Australia
Loot boxes potentially groom young people for gambling
New research funded by the NSW Government’s Responsible Gambling Fund, shows young adults are more likely to gamble if exposed to in-game purchases and loot boxes in video games.
Director of the Office of Responsible Gambling, Natalie Wright, said video game loot boxes are virtual games of chance that offer players a randomised reward when opened.
“Loot boxes can resemble gambling since players invest time and sometimes money in obtaining them, then receive a random reward of uncertain value such as weapons or outfits for their characters,” Ms Wright said.
“They are a growing concern because of the risk and reward elements associated with them that is similar to gambling and there are currently no age limits to play these games.”
The study by Central Queensland University (CQU), surveyed adolescents about their gaming experiences. Some of their key findings showed 62 per cent of the games they looked at offered loot boxes, and about a third of respondents had purchased a loot box in the last 12 months.
Additionally, the median monthly expenditure on loot boxes for adolescents aged 12 to 17 was $50 and $72 for young adults aged 18 to 24 years.
Overall the CQU research report found:
- Loot boxes are common in the best-selling video games – the research report looked at 82 best-selling video games and revealed 62 per cent (51) had loot boxes.
- In the survey sample, almost all of the respondents played at least one video game with loot boxes within the last 12 months (93 per cent).
- Compared to other purchasers, young adults, aged 18 to 24 years old, who had recently purchased loot boxes for the first time, were more likely to have gambling problems. However, there was no evidence that earlier experiences with loot boxes predict later gambling problems.
- Young people who had either opened, bought or sold loot boxes within the last 12 months were also more likely to have:
- gambled in the last 12 months (young adults)
- gambled more frequently (young adults)
- spent more money gambling (young adults)
- suffered more gambling problems (adolescents and young adults)
- suffered more gambling-related harm (young adults), and
- endorsed more positive attitudes towards gambling (adolescents and young adults).
To view a copy of the report, please visit the Office of Responsible Gambling website.
For those needing help with gambling issues, help is available 24/7 on 1800 858 888 or through www.gamblinghelp.nsw.gov.au.
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Anthony Woods
PointsBet Goes All In on Grafana Cloud to Power AI-Driven Observability at Scale
Grafana Labs, the company behind the open observability cloud, announced that PointsBet, one of Australia’s fastest-growing digital wagering operators, has selected Grafana Cloud as its unified observability platform. PointsBet is using Grafana Cloud to consolidate telemetry across its proprietary betting platform, accelerate incident resolution with AI-powered insights and give engineering teams the visibility they need to own and operate their services with confidence.
“Our platform is our product. Grafana Cloud gives us one place to see everything — and the AI tools to act on it fast,” Daniel Lucas, CTO at PointsBet.
Grafana Cloud was selected for its ability to deliver:
• Unified Observability Across Every Data Source: PointsBet’s proprietary platform spans real-time odds calculation, player account management, front-end apps and a custom-built betting engine, all generating high-volume telemetry from multiple sources. With Grafana Cloud, PointsBet can ingest and correlate metrics, logs, traces and profiles in a single open platform, ending the fragmentation that slows incident response. Built on OpenTelemetry and open source foundations including Grafana Loki, Grafana Tempo and Prometheus, there’s no vendor lock-in — just a unified view of the stack. This flexibility is what enables PointsBet’s shift towards a true service ownership model: engineering teams can now observe, understand and act on what they build.
• AI That’s Actually Useful: Grafana Assistant gives PointsBet engineers a context-aware AI co-pilot for investigation and troubleshooting, letting them query telemetry in natural language, navigate dashboards and trace issues to root cause without deep expertise in PromQL, LogQL or TraceQL. Now generally available in Grafana Cloud, Grafana Assistant can run multi-step incident investigations, generate and refine queries on the fly, and surface the right data at the right moment — keeping every action inside the tools teams already use. For a business where live betting windows close in seconds, reducing time-to-resolution isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s a competitive edge.
• Application Observability That Empowers Developers: Grafana Cloud Application Observability provides PointsBet’s teams with end-to-end visibility into how their services perform — surfacing service dependency maps, latency hotspots and the customer impact of every change. By connecting distributed traces, metrics and logs in a unified view, Application Observability helps teams understand not just that something broke, but why and who is affected.
“Observability used to mean drowning in dashboards, alert noise and waiting for someone else to tell you what’s on fire. We chose Grafana Cloud because it brings technology and commercial teams together on the single view building autonomous value streams — and Grafana Assistant means our engineers spend less time asking ‘what’s wrong’ and more time fixing it. It enables the shift from reactive firefighting to teams that genuinely own their services end to end and that helps us build a platform our customers can reliably bet on,” said Saurabh Vyas, Head of SRE, PointsBet.
“Real-time platforms at scale are some of the hardest systems to operate — every component has to perform under pressure, and every signal matters when something goes wrong. PointsBet’s engineering team has built a sophisticated platform, and we’re proud to give their engineers the observability foundation they need to operate it. Open, AI-powered, and built to cut through complexity — that’s exactly what Grafana Cloud is for,” said Anthony Woods, co-founder of Grafana Labs.
The post PointsBet Goes All In on Grafana Cloud to Power AI-Driven Observability at Scale appeared first on EE Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.
Australia
Elections, Bitcoin, and the Australian Open: Slotegrator breaks down prediction markets in new ebook
Annual trading volume in the prediction market vertical grew from $500 million to $64 billion in only three years. What’s behind their explosive popularity? In a new ebook, Slotegrator lays out why this latest evolution in betting has so much appeal for players and what operators need to consider before launching their own prediction market.
