Online Casino Gaming Continues To Grow
Published: Thursday, November 17, 2005 Online-Casinos.com
ONLINE CASINO GAMING CONTINUES TO GROW
EIG presentation full of interesting information
The European i-Gaming conference in Nice recently provided some 800 delegates with a wealth of data through informed and expert speakers on a diversity of topics. One of the most interesting was a detailed statistical breakdown of the business, presented by Simon Holliday, a partner in the Global Betting and Gaming Consultants firm.
Let’s take a look at just some of the aspects of the industry that Holliday covered, starting with the obvious question “From where do most online casino players gamble?” Most readers would guess North America as the main market, and they would be right, but perhaps not by as big a margin as previously thought.
North American online casino gamblers constitute 48 percent of the overall online casino gambling business…and research indicates that this might shrink to 36 percent by 2010, albeit in a much larger market.
Coming up strongly is Europe which is currently at 28 percent, but will rise to 33 percent 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 percent but set to grow to 25 percent.
Central and South America is likely to stay at 2 percent, with the rest being divided in small percentages in Africa and Oceania.
“How big is the market and what are the prospects?” The presentation provided a detailed historical breakdown, but looking at the more recent numbers the online gambling industry was worth US$ 7.2 billion in 2003, probably around US$ 9.4 billion by end 2005 and a steady increase from there through US$ 15.2 billion in 2006 right through to US$ 25.1 billion in 2010.
Although terrestrial gambling still massively dominates the global market, that’s 4.6 percent of all gambling, rising to 7.6 percent by 2010. This industry still has plenty of “legs!”
Analysing the market by “product” shows that betting generally in betting exchanges and sportsbooks dominates at 38 percent with online casinos handling 23 percent of the action and online poker close behind at 22 percent. Skill Gaming and Bingo hold 2 percent and 5 percent respectively with online lotteries in a growth phase expected to surge from a current 10 percent to 27 percent by 2010.
Sub-market delivery channels include mobile or m-gaming at 15 percent with growth to 27 percent likely by 2010, and interactive TV at 3 percent with surprisingly slow growth to only 5 percent over the same period.
But the traditional Internet remains the dominant vehicle at 82 percent.
Operators are mostly located in Europe (39 percent) and North America (25 percent) with the former more likely to grow by 2010.
The survey took a snapshot of this year’s public company listings (IPOs) on the London exchanges, recording that GBP 4.5 billion was raised in the first 9 months of 2005, the biggest beneficiaries being Party Gaming, 888.com and Empire Online which together received GBP 1.43 billion.
There have been 55 IPOs so far this year (vs 35 raising GBP 3.5 billion in 2004) which raised an average of GBP 82 million each.
In a volatile market, the top performances of one year preferential shares were Bet and Win, Fluxx, Neteller, Sportingbet, FUNTech, Youbet, ukbetting, Paddy Power, Hilton and Cherry in that order.
Most sites by software went surprisingly to the resurgent World Gaming (131) with Microgaming closing in at 124 followed by Playtech (102) proprietary softwares (93) RTG (66) Tribeca Tables (65) and Parlay (60) Readers should remember that this is by site numbers rather than the size of sites.
The presentation indulges in a little crystal ball gazing, predicting that by 2020 all major gambling companies will have online operations.
The numbers in this painstaking research all point to a healthy and growing industry with an abundance of opportunities in the years ahead.
