Casa: Operators should invest in their staff instead of AI

Malta's longest-serving Member of the European Parliament, David Casa, called on operators to invest in their staff before turning to AI, in a speech at the SiGMA World conference in Rome on Wednesday. Casa said news of workers losing their jobs in the gambling sector "should be taken into account."

Casa said Europe should embrace the potential of AI to save time, detect fraud and help staff do their jobs better. However, he stressed that the human cost of automation cannot be ignored. "Behind every job there is a person, a family, a rent payment and a plan for the future," said Casa, who asked that the way roles could change be examined rather than cut outright, and that training be provided before any losses occur.

The sector is facing a wave of job cuts. Flutter announced last month that it will cut up to 1,400 positions in its UK and Ireland division and at its offshore centers in Leeds, Dublin, Porto and Cluj-Napoca. The company attributed this to a sharp increase in UK remote betting taxes. BDO's Ollie Woodward said that automation through AI may also have increased the scale of the restructuring, noting that operators are using AI in coding, customer support and CRM, and that this directly affects team structures.

Sweden-based platform provider Cubeia announced it has set a goal of using AI-written code in all new features and releases by August. The company's chief operating officer, Stefan Grenstad, said the idea emerged during a salary review, that mid-level developers using AI had pulled ahead, and that two or three developers were producing about 60 percent of the output. Grenstad said the company does not present this as a headcount reduction move, but noted that keeping up with the shift is not an option for developers or the company.

Gambling.com Group has been more direct. In May, the company announced a restructuring built around AI that will reduce its workforce by 25 percent and save $13 million a year. New CEO Kevin McCrystle told investors that 80 percent of the company's new code is generated by AI, and said the company is trying to make AI the core operating layer of the entire organization.

In the US, former FanDuel employees told Front Office Sports that AI adoption, prediction markets and economic uncertainty have played a role in this year's cuts.