2023 has just started and the betting industry is right in front of another year full of innovations, emerging and dominant trends and of course excited and highly demanding punters, who seek to satisfy their needs in the most convenient, entertaining, easy and efficient way.
Bookmakers across the world, including Austrian bookmakers, who are admittedly experiencing considerable growth in demand in the last few years, need to be not only alert and anticipate the main trends in betting for this year, but they should also be able to deliver according to these trends.
Two of the most profound mega trends in betting for 2023 are in-play betting and mobile betting. They are not new and certainly they have not reached their peak. They are growing at a phenomenal rate and they are expected to be the dominant “things” in betting from now on.
Let’s see both in-play betting and mobile betting separately and discuss how they are going to shape the betting industry from now on.
In-play betting
Punters could not but fully commit to bets that can be placed during a sport, while a match unravels or while a competition progresses. Pre-game bets have been the dominant types of bets for decades, but things have changed now.
The internet has completely transformed the way people watch sports and of course the way that they bet on these sports. Now, punters are able to watch a game and bet on the game as it unfolds. And more importantly they are able to watch their bet unfold as well at the same time.
In-play betting offers greater fun, greater enthusiasm and excitement and at the same time enables greater engagement. With live betting, fans can change their bets during the game if they decide that it is of greater leverage to them. So, they don’t just watch a match, they live a match and they experience first hand its ups and downs and its dynamic nature.
If we think in-play betting in numbers, we just need to consider that almost all betting sites today offer live betting markets and that, specifically for the European market, more than half of the total wagers placed (especially on sports like basketball and football, which are highly popular) are live bets. This tells us a lot about how popular in-play betting is and how much it is going to dominate the present and the future of the industry.
Growth in in-play betting is also driven by the growth of live streaming in betting sites and gambling platforms. Now, live betting does not only concern only those games and matches broadcasted on the television, let’s say, but nearly all games and all sports that online bookmakers can live stream. And that’s a lot, considering that more and more sportsbooks obtain streaming licenses and rights and attract, in this way, more and more bettors.
Mobile betting
The second mega trend, which also is not new to the world of gambling, but it seems that it will absolutely become the dominant betting mode, is mobile betting.
In Europe more than 30% of new registrations in online betting sites are made from mobile devices, while more than 60% of wagers placed online involve mobile betting. This means that the number of gamblers who are using their smartphones or tablets to place wagers is in fact really high.
The vast majority of betting analysts clearly state that the future of gambling industry is in the mobile devices and that smartphones will -at some point – become the main vehicles for placing bets.
By now, most online bookmakers have developed applications for mobile betting but the thing is that all sportsbooks need to do this. And they need to do it effectively. Building competitive applications that are easy to use, convenient, functionabe and above all attractive for punters should be the ultimate goal of every betting site that wants to succeed.
So, in-play betting and mobile betting are the two mega trends in betting. They are not just for 2023, but for a new era in the world of gambling. And the truth is that they complement each other, driving further growth in each case. As in-play betting becomes more popular, the demand for mobile betting will grow and vice versa, as mobile betting grows, the opportunities for in-play betting are bigger and the market grows as well.
