Research has been done on the potential growth and trends in the global gambling sector and its findings have indicated that its value would reach an estimated $565 billion (£445bn) by the year 2022.
The report, which is called “Gambling: Global Market Opportunities & Strategies to 2022” takes a look at two different 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 $449 billion (£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 the figure indicated above.
The primary reasons for growth in the historic period were a strong economic performance, promising initiatives, the development of nascent markets, increasing urbanization, a rise in the levels of online gambling, and increasing numbers of female gamblers. Some of the elements that adversely affected the rate during this period include rising tax rates for casinos.
Some of the crucial trends that will influence future growth levels will include further legalization of gambling, rising social media use, economic growth worldwide, and dynamic habits of consumers. Some of the possible negative factors include fluctuating government gambling regulations and changes in demographics.
The report broke down the gambling market into four different segments: casinos, sports betting, lottery, and others. The biggest of these sectors were lotteries with a 46.1% share, which amounts to over $20.7 billion (£16.3bn). Sports betting appears to be the sector that will develop the most, mainly because of its rising legalization across the United States since May of last year.
Offline gambling is still the viable source of revenue for the casino segment with 94.3% of revenues. VR gambling is gearing up to be an area of quick growth for this segment heading 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.
The largest region for gambling was the Asia-Pacific with a 32.7% share of the market. Next were North America and Western Europe. The forecast points to Asia-Pacific and Africa as the regions where gambling will rapidly grow. The global amusements market is still considerable in size, with yearly values of about $511bn (£403bn). According to rough projections, this sector’s value will grow to over $652bn (£514bn) by 2022.
There are some intriguing takeaways from this study. Offline lotteries are projected to grow even further in size, with a rise of over $48 billion (£37.8bn) by 2022. The Chinese market is also set to grow the most in this period, by $23 billion (£18bn).
