Europe’s Online Gambling Market Grows 11% in 2018

Europe’s online gambling market has shown an impressive growth last year.

According to the market data published by the European Gaming and Betting Association (EGBA) in partnership with H2 Gambling Capital, Europe’s online gambling market grew 11% from €20 billion GGR in 2017 to €22.2 billion GGR in 2018.

According to the new data, EGBA members had 16.5 million active customers and generated €5.41 billion in online gambling GGR in 2018. The UK market (34.2%) accounted for the largest portion of the total EU online gambling market, with a market value of €7.3 billion GGR.

Sports betting was the most popular online gambling activity with 42.5% of the total EU market share (worth €9.4 billion GGR), followed by casino games at 32.4% (€7.2 billion GGR), lottery at 12.6% (€2.8 billion GGR), poker at 5% (€1.1 billion GGR), bingo at 4.3% (€1 billion GGR), and other games with a 3.2% market share (€0.7 billion GGR).

As per the new data, 57% of online bets were placed from a desktop computer, while 43% of online bets were placed from phones and tablets – up from 39% in 2017 and highlighting a shift towards the use of mobile devices.

“Europe’s online gambling market continues to show a strong demand-driven growth and a switch to mobile devices. But its increased popularity reinforces the need for more consistent and strong consumer protections and industry standards across all EU countries. The current situation of diverging and sometimes conflicting regulations in EU countries is detrimental to consumers, authorities and operators alike,” Maarten Haijer, Secretary General of EGBA said.