The European Gaming and Betting Association has published its set of key findings from a variety of industry data for 2017, stating that its members “are leading the way in popular digital entertainment”.
Within the collection of company’s responsible for the data, 134 different online gambling licences are possessed, providing services to 19 EU member states and averaging seven licenses held per member state.
Delving deeper in the European market, the gross profit generating from the online sector is expected to continue its upwards trend, with projections at current growth rates placing the sector’s worth at €24.7bn in 2020, up from €19.6bn last year.
Online gambling also enjoyed a 20.7 per cent share of the market’s total gambling activity, expecting to increase to 24.9 per cent by 2020, with 79.3 per cent land-based, including lotteries, casinos and bookmaker shops.
The most popular form of online gambling across gambling was found to sports betting with 40.3 per cent market share, followed by casino games (32.1 per cent), lottery (13.3 per cent), poker (6.1 per cent), bingo (4.6 per cent) and other games (3.6 per cent).
EGBA members were also found to have in excess of 12m European active online account holders, around 2.4 per cent of the region’s population, averaging a return to player/pay-out rate of 93.06 per cent.
Maarten Haijer, secretary general of the EGBA, said of the findings: “Europe’s online gambling sector is a growing and popular form of digital entertainment, but with this growth comes responsibility to ensure that people are kept safe while playing on online gambling websites.
“This new data shows EGBA members are at the forefront of the sector’s development, interacting with millions of customers and processing nearly a million payment transactions each day.”
Further headline data also shows EGBA member contributing €325m in financial support to sports federations, leagues and clubs through sponsorships, advertising and sports rights, with over €22.6m also invested in KYC checks.
