iGaming is the fastest growing market - what are the reasons?

Many consider iGaming to be the fastest-growing industry in the world. Over the past decade, revenues have doubled regularly and will continue to do so. By 2024, according to current estimates, revenue will be larger than the music and film industries combined.

The growth is mainly due to rapid technological advances, acquisitions, and collaboration between the game, music, and film industries. The current global pandemic is further causing people to choose online games.

What is iGaming?

iGaming is playing online on the outcome of a game, betting on sports, or playing a video game. It is synonymous with online gaming. For a long time, it was reserved for young users and tech-savvy seniors. But iGaming became more user-friendly. And it was also coming more and more to the smartphone.

And the making of the iGaming software went from the nerds to the business world. The business community threw itself into the growing market and turned it into the gaming industry. An industry that can now compete with other industries. A comparison with the music and film industry is the most obvious.

The fact that we want to travel less and less to the limited supply of physical casinos certainly plays a role in this. It is a development that is also felt in other environments. Like the movies, we get streamed at home whenever we want. Or the stores that we only visit online for many products.

But there are still many fans of online casinos. So if you prefer online casinos, you can learn more from the Jeetwin casino review.

Turnover figures for iGaming

But what about the numbers when analysts claim that iGaming is growing the fastest. And that it is or will be bigger than the music and film industry in terms of turnover and suchlike. Those figures used appear to vary quite a bit.

In the figures, quantities are regularly used interchangeably. As a result, the figures are hidden or simply incorrect. This happens, for example, in a story where the world turnover is discussed, but only the turnover of the United States is used. Or when a turnover figure is copied without converting it to the currency used in the story.

What also happens is that an author compares sales figures, taking the sales figures of one country but the net income (sales minus expenses or even after-tax payments) of another country.

Some figures

However, it is still fun to compare figures side by side. Of course with the caveats that we outlined in the previous paragraph; in other words: no rights can be derived from the figures as they are a compilation.

The 2021 data are not in yet. There, the current Christmas vacations could still lead to a nice increase. Nevertheless, predictions have already been given. If we average that out, the iGaming market will account for $185 billion in revenue worldwide in 2021.

According to some, most of that revenue, as much as 50%, will come from Asia and the surrounding area. There are countries like China, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and others. But so are Australia and New Zealand. Others put the United States in first place with 22%.

One example of a problem we encounter with this is what numbers are included. With some analysts, it's only revenue from player deposits. Others also include revenue from video game purchases.

Europe often ranks third

Those who put the United States in the first place sometimes include Canada. Some still refer to the US, while other analysts speak of North America. The US and Canada together account for 26% of the iGaming market.

The same analysts put China in second place with 25% and Europe comes in third with a 17% share and a turnover of $30 billion. The somewhat smaller countries or territories hover around 5% each. These include all of Africa, the Middle East, and South America (or Latin America, which is South and Central America).

iGaming on smartphones grows

In the early days of iGaming, the computer still had a large share. Meanwhile, we got tablets and smartphones. The latter today already has the power of a PC of a few years ago. It thus gains in ease of use, which is beneficial for iGaming on a device that most people have at their fingertips almost all the time.

Currently, over 40% of iGamers use a smartphone for gaming and betting. In doing so, according to some marketing people, the share is closer to 50 than 40 percent. It then also depends on how many shares they take for consoles like PlayStation. That share is somewhere between 25 and 30 percent. Tablets, although they tend to have a more attractive screen size than a smartphone, only account for 7 percent of iGaming usage.

These are mainly iGaming apps that may be clear from the share of games played in a computer browser. That is just under 2% of the market share.

Additional Information

Want to take a look at the numbers yourself. These are some of the companies that make their analyses and studies public:

• Statista
• NewZoo
• Fortune Business Inside
• Games Industry Bizz
• Mordor Intelligence