Details of new report
A new study has been conducted on future growth and trends in the global gambling sector. This report is called “Gambling: Global Market Opportunities & Strategies to 2022.” It looks at two separate periods, a historic period between 2014 and 2018 and a future period from 2018 to 2022.
In 2018, the global gambling sector reached a value of almost $449bn (£354bn), with an annual compounded growth rate each year from 2014 of 4.1%. This rate is projected to rise to almost 6% in the coming years, which would bring the value of the sector to around the $565bn (£445bn) mark by 2022.
The main reasons for growth in the historic period were strong economic performance, favorable initiatives, growth of emerging markets, increasing urbanization, increases in the levels of online gambling, and increasing numbers of female gamblers. Some of the factors that negatively affected the rate during this period include increasing tax rates for casinos.
Growing trends
Some of the important trends that will dictate future growth levels will include further legalization of gambling, increasing use of social media, economic growth worldwide, and changing habits of consumers. Some of the potential negative factors include changing government gambling regulations and changes in demographics.
The report broke down the gambling market into four segments: casinos, sports betting, lottery, and others. The biggest of these sectors was lotteries with a 46.1% share, which amounts to over $20.7bn (£16.3bn). Sports betting looks like the sector that will grow the most, largely because of its increasing legalization across the United States since May 2018.
Offline gambling is still the main source of revenue for the casino segment with 94.3% of revenues. VR gambling is set to be an area of rapid growth for this segment going into the future. Offline sports betting revenues are about 65.7% of the total revenues. For lottery revenues, offline sales dominate with a 96.2% share of the market.
Different regions
The biggest region for gambling was the Asia-Pacific with a 32.7% share of the market. Next in the rankings were North America and Western Europe. The forecast spotlights Asia-Pacific and Africa as the regions where gambling will grow the fastest. The global amusements market is still substantial in size, with annual values of about $511bn (£403bn). According to estimates, this sector’s value will grow to over $652bn (£514bn) by 2022.
There are some interesting takeaways from this report. Offline lotteries are set to grow even further in size, with an increase of over $48bn (£37.8bn) by 2022. The Chinese market is projected to grow the most in this period, by $23bn (£18bn).
Some areas in the sector in which there will be more of an emphasis are more advanced security protocols for online gambling platforms, more investment in the mobile side, more branded slot titles investment, smartwatch gambling apps, and the increasing use of big data analysis. There will also be an emphasis on increasing ways in which customers can add funds to their gambling accounts, more large-scale slot formats, and entering into markets in emerging countries.