Publication date: 23 Jun 2021

Global gambling markets continue thriving despite the COVID-19 pandemic and over-regulation in many countries. According to experts, by 2025, the profit of betting operators will have increased to $ 750 billion. Let’s look at how current and future trends affect the development of the sports betting market.

How to bet on sports without bookmakers?

Wagr, founded in April 2020, has developed a gambling app that allows you to bet on sports with your friends. The trick is that there is no bookmaker here consequently, there are no coefficients, coupons, bonuses and other things. All the user needs to do is to select a team, an opponent, and to place a bet, specifying its amount. If the user can’t find a friend who wants to make a bet, the service will select a random player. Access to the service is still limited, but you can get it by leaving a request on the site. Wagr plans to introduce a limit of $ 500 per bet and will charge a commission. This new app for betting with friends is already gaining popularity in the States and outside the country and could upend the traditional sports betting industry around the world. Bets on EURO 2020 lead to jail terms Thailand’s top leadership has expressed concern about the rise in illegal gambling by Thais during the UEFA European Football Championship and Euro 2020. In this regard, the Royal Thai Police and the Ministry of Digital Economy were instructed to strengthen the monitoring of illegal gambling, especially on the Internet, and to ensure strict compliance with the law against violators. At the moment, there are regular raids leading to fines or jail time for people who take part in illegal gambling. In Thailand, gambling is regulated by many laws, but all of them prohibit gambling. At the same time, residents of Thailand can play legally in neighboring countries: Cambodia, Burma, Laos. You can place bets online from anywhere, and then visit the casino offices in person to collect your winnings.

• How are gambling and its advertising regulated in different countries of the world?

The future of sports betting is online!

Proper regulation of the gambling industry leads to the growth of legal operators. According to the management of the Association of Bookmakers of Russia, the future of sports betting is in the online format. This trend is associated with unlimited sports statistics, loyalty programs for customers from bookmakers, convenient calculation of bets and hassle-free withdrawal of funds. It is expected that in the coming years, land-based betting points will lose out in competition with online operators. Meanwhile, the top three new leaders among bookmakers* in terms of site traffic in May 2021 included:

• Fonbet is the leader of the rating with an attendance of 8.15 million people per month – this is almost 8% more than the figures for April 2021.
• Winline took the second place in the top with the number of customers of its site at 5.48 million people – there is a clear increase of almost 24%.
• Liga Stavok occupies the third position – they were visited by 5.37 million people in May, which is 17.49% higher than in April 2021.

*according to the “Similarweb”resource.