The conversation surrounding the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in online betting and gaming has shifted from concept to real-life applications in recent years thanks to an increasing volume of proof points across the sector.
Nowadays, from player management and marketing to odds generation, personalised content creation and fraud prevention, experts agree that AI now underpins core infrastructure across the industry.
Until now, discussions surrounding AI in the industry have largely focused on the revenue-generating and player-focused opportunities. That is an understandable perspective.
More than 80% of businesses in the space have embraced generative AI to support tasks like content creation and gathering customer insights, according to a new study by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’ International Gaming Institute AI Research Hub in collaboration with audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG.
Increasingly, though, there is broad recognition that AI can play an indispensable role behind the scenes – in improving efficiencies and therefore reducing costs.
Next-generation opportunities
With over 100 locations spanning Europe, the Americas and Asia providing managed hosting, cloud, cybersecurity and global network solutions for iGaming brands, Continent 8 Technologies has a prime perspective on the growth of AI at the cutting edge of the industry.
Continent 8 recently strengthened its proposition with the appointment of Cris Kuehl as its chief data, information and AI officer. Kuehl, who brings more than 20 years of experience in enterprise AI, analytics and data, is an important addition to Continent 8’s leadership team as the company helps operators to navigate next-generation technological opportunities.
He stresses that the deployment of AI across operational layers, spanning infrastructure, monitoring, compliance and internal services, is transforming how gambling businesses function at scale by playing a vital role in analysing data, logs, metrics, alerts and network telemetry.
It would be impossible for a human to perform such tasks at scale, Kuehl states, while underlining his belief that there is an opportunity in the sector to view cost prevention as a proactive measure.
“AI-driven operations help with initiating some automated remediations, and I think that’s key,” Kuehl says. “The cost reduction there is very real, but it’s also more significant to gain resilience, catching degradation before it becomes an outage.
“Right now, we’re seeing a lot of AI use as a cost-saving tool, but I like to look at it as a cost prevention measure. Outages are massive from a revenue loss perspective alone.”
“The regulatory overhead of running a multi-jurisdiction iGaming business is massive. Automation and the efficiency gains compound as the number of active jurisdictions continues to grow”
Transforming operations
In his new role, Kuehl will lead the company’s global data, AI and information strategy – driving innovation across analytics, automation, cybersecurity resilience and customer-centric intelligence.
His remit includes shaping Continent 8’s AI-enabled product evolution, supporting responsible AI practices and strengthening data governance frameworks aligned with the needs of the iGaming, tribal and enterprise sectors.
“AI is transforming how organisations operate, collaborate and protect their data,” Kuehl says. “Continent 8 is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation for the global iGaming and online sports betting sector. I’m excited to help drive the next chapter of innovation.”
Continent 8 has been a leading provider of managed IT solutions for the iGaming and online sports betting industry since it launched nearly three decades ago. The company has evolved into a full-service managed service solutions provider, and the appointment of Kuehl is designed to help it solidify its status as an authority on cybersecurity, technology and artificial intelligence across the iGaming space.
As Michael Tobin, chief executive and founder of Continent 8, said: “Cris’ deep expertise across data, AI and regulated environments is an exceptional match for our organisation’s direction. As the industry rapidly shifts toward intelligence-driven infrastructure, his leadership will ensure we continue to provide secure, high-performance solutions that deliver measurable value to our customers.”
Room to grow
Kuehl has identified three core components for how AI can reduce operational overheads and improve efficiencies in the services and infrastructure that support an iGaming business: capacity and demand forecasting, compliance operations and internal service operations.
“iGaming traffic is heavily driven with major sports fixtures, regulatory launches, promotional windows, market entries and more,” he says. “All of those create demand spikes that are either partially predictable or partially volatile.
“For AI forecasting models that apply to historical traffic patterns, the market signals that allow for infrastructure capacity to be provisioned more dynamically rather than against the worst-case static assumptions that humans make has direct cost implications.”
In terms of compliance operations, the regulatory overhead of running a multi-jurisdiction iGaming business is significant. Keeping in line with reporting, audit trail management, licence conditioning, monitoring, data retention and enforcement all come with high volume and potential for errors. This makes such operations ideal for AI support.
“Compliance operations is a core component [of AI’s ability to improve infrastructure efficiency],” says Kuehl. “The regulatory overhead of running a multi-jurisdiction iGaming business is massive. Automation and the efficiency gains compound as the number of active jurisdictions continues to grow.”
There are also benefits attached to the application of AI through internal service operations, with Kuehl highlighting efficiencies ranging from the IT service desk to network operations centre functions and vendor management processes. “All of these can carry significant operational costs, and AI changes the economics of these functions materially, fundamentally shifting the way teams operate,” he says.
Improving human efficiency
Kuehl is a firm believer that AI can be harnessed to optimise human output, rather than replacing humans altogether.
Indeed, he views the technology as a way of handling more menial tasks such as account questions, payment status, bonus mechanics and general troubleshooting.
“AI can handle those without any human involvement at all,” Kuehl says. “The proportion varies obviously by implementation quality and query complexity, but the biggest thing is it can consistently reduce agent volume requirements materially.
“I’ve seen it first-hand for the last five years – the transformation effort since Covid-19 – and I think it’s only getting more and more aggressive.”
With AI taking the heavy lifting of basic processes, humans have more freedom and time to focus on the more significant strategic and creative challenges and opportunities.
“If mean time to resolution basically drops to nothing, repeat incidents decrease as root cause analysis continues to improve,” Kuehl adds. “Then, my favourite part is that my senior engineering team’s time is protected for the work that actually requires it. I think this is absolutely huge.”
According to Kuehl, it is clear that the impact of AI in iGaming can go much further in the years to come – particularly in an enterprise’s day-to-day business.
“The industry conversation gravitates towards the player-facing AI because the outcomes are visible and commercially intuitive,” Kuehl says. “But the operational side is where AI delivers the most structurally significant efficiency gains, and it is considerably underinvested relative to its potential.”
Cris Kuehl, chief data, information and AI officer, Continent 8
Original article: https://igamingbusiness.com/tech-innovation/artificial-intelligence/from-cost-reduction-to-cost-prevention-powering-igamings-ai-transformation/
