Across both Ireland and the UK, the iGaming marketplace is a lucrative and fast-growing entity, and one that continues to evolve despite a number of mounting challenges.
To this end, it’s estimated that up to €10,000-a-minute is spent in Ireland across various iGaming verticals, while around 10.5 million Brits wager online in the UK each month.
Much of this revenue is generated through online casino gameplay, which accounts for more than 50% of the total GGY in the UK and Ireland. But what trends are most likely to impact virtual casino gambling through 2021 and beyond? Let’s find out!
1. The Rise and Rise of Mobile Gambling
With approximately four billion people worldwide now owning a smartphone, it’s little wonder that gambling on the movie is now a prominent past-time amongst players in developed economies such as Ireland and the UK.
If we look at the UK market, for example, we see that the mobile Internet penetration rate peaked at 72% in 2020, with the average Brit spending approximately 148 minutes on a smartphone each and every day.
Overall, smartphones comprise around 40% of total online traffic in the UK, as people use their handheld devices for a growing range of everyday tasks. These include mobile gambling, both through mobile Internet browsers and native casino apps available on iOS and Android.
It was in 2018 that the number of gamblers who wager regularly while on the move moved beyond 50% for the first time, and this number is continuing to inch higher every single year.
Clearly, mobile gambling remains a prominent iGaming trend in developed economies like Ireland and the UK, particularly as technological advancement continues at pace and the rate of smartphone penetration continues to rise incrementally across all social demographics.
2. Making Virtual Reality (VR) Gaming a Mainstream Concept
It seems as though VR gaming has been talked about for years now, without quite ever becoming a mainstream concept in the UK and Ireland.
While we may not have seen seismic changes in the iGaming landscape as a result of VR, however, this technology is impacting gradually on the marketplace and being adopted by a growing number of key stakeholders through 2021.
We’ve seen several VR-inspired casino brands grow to dominate the market, for example, while several slots and individual titles are also available to players with designated headsets and hardware.
In total, it’s estimated that $250 billion will be generated globally through VR gaming in 2021, with a large percentage of this driven through online casino gambling and interactive video slot games.
What’s more, we’re also seeing cross-technology projects that combine VR with augmented reality, effectively creating mixed reality (MR) casinos that are multiplayer in nature and available on the blockchain.
Take the XR Casino, for example, which claims to be the first MR platform of its type and one that will connect players across a multitude of different devices and games in real-time. The platform features blackjack, roulette and online slots, while its initial MVP version is scheduled to launch for real on August 21st.
3. The Rising Number of Crypto-friendly Casinos
There’s no doubt that contemporary casino platforms offer access to a diverse range of payment methods, from accessible e-wallets like Neteller to PayPal and traditional bank transfers.
However, 2021 will continue to see the rise of cryptocurrency casinos, which are mostly focused around tokens such as Bitcoin (BTC) and enable players to wager with increased privacy and transparency.
Second-generation blockchains like Ethereum (ETH) are particularly synonymous with crypto gambling, thanks to their additional layers of functionality and ability to host decentralised apps (Dapps). These enable transparent and trustworthy casinos to be built exclusively on an immutable blockchain, while eschewing the traditional house edge in favour of a ‘smart contract’ between players and online operators.
From a broader perspective, this eliminates the online casino’s central point of control, creating a more accessible wagering experience that’s fairer and much easier to regulate effectively.
Even on a fundamental level, a growing number of casinos are now buying into the concept of cryptocurrency gambling and allowing the use of BTC and ETH tokens for betting and wagering.
This is particularly true in the case of new and independent casino brands, which often look to compete by offering as much freedom and flexibility as possible to their customers.
