Social to push mobile gaming to “$100bn by 2017”, study predicts

Posted on May 25, 2012 by t.washington

Social operators moving to real money will see amounts wagered on mobile casino overtake sportsbook in coming years

Rapid growth in social gaming, coupled with impending US intrastate regulation, will see amounts wagered via smartphones and tablets reach US$100bn (£63.7bn) by 2017, suggests a new report.

Conducted by mobile analyst firm Juniper Research, ‘Mobile Gaming: Casino, Lotteries & Betting 2012 – 2017’ charts the expected growth of mobile gaming, which accounted for $20bn in worldwide amounts wagered last year.

It claims that the current trend, which has seen mobile become an increasingly important revenue stream for leading sportsbooks, will continue. Such assertions have been supported by recent results announcements. In William Hill’s full-year results presentation for 2011, for example, group CEO Ralph Topping revealed the company had set a target of generating 40% of sportsbook revenues from mobile by 2014, while mobile accounted for 38% of total amounts wagered on Paddy Power’s dot.com sportsbook in the company’s results for the first quarter of 2012.

The report also says that the US Department of Justice’s clarification on the Wire Act, announced in December, has “effectively reopened” the US egaming sector and will contribute to also driving further mobile growth.

Despite sportsbook’s leading position in the mobile sector, however the report’s author, Dr Windsor Holden, said casino and games would overtake sportsbook as the key driver of mobile revenue in the coming years due largely to the rapidly expanding social gaming sector: “Social gaming companies such as Zynga are seeking to move from play-for-fun casino games into real money gambling, while pure-play mobile casinos including Probability have begun to integrate with the Facebook mobile platform.

“In this way, consumers will be able to use their social networks to register for casino games, substantially increasing both the reach and engagement of such services,” Holden explained.

Mobile gaming boosts customer spend, research shows

Posted on April 2, 2012 by t.washington

Impulse gambling and betting at work are by-products of mobile gaming according to new survey.

The advent of mobile gaming has seen customers spend more money, more often, according to new research.

Nearly half of all gamblers surveyed by experience design agency Foolproof said they have placed more impulse bets since beginning to bet on their mobiles, while 32% said they use their mobile to place bets at work. Fourteen per cent said they had not previously placed a bet but that the developments in mobile betting had persuauded them otherwise.

However, the study also found that egaming companies should be more aware that poor products or gaming experience is a major turn off for customers. Across all sectors, nearly 47% of mobile users said they had already stopped betting with a certain brand as a direct result of the mobile service or app being below par.

When asked to choose words to describe a company’s poor mobile service or application, 38% of respondents chose ‘unprofessional’, while 35% chose ‘out of touch with customers’.

Caroline Ahmed, head of practice and insight at Foolproof, said: “Online bookmakers have a clear opportunity to leverage mobile to increase customer betting activity and spend levels. But, we now know that customer engagement with a mobile platform is fragile.

“They should be mindful that they may only have one chance to get it right with mobile users, before they default to better-performing competitors.”

Online poker boosts offline casino revenues, research shows

Posted on March 22, 2012 by t.washington

Study finds the larger the online poker market, the larger the offline gambling revenue

The regulation of US online poker would boost land-based casino revenues, a joint study by the Universities of Nevada and Hamburg has concluded.

The research found evidence that online poker and offline gambling, rather than competing for the same revenue, complement one another and that the presence of online poker “may increase demand of offline gambling overall”.

“Given a jurisdiction generates an additional US$1m in offline gross gaming revenue, we would predict an additional $2,700 in online poker revenue,” the research found. “Although this effect may appear to be relatively small, the finding is robust across many model specifications, suggesting a stronger argument for validity,” it added.

Authors of the Online Poker in North America: Empirical Evidence on its Complementary Effect on the Offline Gambling Market study, Kahlil Simeon Philander of the University of Nevada and Ingo Fiedler of the University of Hamburg, said: “The results are surprising: overall, online poker and offline gaming do not compete for an identical market and cannibalise each other’s revenue.

“Rather, we found a small but significant positive relationship between those variables. This indicates that the markets reinforce each other and the goods are gross complements and not gross substitutes.”

The paper also revealed the size of the North American online poker market in 2010 pre-Black Friday. Using data from the Online Poker Database of the University of Hamburg it found that an estimated 1.4m US citizens played real-money online poker in 2010 paying $981m in rake to operators as a result. In the same year 307,000 Canadians generated an estimated $220m in rake, however this is nearly twice as many players (0.9% of the population compared to 0.46% in the US) compared to its North American neighbours.

It suggests this is likely to be due to financial transactions between players and operators not being not limited by UIGEA in Canada.