The lockdown measures brought about by the coronavirus pandemic have caused a big shift in day to day habits for many, as we look for ways to stay distracted and entertained many different mediums have found a huge surge in popularity – one of a which is within mobile gaming, and at the center are mobile casinos.
There are a varying number of reasons to why they’ve been performing so well too, whilst the obvious would be that brick and mortar offline casinos have been closed during this period causing many to turn to online alternatives, the growth has remained true even now that some of the bigger hubs such as Vegas have reopened – it has been expected that because the reopening was perhaps not handled in the best way possible it may cause a growing number of punters to remain online, but that may take a little time to fully realise. Another reason has been attributed to the cancellation of sporting events seeing a record fall in sports betting, with those looking to scratch an itch turning to mobile casino alternatives – now that sporting events have begun again and others are set to continue throughout July, there may be a second shift here.
There have been changes to try and limit the growth – during lockdown some countries across the world had placed restrictions on advertising options for these online alternatives, some even going as far as to putting a limit on deposits for a short period. Within the UK particularly there had been a challenge for operators as regulation changes made it difficult for those registered within the country to grow as a recent credit card ban to betting and gambling, alongside recent changes to an initiative aimed at reducing participation options for problem players – but a growing number of operators have been registering outside of the UK due to these changes and these non uk casinos have much of the same safety for regulation practices, but avoid the restrictions recently placed upon them elsewhere.
As the world heads back into a period of recovery and the day to day for many starts to move back toward what it had previously been, many experts will be keeping a close eye on the mobile gaming market in particular to see how it flexes back – but there is an expectation that many new players who had joined through this short period of time are more likely to be retained than those prior, and that much of the growth has been found through a changing demographic as it is now more common that a slightly older audience has become involved primarily in mobile gaming – this demographic primarily consists of those over the age of 34, and are much of the reason it has been suggested are more likely to stick with these games afterwards – it’ll be interesting to see how the market flexes back, but in a period of financial struggle for many, it’s interesting to see just how well mobile casinos and mobile gaming as a whole managed to perform in such as short period of time.