Isle of Man-based specialist gambling consultancy Global Betting and Gaming Consultants (GBGC) has announced that a recent analysis it conducted found that the online gambling market grew by twelve percent in 2010 to $29.3 billion.

GBGC stated that its Global Interactive Gambling Market report discovered that sportsbetting accounted for 41 percent of the total online market with gaming products such as casino and poker responsible for 46 percent. Bingo has also grown rapidly in Europe with revenues for operators predicted to rise from $1.3 billion in 2010 to $2.1 billion by 2013.

GBGC revealed that online betting is expected to bring in $41.7 billion within three years while it expects a regulatory approach to be pursued by more countries as indicated by seven member states of the European Union bringing forward Internet gambling legislation in 2011.

“Internet gambling is clearly growing strong roots and becoming more of a mainstream leisure pursuit and our analysis suggests that, with few exceptions, countries are moving to regulation rather than damnation with seven European Union member states bringing forward Internet gambling legislation for 2011,” said Warwick Bartlett, Chief executive Officer for GBGC.

“This is a healthier engagement with a business certain to continue growing at a rapid rate encouraged by an increasing number of applications developed for mobile phones and the global spread of broadband.”
GBGC has also been critical of the recent British Gambling Prevalence Survey, describing it as ‘flawed’.
“Gambling is a much less problem for the country than alcohol consumption where 8% of people drink to the point where their health is in danger.’ said Bartlett.

‘In 2008, there were 6,769 deaths directly related to alcohol according to the National Health Service. No one died from playing the lottery or having a bet. The survey should also be extended to gambling with exotic financial instruments where the results can be catastrophic, as we have seen since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.”