A recently published report named ‘Global Online Gambling and Betting Market 2014, developed by the German research Hamburg-based organisation yStats, attracted wide attention of gambling masses. Heaps of nutty facts and interesting statistics demonstrate how quickly an online gambling market evolves. One of the main conclusions is the fact that online casinos switch their focus to modern smartphones and tablets. According to the YStats CEO, Yücel Yelken, despite still superior position of land-based casinos, the pace of development of the online casino is way higher.
Every other year online casinos map is updated with new names and countries. For example, the majority of Western European countries adopted a range of laws governing the operation of virtual casinos, even special resolutions of the European Parliament have been carried into effect. Most likely, in the near future the online casinos of the major Asian countries, as well as the United States, will be subjected to obligatory regulation. Thus, gambling has already been legalized in 3 states in the US and in the majority of resort areas and in most of Asia. A significant and rapid growth (today the market is estimated tens of billions of euros) forcing many governments to develop laws for the regulation and operation of virtual casinos. In aspiration to increase the part of the income of these institutions to the local treasuries, in the next few years the governments will press for 7-10% part accordingly.
Bookmakers and gambling trends
The pace of development of modern technologies influence the direction of development in the field of online gambling, where the dominant start to win games for social networks and mobile games. For example, experts predict that by 2018 the proportion of players using to access gambling portable devices, will grow to 40% of that in quantitative terms will be about 100 million people.
To date, the leading players in the market of online gambling services are:
- PokerStars
- Party
- William Hill Online
- Betfair Group
- Paddy Power
- 888 Holdings
- Ladbrokes
Most of these companies operate on the basis of a license in Gibraltar. The fact should also be underlined that the top three of the list (Bwin.Party, PokerStars and William Hill Online) generate annually about 500 million euros.
Regional differences and particular characteristics
As for Brazil, horse racing betting is the only allowed form of gambling here; all the other online casinos are under a ban, which contributes led to a widespread interest in online gambling services offered by offshore operators. Mexicans prefer offshore operators as well, despite the fact of the legal work of online casino, which is though explained by the fact that the terms offered by offshore operators are more profitable. By the way, the leader of the region in terms of the amount of legal casinos is Argentina.
Western Europe audience, preferring online casino Nederlandsegokken, a European-based gambling hub, makes its choice in favor of both domestic service providers as well as offshore enterpris
