Europe’s Online Gambling Revenue Continues to Grow

The European Gambling and Betting Association recently released a report that Europe’s gross gambling revenue for online gambling grew at 11 percent last year. The European Union was able to bring in a total of 24.71 billion US dollars of revenue in 2018.

Online gambling accounts for 23.2 percent of the overall gambling revenue that Europe made. This makes Europe have one of the biggest gambling industries as it makes up 49.2 percent of the global iGaming market. 

However, the revenue that online gambling brought in is still far from how much land casinos made. This is because, across the EU, over 70 billion dollars was generated by mortar-and-pestle casinos. Still, even if the two revenues have quite a gap, the local online gambling market is still expected to grow.

This 2022, the EGBA forecasts that the EU online gaming revenue will be worth over €30 billion. By 2020, they expect it to grow to €25.7 billion. By the end of 2021, they see that it’d be worth around €29.3 billion. By the year 2023, it should already be earning as much as 35 billion euros.

When it comes to the most popular way for the Europeans to gamble, sports betting still takes the top spot. In fact, it makes up 42.5 percent of the overall gambling revenue in Europe. Following sports betting are casino games like the ones that can be played. It is 32.4 percent of the total revenue.

Aside from sports betting and online casinos with fast payouts, the lottery comes next. This is 12.6 percent of the total overall gambling revenue and is followed by poker at 5 percent, bingo with 4.3 percent, and other skill games at 3.2 percent.

The 24.5 billion euros of bets placed in the EU is reported to be a total of 31.6 billion bets. These bets were made or placed by 15.5 million customers. In the whole of 2018, there has been a total of 320 million online payment transactions made for gambling.

Specifically, European punters place their bets with desktop computers. Over half or 57 percent of the customers placed their bets with a PC. Meanwhile, 43 percent of these people placed their wagers through their mobile devices.

The amount that the EU gambling industry is earning just makes sense as countries in this union are pretty relaxed when it comes to gambling laws. Most forms of gambling are legal in the European countries and many online bookie and casino operations are local.

The growth of the online gambling revenue in the EU doesn’t really come off as surprising. After all, mobile gambling seems to be the future of the gambling industry. Despite the fact that the UK’s overall gambling revenue fell a bit last year, it still made the biggest of all gambling revenue in 2018.

The future trend of the UK’s gambling market revenue is a bit of a blur at the moment. It’s hard to tell whether it will continue to decrease next year, but what’s sure is that the UK is becoming more inclined towards safe gambling.

Recently, big online casinos in the UK made pledges to ensure that the UK will be a safe place for gamblers. Five online casino operators pledged that they will take the necessary steps to prevent underage or minors from gambling.

These casinos will also support treatments for gambling addiction. They will also ensure that the proper and legal practice of advertising and marketing gambling online and on the television will be strictly followed.

Overall, safe gambling is the UK’s priority and this could either have a positive or negative effect on the industry. One of the steps that they also took for this is to put a 2-euro limit for betting on pokies or slots. Of course, this might significantly decrease the revenue that the country is making for gambling.

Gambling is still expected to continuously rise in the European countries. The legislation isn’t really a problem for these countries anyway or at least for now. The technology is also helping this industry’s growth and the competition between the best online casinos in the USA.

Mobile technology, in particular, is fueling this industry. Mobile phones, gadgets, or devices are now made more available for everybody. This makes gambling easier for many too. People can now play casino games or place their bets anywhere they are with their phones and the internet.

It also helps that the casino software developers are coming up with more interesting ways to gamble. Online casino games nowadays are no longer basic and can easily appeal to many customers. This is whether they are gamblers or not.