Gambling and sweepstakes sites are shown to be most popular with French and Swedish online users, while southern Europeans are revealed to be less likely to bet online, according to new data from internet research specialists Nielsen//NetRatings.
More than 14 million Europeans, or 14% of those online, visited a gambling site in February, with gaming sites currently enjoying more user traffic in northern Europe. Nielsen//NetRatings show that less than 10% of Spanish and Italian internet users log on to gamble.
Commenting on the findings, Gabrielle Prior, Neilson//NetRatings’ European internet analyst said: “Gambling is clearly an important sector for the internet industry, online gambling and casino sites are also prolific online and offline advertisers.”
Prior continued: “We expect to see this category continue to grow as advertising attracts consumers and the sites add more and more games and prizes.”
A new report from Research and Markets estimates that the total amount of money gambled around the world on poker websites will exceed $60 billion in 2005. The company predicts Europe as an area of growth saying: “When it comes to geographical expansion, Europe seems to be the place to go, 52% of our experts believe that Europe offers the greatest future potential for online poker.”
Prior points out the role of broadband in the growth of online gambling, saying: “As the broadband boom continues we expect more people to try online gambling.”
However, while in most categories high-speed users spend most of the time online, on gambling sites this isn’t always the case. In France, Sweden and the UK, the time spent on gaming websites is very similar regardless of access speed, suggesting that slower connections aren’t holding back determined users in those countries.
By comparison, in Switzerland, Italy and Germany, high-speed internet users are spending significantly more time than those connecting at a slower speed.
A report by analysts eMarketer show that in the UK, British women are spending increasing amounts of time online, with between 30-40% of internet gamblers female, according to a report by research company YouGov (see UK Females Set To Lead Online Gambling).
Lotteries, betting and casino style gambling are predicted to generate over $2 billion for the mobile phone industry in 2006, according to Juniper Research (see Gambling To Generate Over $2 Billion By 2006 For Mobile Phone Industry).
The research reveals that lotteries will be the largest money-spinners, with gross revenues of nearly $7.9 billion worldwide, followed by sports betting predicted to take $6.9 billion, and casino style gaming at $4.5 billion.
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