underground sports betting industry market size

That’s over 9% of the global market, in one country. Sports betting in the US is believed to be worth around $7.6 billion annually. It can be both interesting and arguably more useful, however, to break things down by region.įor starters, the USA is the single biggest market by an absolute mile. So far, we’ve generally looked at the global betting industry. But the number of sportsbooks has grown at an incredible rate in recent years, to the point where there are now over 2,400 British licensed operators, adding up to millions of betting accounts in the UK alone. Obviously the rise of online sports betting, since around the turn of the century, has had a massive impact. Thirdly, and in conjunction with our last point, there are vastly more places to bet. Now they can use licensed betting outlets, and thus give us better data. People were still betting in countries where gambling was officially banned – they were just doing so in ways that couldn’t be officially quantified. On a connected note, this wider legalisation has also given us more reliable data. State-by-state legalisation in the US is obviously the most high profile example in recent years, but we’ve also seen big countries like Canada and the Philippines becoming more open to gambling. Secondly, there are less legal restrictions. That said, the global growth rate is below 1%, which is obviously far below that of the gambling industry. Rather, the growth of the industry could be down to three main factors.įirstly, there are obviously more people now. It’s not necessarily becoming ‘more’ popular nowadays.

Gambling on sports has been popular for millenia.

We’ve already seen that the betting industry, as a whole, is shooting upwards at an incredible rate. In short: sports betting is already enormously popular, and the industry is only trending upwards. It’s believed approximately 1.6 billion people around the world bet with some regularity, while over 4 billion will wager at least once per year. This is not necessarily just driven by a small percentage of ‘big fish’, either. Not only that, but the industry is growing at anywhere from 10-12%, depending on which source you believe. not including casino gambling) is worth around $83.65 billion. It’s currently estimated that sports betting alone (i.e. We’ll also investigate regional differences, and try to put recent trends into a historical context.

In this article, we’ll be analysing the size and scale of that market. It extends far beyond the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas, or the pomp and circumstance of the Cheltenham Festival, to cover countries and cultures all around the world. It’s no secret that betting is a global market.

Underground sports betting industry market size