As reported by Infopowa, a statistical study presented by Simon Holliday, a partner in the Global Betting and Gaming Consultants firm, during the European i-Gaming conference in Nice, provided an interesting breakdown of the online gambling sector.
According to recent numbers the online gambling industry will be worth $9.4 billion by the end of the year, it was $7.2 billion in 2003, but it will be steady increasing through to $25.1 billion in 2010.
North American players constitute 48 per cent of the overall online gambling business, a number that might shrink to 36 per cent by 2010, albeit in a much larger market.
Europe, which is currently at 28 per cent, is coming up strongly and will rise to 33 per cent in a bigger market by 2010.
But the real growth looks as if it will take place in the Asia and Middle East regions, currently 17 per cent but set to grow to 25 per cent. Central and South America is likely to stay at 2 per cent, with the rest being divided in small percentages by Africa and Oceania.
Analyzing the market by “product” shows that betting exchanges and sportsbooks dominate at 38 per cent, with online casinos handling 23 per cent of the action and online poker close behind at 22 per cent. Skill gaming and bingo hold 2 per cent and 5 per cent respectively with online lotteries currently at 10 per cent, but expected to surge to 27 per cent by 2010.
Internet remains the dominant delivery channel at 82 per cent, with mobile gaming at 15 per cent, but likely to growth to 27 per cent by 2010, and interactive TV at 3 per cent and growing slowly to only 5 per cent by 2010.
Very interesting the snapshot of this year’s initial public offerings on the London exchanges:
55 IPOs so far this year raised £4.5 billion vs 35 IPOs raising £3.5 billion in 2004).
Another interesting data was the one relative to the software used by online gambling sites, with 93 of them using proprietary technolgy, while the rest use solutions provided by World Gaming (131), Microgaming (124), Playtech (102), RTG (66) Tribeca Tables (65) and Parlay (60).
Contrasting results were provided by a Nielsen//Netratings research presented during a seminar hosted by Netimperative.
According to Nielsen//Netratings, lottery-style games and bingo are already the most popular form of online gambling, comfortably ahead of casino and bookmaker sites.
The US retains the biggest market share, while the UK is the strongest market in terms of advertising gambling sites, accounting for an impressive 34 per cent of all UK campaigns online. Spain is the fastest growing market, and France has the most online players per head.
However, the two researches agreed in one thing: the online gambling market remains largely untapped with an abundance of opportunities in the years ahead.
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