According to Roy Morgan, an Australian market research company, the country’s mobile gaming industry is currently thriving. More and more Australians are using mobile devices to place bets at a steadily increasing pace year-by-year. However, the report also reveals that despite the tremendous rise in the number of bets placed using mobile devices, the overall number of punters has seen a not so slight decline in the last few years.
The Specifics
Roy Morgan reveals that a total of 3.4 million Australian punters wagered on sporting events, horse racing, greyhound racing, harness racing and many other events in the past year. In comparison, between March 2011 and March 2012, over 3.7 million Australian citizens placed wagers on the same or similar events. Interestingly, the report reveals that more of these punters seem to be shifting to the online space for their gambling needs as mentioned earlier – the number of people who placed bets on the internet increased by over 50 percent which sums up to about 34.1 percent of the total number of Australian gamblers.
The massive increase in online gambling, as reported by Roy Morgan, is all thanks to the increasing popularity of mobile devices especially mobile phones, or to be more precise, smartphones. To be more specific, more than one-fifth of Australians use their mobile phones to place bets. On the hand, the number of people who still prefer to place bets online on their computers has remained unchanged when compared to the figures that the research firm reported in 2012, that is, 15.1 percent.
“What is clear from these figures though is that a majority of Australians who bet still don’t bet via the Internet. Over two-fifths of Australians who bet have not used the Internet to place a bet and these are the key market companies offering online betting need to target to grow their revenue,” the Roy Morgan chief executive officer, Michele Levine said in an official statement.
Consolidation in the Australian Gambling Market
As it stands, the Australian gambling industry is undergoing a period of elongated consolidation and therefore, the numbers presented by the Roy Morgan report are encouraging to say the least. In fact, there is a lot of great things ahead including more technologically up-to-date options and products.
Roy Morgan reports that the Australian betting market is being dominated by two operators. The two market leaders include Tabcorp Holdings whose online betting site boasts of nearly 18 percent local customers. Tabcorp Holdings runs a decent number of betting websites each offering various kinds of betting services to the market.
The other operator dominating the Australian gambling market is Sportsbet.com.au that is used by close to 13 percent of the Australian gambling markets. Coming in third is Crownbet which caters to about 6.5 percent of the Australian gambling population.
