(to access the full analysis, feel free to reach out to mark@codepole.com)
In this article you will learn…
- What causes most operational friction in iGaming today,
- How player trust, game development, and compliance are interlinked,
- What can be done to turn these frictions into competitive advantage.
Let’s talk about the iGaming trust paradox
The more valuable data becomes, the less anyone wants to share it. That’s the hidden source of friction in today’s iGaming ecosystem. Players, operators, suppliers– all guilty as charged.
They say you fear what you don’t know, and between hefty regulatory fines, fraudulent players, and unserious operators, being wary is reasonable. Most actors don’t know what others might do with the data they share. Many don’t even fully grasp what they themselves could. They know they have something valuable and profound –but also hard to comprehend and potentially dangerous.
That’s the perfect foundation for distrust – as long as one is not 100% sure of what, how, and why they share. Brought under control, sharing data becomes like investing money: a careful balancing act between risks and rewards.
Our research explores what data issues disguised as trust issues permeate today’s iGaming market, and how they can be mitigated to turn friction into innovation.
European iGaming
Europe has long been the largest gambling market in the world. Yet it not only keeps growing, but undergoes rapid digitalization, with mobile taking over desktop(59% in 2025 vs. 50% in 2020). That means:
- European iGaming has huge expansion potential, especially on the large but less digitalized markets like Italy, Spain or Germany. For operators eyeing regional growth, these markets offer volume – but also demand localized UX and agile compliance adaptation.
- The market’s fragmented nature comes with its own challenges like cultural gaps and disparate regulatory requirements. CTOs and compliance leads need to build scalable infrastructure that respects these national quirks — without slowing teams down.
- All that gambling generates vast and ever-growing amounts of data. For data teams,this means opportunity – but also governance nightmares if ingestion and privacy aren’t under control.
A fourth conclusion is that optimization for mobile, be it UX or data flows, is crucial.However, the lack of player complaints suggests that operators and suppliers are doing well on that. The outlook is less bright when it comes to data and regulatory issues.
The three friction points
In our research spanning 40+ suppliers, 20+ operators, and 1100+ Trustpilot reviews,we synthesized the most frequently mentioned business problems into a comprehensive friction map.
Three friction zones that repeatedly stall innovation surfaced:
Compliance overload
Support teams are buried in KYC, AML, and RG processes — leaving players frustrated and unassisted.
Data-sharing barriers
Developers can’t build better games without behavioral insight. But operators fear regulatory blowback.
Fraud defense friction
Heavy-handed anti-fraud policies trap innocent players in rigid systems, especially around withdrawals.
It would seem that iGaming has serious trust issues. But in reality, those are data issues.
Frictions explained
Compliance vs. player experience
Following the rules imposed by national gambling authorities not only halts player flows,but also spreads customer service (CS) resources thin, with little capacity left to deliver friendly and efficient support.
We have seen companies automate aspects of the KYC, AML, and RG processes, e.g. risk scoring and pre-verification, as well as operate VIP support teams. While high rollers can’t be exempted from regulatory checks, operators can process them faster. Operations leads know that automation cuts ticket volume – but also that handoffs to live agents often reveal deeper UX or tooling gaps.
So why not turn CS data into an innovation resource? Human and chatbot conversations both provide great insight into not only what people talk about, but also where processes get stuck. For data scientists, those unstructured logs are a goldmine. If properly mined, they reveal what friction really costs, and how to streamline resource planning, upskilling, business processes, and more.
Compliance vs. data sharing
For game studios, lack of player behavior data is a killer. 82% said it prevents them from iterating or proving what works. For operators, it’s a legal risk; one unclear clause in a sharing agreement could mean a million-euro fine.
This is a textbook case of a data problem disguised as a trust problem. What counts as personally identifiable information (PII) is not always easy to decide, and seeing clear in the matter requires a profound understanding of both the law(e.g. GDPR) and the data itself. From a DPO or legal lens, it’s not just about“share or don’t share” – it’s about proving intent, purpose limitation, and streamlining data packages. For game designers, the data that drives innovation is often the same data privacy teams are trying to redact.
Only by building the necessary understanding, processes, and infrastructure can actors find the common ground to safely and confidently share data with each other. Platforms and B2B tool vendors can play a key role here by offering modular pipelines that embed compliance into design, making this into the collaborative game it should be.
Trust vs. fraud
Few things raise so much anger as a seemingly rigged game. Sure, the house is meant to win, and frequent gamblers understand that, but extreme loss streaks,underwhelming bonus spins, or delayed withdrawals still top the players’ blacklist. For player-facing teams, opacity means churn. But for fraud analysts and legal counsel, transparency is risky. Fraudulent actors could use details about game mechanics, KYC processes, etc. to game the system. This fear of the 5% bad eggs makes operators treat the decent 95% worse than they deserve. Studios, too, get caught in the crossfire – their games flagged as “suspicious” without ever knowing why. So, what now?
Revealing sensitive info to players is obviously not the way to go. One option is blockchain-based provably fair gaming, which proves each spin’s fairness without revealing the underlying RNG algorithm. We can also help you tackle both regulatory and CRM issues via dynamic RTP monitoring to quickly detect suspicious patterns as well as loss streaks that might cause players to quit.
Then there is the matter of slow withdrawals. Product and CRM teams know that trust drops fastest during payout delays, yet it’s fraud teams that often control the logic. The best remedy would be a more accurate distinction between legit and suspicious players. And modeling teams can build better signals, if given access to the full behavioral context, not just transaction logs. Feeding those signals into a tiered KYC risk model yields fewer false positives and false negatives – meaning lower losses to fraud and fewer unhappy players.
Last but not least: the game experience
Good games make players happy: 43% of all positive reviews mentioned game quality, UX, and selection, while only 5% of all negative reviews complained about the opposite.Players actively seek out sites (especially casinos) that have great games and nice UI. Operators, knowing that, look for the best titles, and feature only the best of the best in their lobbies. But how do they decide what’s the best of the best?
Content managers often rely on heuristics, previous success, and brand recognition (anew title from the studio that released Book of the Dead is probably good…right?). But smaller studios need data to make their case for a spot in a major operator’s lobby.
- Developing features is simple – knowing what features to prioritize and how to present them is hard. For game PMs, data-driven development helps leave the risky realm of roadmap planning by instinct and make informed choices from A/B tests to complex strategic decisions.
- Having a great game is one thing; proving it is another. Analytics leads must define and prove engagement via relevant KPIs and deep analyses in a situation where they don’t control the user touchpoints.
We can help developers with both, as well as operators with the data-driven management of their game portfolio.
Conclusion
The evidence supports our thesis that the trust issues hindering innovation in iGaming are, in fact, data issues. Solving those would unlock immense growth potential for the whole ecosystem, at the same time fostering a partnership mindset. Because we aren’t rivals. Operators, game developers, platforms,payment solutions, consultants, and the other actors each see a slice of the problem – but the real wins come when we tackle friction together.