Why have prediction markets captured so much attention? In a new downloadable ebook, Slotegrator lays out the factors behind the vertical’s popularity, analyzes how prediction markets are disrupting the modern betting landscape, and provides a checklist to help readers decide if
the time is right for them to add a prediction market to their platform.
In the ebook, Slotegrator highlights generational shifts in preferences and behavior, such as the increase in younger players who are familiar with trading and financial markets, as one of the main drivers in the rise of the format. There’s also a widespread change in values; players view the P2P exchange mechanic, in particular, as a more transparent form of betting than wagering against the house.
“Today, the audience’s attention shifts in real time across platforms, and digital experiences evolve constantly. If you’re not actively tracking where engagement is moving, you’re not just behind the trend — you’re already losing relevance in the market,” comments Olga Ivanchik, COO of Slotegrator.
Opinion-based betting allows users to trade literally any event from politics to current events. The pursuit of getting a more interactive, dynamic, and fair experience is reflected in prediction market mechanics: the odds in this type of betting are not set by the house but fluctuate in accordance with supply and demand — players bet against each other, and the platform generates revenue on commissions based on the amount of bets.
“This transition eliminates the old conflict of interest and gives us a more transparent, equitable, and stimulating experience where value is defined by the market itself”, says Maksym Shtun, Product Owner at Slotegrator.
The report provides analytics with key figures, regulatory notes, expert comments, and an explanation of the mechanics involve. It also includes useful tips for readers:
- A checklist that will help operators understand whether they need prediction markets on
their platform - Tips and recommendations on the events for betting by region
- Comparison of prediction market mechanics with classic sportsbooks
- Analysis of relevant psychological factors
- Breakdown of how exactly how prediction markets generate revenue
Download the guide and get a full understanding of the prediction market phenomenon. Be among the first operators to make the most of the quickest growing opportunity in iGaming.
ABOUT THE COMPANY
Since 2012, Slotegrator has been one of the iGaming industry’s leading software and business solution providers for online casino and sportsbook operators.
The company’s main focus is software development and support for online casino platforms, as well as the integration of game content and payment systems.
The company works with licensed game developers and offers a vast portfolio of casino content: slots, live casino games, poker, virtual sports, table games, lotteries, casual games, and data feeds for betting.
Slotegrator also provides consulting services in gambling license acquisition and business incorporation.
The post Elections, Bitcoin, and the Australian Open: Slotegrator breaks down prediction markets in new ebook appeared first on EE Gaming | Global iGaming & Tech Intelligence Hub.
Australia
Elections, Bitcoin, and the Australian Open: Slotegrator breaks down prediction markets in new ebook
Annual trading volume in the prediction market vertical grew from $500 million to $64 billion in only three years. What’s behind their explosive popularity? In a new ebook, Slotegrator lays out why this latest evolution in betting has so much appeal for players and what operators need to consider before launching their own prediction market.
Why have prediction markets captured so much attention? In a new downloadable ebook, Slotegrator lays out the factors behind the vertical’s popularity, analyzes how prediction markets are disrupting the modern betting landscape, and provides a checklist to help readers decide if
the time is right for them to add a prediction market to their platform.
In the ebook, Slotegrator highlights generational shifts in preferences and behavior, such as the increase in younger players who are familiar with trading and financial markets, as one of the main drivers in the rise of the format. There’s also a widespread change in values; players view the P2P exchange mechanic, in particular, as a more transparent form of betting than wagering against the house.
“Today, the audience’s attention shifts in real time across platforms, and digital experiences evolve constantly. If you’re not actively tracking where engagement is moving, you’re not just behind the trend — you’re already losing relevance in the market,” comments Olga Ivanchik, COO of Slotegrator.
Opinion-based betting allows users to trade literally any event from politics to current events. The pursuit of getting a more interactive, dynamic, and fair experience is reflected in prediction market mechanics: the odds in this type of betting are not set by the house but fluctuate in accordance with supply and demand — players bet against each other, and the platform generates revenue on commissions based on the amount of bets.
“This transition eliminates the old conflict of interest and gives us a more transparent, equitable, and stimulating experience where value is defined by the market itself”, says Maksym Shtun, Product Owner at Slotegrator.
The report provides analytics with key figures, regulatory notes, expert comments, and an explanation of the mechanics involve. It also includes useful tips for readers:
- A checklist that will help operators understand whether they need prediction markets on
their platform - Tips and recommendations on the events for betting by region
- Comparison of prediction market mechanics with classic sportsbooks
- Analysis of relevant psychological factors
- Breakdown of how exactly how prediction markets generate revenue
Download the guide and get a full understanding of the prediction market phenomenon. Be among the first operators to make the most of the quickest growing opportunity in iGaming.
ABOUT THE COMPANY
Since 2012, Slotegrator has been one of the iGaming industry’s leading software and business solution providers for online casino and sportsbook operators.
The company’s main focus is software development and support for online casino platforms, as well as the integration of game content and payment systems.
The company works with licensed game developers and offers a vast portfolio of casino content: slots, live casino games, poker, virtual sports, table games, lotteries, casual games, and data feeds for betting.
Slotegrator also provides consulting services in gambling license acquisition and business incorporation.
The post Elections, Bitcoin, and the Australian Open: Slotegrator breaks down prediction markets in new ebook appeared first on Americas iGaming & Sports Betting News.
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