Online gambling is a massive industry that spans the globe and employs hundreds of thousands of people. While the industry is global, there are certainly some markets that are bigger and more valuable than others, while others restrict online gambling to a point where it can’t be considered as a legitimate industry at all.
We set out to find out which online gambling markets are the biggest and most valuable and which countries offer online casino operators the biggest opportunity for success. We included two of the current best markets for online gambling as well as the biggest up and coming market, which is the USA.
United States of America: The Great Up and Comer
The USA is not only one of the most populous countries in the world but also one of the richest. Besides that, the high percentage of people using the internet and mobile devices means that access to online gambling is available to nearly every adult American, provided online gambling operators are allowed to offer their services.
Up until 2018, it was illegal to operate online gambling in all states apart from Nevada, which hosts the world’s gambling capital of Las Vegas. However, after the recent decisions of the Supreme Court which annulled the controversial PASPA law and other legal changes, online sportsbooks and casinos have been springing across the country. With a growing number of states now allowing online gambling of all sorts, the market is absolutely exploding.
States like New Jersey and Pennsylvania are already showing impressive numbers and there is no telling what will happen when all or the majority of states approve online gambling bills and possibly unify their player pools for games like online poker. A full list of legal online casinos and states in which such sites are offered can be found at AmericaGambles, one of the world’s premier portals for online gambling in the USA.
United Kingdom: Highly Regulated Online Gambling
United Kingdom has long been an absolute paradise for online gambling operators, considered British bookies above all else. All these major online gambling operators have been offering their services for year in the UK and the market has been growing steadily over the years.
The UK online gambling market raked in over 13 Billion GBP between April 2016 and May 2017 in gross yield and the numbers have continued to grow even further. With over 100,000 people working in the gambling sector in the UK, the country can easily be considered as the number one market for online gambling in the world.
One of the great reasons for the success of the online gambling industry in the UK is certainly the high spending capacity of the Brits, who don’t mind chucking a portion of their hard earned salary to have some fun playing online gambling games. The tradition of sports betting in the UK is a long and powerful one, while online casino games have also caught on quite a bit. The UKGC remains the world’s number one licensing body for online gambling and some recent regulations may have a negative impact on the operators’ bottom line in the long run.
Europe: A Continent That Loves to Gamble
While some may associate Asia with gambling because of clichés, online gambling statistics are showing that Europe is in fact the continent most obsessed with this hobby. Of course, every country in Europe is a different story, but the wealthier Western nations all come quite high on the list of the countries that gamble online the most.
Scandinavians are at the top of the list with Sweden, Norway and Finland all falling in love with online slots and leading the way in European spend in these games. Germany, France, Netherlands and others also feature a high number of players and a reasonably high average bet size. Some of the European countries such as Sweden have set certain limits on online gambling during the coronavirus pandemic, but these are likely to be lifted at a later date.
Players from European countries tend to gamble at MGA licensed operators and while some countries now issue licenses of their own, many players continue to gamble at international operators with licenses in Curacao, Kahnawake and others.
Europe has been and remains one of the world’s premier markets for online gambling and the world’s seat of power for online gambling is situated in Malta, which is a part of the European Union. As such, all EU citizens are more or less able to gamble at MGA casinos and sportsbooks and are heavily targeted with ads from world’s leading gambling operators.