In a recent report by the market research company Nielsen, online gambling surpassed social networking like Facebook in the UK in the last year along with other social networking sites. With an additional 3.2 million people having visited online gambling sites just in the last year the traffic has rose 40%. The UK lottery Camelot topped the Nielsen chart representing an 88% year-on-year increase from 4.4 million to 9.4 million.
The typical online gambler earns more than £30,000 per year in income. Middle-aged men made up the overall growth in the numbers while women represented the other 46%. Neil Beston of Nielsen has been reported saying, “While the phenomenal growth in gambling sites over the last two years has been driven by men and women of all ages, it appears to be powered particularly by middle-aged men, the well-educated and high-earning households.”
Other popular gambling groups have also appeared on the list of those who enjoyed accelerated growth this year, for instance, Party Gaming Group saw a 870,000 increase in player visits, a growth of 174%. Party Casino also saw an extra 1.2 million players at their sites particularly for online poker. One analyst said “On line poker site have experienced a huge increase in customers over the past decade. Playing poker on the internet has become even more popular than land based poker games held at casino throughout the world. It has become somewhat of a phenomenon.”
The large rise in UK casino players visiting online casino sites, even exceeding the massive social network traffic that is Facebook is a tell-tale sign that the online market will continue to bloom and flourish.
17 September, 2010