During Project Apollo, humans landed on the Moon, that was 50 years ago. This is one of the greatest achievements of humankind. However, people’s daily lives were not impacted by that achievement. After Project Apollo, NASA has stepped back from the Space Race due to its expenses and these were not shared internationally, mostly because the USA and the USSR could not keep doing space projects on their own.
The Beginning of the Internet
After the Space Race, the precursor of the Internet was formed to help in sharing research. This was called ARPANET. The Internet’s precursor connected U.S universities and specific sites, and in 1973 ARPANET went International when Norway decided to connect to it. After Norway, UK followed soon enough.
During this time, Sir Tim Berners-Lee created HTTP and the first web browser at CERN. And what was more important, was that he released the source code and allowed anyone to have access and use it for free. This helped the Internet to be decentralised and democratised and the World Wide Web was created.
When Damien Connelly started to work as a Technical Support Representative for Microsoft during his second Master’s studies. He said that the difference between the Internet and World Wide Web was both obvious and significant. Today, the difference to most people is invisible.
In addition, the word “online” is mostly used to refer to the Internet’s digital ecosystem, where most of the assets are intangible. There are also many opposite words of online, some of them include offline, and in casino’s perspective, there is land-based, bricks and mortar and onground.
In 2018, Sir Tim Berners-Lee noted that he is disappointed in how the Web has developed. From his decentralised and democratised ideas, today what we see is closer to certain economic models of market efficiency. There are two types of commercial behaviours, monopolistic and oligopolistic, and both of them are more akin to the path taken during the Soviet Communist period. Theoretically, the system is amazing.
However, the primary weakness of the system it was that it relies on humans, and humans are imperfect. Some of them seek power and some prefer to follow the masses.
Online vs Offline
In his research article, Morgan Stanley highlights about the online casino. Big companies of this sector gets bigger and bigger. Robert Brassai has also highlighted in one of his articles, that it is just a matter of time until online giants will challenge the land-based operators. Damien Connelly is thinking of a principle of economic scale.
The casino industry has seen economies of scale in practice. The industry was witness to the transition towards integrated resort casinos, where the market and the geo-political conditions allowed. The casino resort is much bigger than the smaller and older commercial casino, because the resort has casino games, food & beverages, live entertainment and a hotel.
However, there is an intriguing question, where Robert Brassai asks. Will there be online and offline mergers in order to create truly omni-channel operators, or the divide will continue? Some say that it is crucial to keep B&M businesses relevant and exciting for experiential players. For example, Admiral Casino is able to be on both sides by having a chain of 400 B&M places in the UK and is on an online platform as well. In addition, there are some articles that reinforce the importance of niche for player groups.
Damien Connelly thinks that focusing on niche experiences and also time constrained experiences will create differences where both offline and online operators will benefit. Online has the ability to add advantage in global economies by creating digital experiences that have no physical borders. Offline should go niche, and create unique and exclusive experiences that are highly targeted at unique companies.
Online is growing at a constant rate and it will continue for quite some time. However, there are recent issues faced by the online operator. In other words, some companies accentuate on the idea that offline skills and experiences are required to have in order to operate big businesses online. The theory is also highlighted by Robert Brassai, where he says that data analysis show that online operators tend to lack the skills of offline operators.
