Wednesday, 12 February 2025

How Big is the European Gambling Market?

Written by  The Dubrovnik Times Feb 02, 2022

As 2021 drew to a close, studies showed that the total gambling market revenue in Europe increased by 7.5% as compared to the year prior. In totality, the European gambling market garnered a gross gaming revenue of 87.2 billion Euros. Of course, experts have proposed that much of this is because of the 19th% growth in the online gambling market. The world still hasn’t fully recovered from the global pandemic of 2020, and that means that many of the land-based casinos in the European markets are still struggling. In fact, many of the COVID-19-related restrictions in Europe have drastically affected the performance of the European land-based gambling sector. That’s why experts look to digital platforms as Europe online casinos guide the total gambling market towards profitability.


Analyzing the Growth

Over the course of 2021, the online gambling market in itself increased its revenues to 36.4 billion Euros. It’s also worth noting that the total 2021 gambling market revenue in Europe is down by 13% as compared to how the market performed prior to the start of the pandemic. That’s because land-based gambling revenue has only experienced a marginal increase of 0.4%, amounting to approximately 50.8 billion Euros. It’s clear from these numbers alone that the online gambling sector is the one that is steering the ship for the gambling industry as a whole. It’s estimated that around 82.7% of the online gambling activity that takes place in Europe is done through onshore market platforms. That means that 82.7% of the total online gambling revenue is earned through gambling websites or apps that have licenses granted by European countries and are under European regulation. Industry analysts have said that the biggest driver in the increase of Europe’s onshore market channeling in 2021 is only the result of the start of regulations of the online gambling market in The Netherlands.

Out of all the kinds of gambling products in Europe, sports betting (and other similar forms of betting) still remains to be the most popular. Sports betting accounts for a 40% share of the gross gaming revenue of the European online gambling market in 2021. This is followed by online casinos that account for 34% of the revenues. Next up is poker with 5% and bingo with 3% market shares respectively. With regards to sports and other betting, horse racing seems to be performing relatively well, accounting for 4.88 billion Euros in revenue. Betting on sports like football and others are worth approximately 9.67 billion in terms of gross gaming revenue.

Charting Casino Locations

There is absolutely no shortage of casinos, both offline and land-based, in the entirety of Europe. Czech Republic is accounted for having the most associated casinos with 299. However, France is the country that has had the most land-based casino visits with more than 33 million in one year. It’s not rare for countries to experience over a billion’s worth of revenues from gambling. Great Britain is recorded for having 1.6 billion Euros’ worth of gross gambling revenues from casinos. Also, incidentally, Great Britain has a large casino sector in terms of employment with more than 16,000 full-time laborers in the industry.

The Future of Online Gambling

Moving forward, as the continent continues to try to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, experts believe that online gambling will continue to dominate majority of the gambling industry. In particular, there is a rapid rise in mobile gambling usage among the consumers. In 2021, an estimated 50.5% of online bets were placed via mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. This is a significant share considering that online gambling was originally an exclusively web-based activity. Analysts believe that mobile betting will account for a total of 61.5% of all online bets within the next five years. Online gambling as a popular trend is one that’s consistent across various countries. For example, Sweden’s online gambling market comprises more than 66.2% of its total gambling activity. It’s the same with other countries like Denmark, the United Kingdom, Finland, and Romania, with each of them having more than at least 56% online gambling market share. It’s also expected that more investors and operators will be looking towards the digital spheres in terms of expanding their operations and tapping into newer markets.

The Voice of Dubrovnik

THE VOICE OF DUBROVNIK


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