Alive and Growing: UK Market Grows with Customary Robustness Says Latest Data
Published September 8, 2021 by Lee R
The UK market is growing despite land-based losses: here's why.
The entrenched popularity of gambling in the UK has given rise to an advanced and flourishing iGaming market as well.
Shaping the Market
With competition driven primarily by innovation, the UK market has seen more diffusion and more stratification as a result: a look at the unique manner in which iGaming has grown in the world's most passionate market is worth understanding in a bit more depth for all iGaming stakeholders.
Sea Change
At this point, a correction is taking place in the UK betting and gambling market, as evinced by a decrease in gross gambling yield (GGY) of roughly £84.1m between April 2018 and March 2020.
Land Losses
However, the dent came from the land-based sector, with in the same period remote casino gambling, a.k.a. online gambling, increasing roughly 4% and remote betting increasing a robust 15.5%, with the market currently showing no signs of slowing down.
Components of Online Growth
At this point, there is a proliferation of online casinos and gambling platforms available to UK users, with competitive components ranging across extensive games libraries; competitive registration bonuses; and state-of-the-art digital platform technology.
Sports Betting Leadership
Sports betting is definitively leading the charge for iGaming in the UK, currently growing year-on-year at an exponential rate.
Football Leads the Wagers
Football is the most dominant sport wagered on, at some 48.4% of the sports betting marketshare. Second is horse racing and steeplechase events at 28%, with animal rights activism posing a barrier to continued development in that second place category.
Other Sports Contribution
Tennis (5%); dog-related events (3.1%); golf (0.7% towards GGY) follow, with 9.7% of the GGY contributed by miscellaneous sports.
Virtual Sports' Emergence
The category of sport which has arisen in popularity over the April 2018 to March 2020 period is virtual sports and events, and specifically esports, offering another event category of punting action which is set to grow exponentially.
Outlook
The study covering the period of the two years up until the pre-pandemic lull provides an effective profile of the growth of iGaming in the UK. With research predicting further UK of over $80m by 2024, other casino verticals such as slots should also show more growth a iGaming's most prominent jurisdiction adapts and changes over to the technology of the times.
