Online Slots Industry Economic Trends

In 2019, the online gambling market was worth around $60 billion. This amount has been climbing steadily since 2000, and there seems to be no reason why it is going to stop. As more and more people discover online slots and – perhaps more importantly – mobile apps that allow them to play wherever they are, they are going to be spending more money.

But will it be in quite the same amounts as they were spending before? The rise is not predicted to end, but the rate at which the industry is growing may start to level off in the next 10 years or so – play today. Let’s look at why this might be.

Failing Economy

We know the entire world has been hard hit by coronavirus, causing once stable economies to become much more volatile. What does this mean for the online slots’ industry? There are two potential problems. The first is that people who would normally play slots just don’t have the disposable income to be able to do it anymore, especially if they have lost business or been made redundant. 

Secondly, gaming developers might not have the same amount of development money they had a year ago – their profits will be down since fewer people are playing and that means fewer games are being created. All in all, this downturn could have long term effects on the slot industry. 

Regulations

Even if the economy weren’t in such a sorry state, there are still potentially some issues that people are finding when it comes to the gambling industry as a whole and slots in particular. The many restrictions that are put on online casinos mean that what was once an easy game to enjoy is now full of different rules that can be hard to keep up with. 

One of the most recent of these rules is that credit cards are banned. Although there was a positive reason behind this ban – people would be less likely to get into debt if they weren’t allowed to use credit – it will have curtailed spending in quite a large way. This may not have been obvious immediately, but as time goes on it becomes more and more clear that stopping the use of credit cards will affect profits negatively. 

The Overview

Despite the above, predictions are that by 2025 the online gambling market is going to be worth around $103 billion. Not quite double where we are now, but certainly a large enough stake of any market to be impressive. 

Around 30 percent of people engage in regular online gambling, and since we have all been at home a lot more recently, many of us with nothing to do, turning to online games may well be something more and more people try. Perhaps the downturn isn’t going to be as difficult as it first appeared, at least for this particular industry.