The UK and Italy are now the leading markets in legalised online gambling. The illegal status of online gambling in the US and the freezing of accounts used to make payments for online poker operators servicing U.S. players from overseas, means the potential gaming superpower of America cannot get in on the action to make its global presence felt.
Italy and UK lead the way
Italian gaming regulatory body, AAMS released figures relating to the value of the Italian market bets between January and June of 2009. The figures showed that the value of on and offline bets had risen 10.8% from the same period in the previous year. IGaming News reported that online gaming spend in Italy reached 850 million Euros in the first quarter of 2009 and that while it is poker that initially attracts new players, there has been an increase across all online gaming products as players migrate to other games.
In the UK, online gaming is joining forces with traditional media to become more mainstream. Channel 5 have launched an online gambling service in conjunction with PartyGaming, while Scottish ITV franchise STV and Netplay TV, are partnering up to offer the first terrestrial interactive TV gambling shows.
European player trends
As for the rest of Europe, Everest Poker commissioned a research project with Jupiter Research to assess the profile of poker players in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands and Sweden. The findings confirmed a few suspicions and raised a few interesting facts. Here are some of Jupiter’s findings:
- European poker players are largely male, between 25 and 34 years of age and earn less than €35,000 a year.
- France and Germany were the countries that had a greater percentage of female players at 34% and 31% respectively.
- Germany’s online poker players tend to be older than those in the other courtiers surveyed, falling in the 35-44yr bracket, while an average of 10% of all European players were in the 55+ category.
- European players were found to play poker online an average of four times a month. 40% play on a weekly basis in the evenings or weekends.
- Reasons for play were overwhelmingly about having fun not making money.
- Swedish and French players considered themselves to be passive players while Italian and Spanish players claim to be loose in their online game play.
- Dutch and German players believe they have below average poker skills compared to players in other European countries. The Swedish respondents had the highest percentage of players claiming their poker skills were better than players from other countries.
So, next time you get online, look for the German or Dutch contingent! That is, unless they’re bluffing!