video game comparison reenters the conversation. Backman believes the challenge is figuring out “how to make these experiences more communal, more social,” similar to “what’s really been driving the longevity of video games,” as they “evolved from single-player experience to social experiences.”
“Social games,” he added, “are basically what run the game industry … nowadays on the video gaming side.”
Backman said that could mean borrowing from video game design elements such as guild systems, team-based competition, shared goals, and longer-term progression.
That piece, he said, is still “a massive unlock.”
Retention & Responsible Gaming Have to Coexist
The more gambling products borrow from mobile games, the more complicated the responsible gaming question seems to become.
A lot of that comes down to retention. Mobile games are designed to keep users coming back. Of course, gambling operators want users to return, too, but they’re also expected to identify risk and intervene when needed.
Backman says the gambling industry can’t treat those forces separately.
“I think it’s more [that] they have to coexist,” he told us.
Listening to Backman, one of the big takeaways is that more mobile gaming-style design is coming to gambling, whether the industry is ready or not.
But one of the outstanding questions is whether regulated operators take the lead in building those products or whether users end up gravitating to offshore operators with fewer consumer protections.
“There is also an increasing risk that users go to offshore operators that offer more engaging experiences,” he said. “They are not bound by the same kind of consumer protection laws and regulations.”
Play Ventures wants to back companies that build within regulated markets and take a responsible stance toward emerging audiences.
“As investors, we do want to be there if and when that change or switch is happening,” Backman told us.
He also explained that the regulatory challenge isn’t the same in every market.
In the UK and other major European markets, Backman sees the issue as more of a conversation between regulators and operators.
In the U.S., the issue is messier because licensed sportsbooks are highly regulated, while products like prediction markets and DFS 2.0 have had more room to test different formats while regulators decide how to respond.
“Innovation just moves much faster,” Backman said of categories outside traditional sportsbook licensing. “It’s still kind of undecided what the regulator will do.”
The Next Real-Money Audience Expects Entertainment
For years, gambling products mostly competed against other gambling products. That’s starting to change.
From Backman’s perspective, gambling is becoming more integrated into the wider consumer entertainment market after years of developing in its own lane.
What that means for operators is that it may be time to look outside the traditional gambling industry and study what has already happened in mobile games, social products, and consumer apps.
“If real-money gaming has largely remained kind of an isolated industry that hasn’t really taken many cues from what’s happening around it, then I would say the change is that it is becoming more and more part of the zeitgeist,” Backman told us. “[It’s] sort of exiting the shadow or the more murky waters where it used to be.”
That’s not to say that every sportsbook will become a mobile game or that every casino product will need guilds, chat rooms, and progression systems.
But Backman believes the next generation of real-money gaming products will be shaped by companies that understand why users return to entertainment platforms even when there’s no bet slip waiting.
The next phase of real-money gaming will still be defined by odds, bonuses, RTP, and market access. But it will also be defined by social design, live operations, progression systems, creative velocity, and whether users feel like they’re part of something more engaging than just placing a bet.
That’s a big change for an industry that’s been built around the wager. The bet will still be there, but it can’t be the whole product.
“The emerging demographics are expecting more than a basic slot reel,” Backman said. “They are expecting an entertainment experience.”
