Venturebeat is reporting that social casino app usage skyrocketed during the last year when many people were spending much more time at home. The information comes from a compilation of data from GameRefinery and Liftoff.
Social gaming and mobile ad optimization is big business with Blackstone taking a majority stake in leading mobile performance marketing platform Vungle two years ago. Vungle acquired GameRefinery in March 2021 and merged with Liftoff in late August.
The mobile social casino apps report for 2021 notes a decrease in attendance at land-based casinos during the height of the pandemic, which the paper defines as Q3 2020 to Q2 2021. The decline in in-person gambling corresponds to an increase in social casino participation that saw gamers spend about $990,000,000 on apps during that period.
That translates into quarterly profits of about $260m for the virtual-virtual gaming industry.
Las Vegas Records 7th $1b Month in a Row
One place the correlation has not held true is in Las Vegas where we reported last month the city’s on track to break its all-time record of 8 months in a row of billion dollar spend by visitors. The Nevada Gaming Control Board released numbers this week marking the 7th straight month of similar action with more than 40% gains in most sectors.
Earlier this year, the UK’s University of Bristol released a study that showed online real money gambling participation soared over the last year with men more than 3x more likely than women to gamble online.
The numbers coming from the social gaming industry, wherein people buy valueless virtual coins to gamble with purely for entertainment and bragging rights on casino leaderboards came from data compiled by mobile growth and marketing app Liftoff as well as ad impressions and clicks analyzed by mobile gaming analytics platform, GameRefinery covering 12,000,000 installations across 239 different apps.
Interestingly, mobile social casino app users are most likely to be in the 45+ age range demographic and as likely to be men as they are to be women.
Online Real Money Gambling
In mid-October we looked at gambling participation by players in Australia and found that online numbers had roughly doubled over the last decade. Australia, Singapore, Ireland, Canada, and Finland are among the countries whose citizens gamble the most, according to H2 Gambling Capital.
According to a report by Fortune Business Insights earlier this year, global online gambling is expected to break US$158.2B by 2028 with a compound annual growth rate over 11% over that period of time. According to the report, “Online Gambling Market, 2021-2028” the online gambling market in the US reached $66.72B last year.
Source: Report finds social casino apps have generated nearly $1B during pandemic, VentureBeat, October 27, 2021