Betting on sports

Mobile gambling and sport are both growth areas for the telemedia industry and our annual events – produced in conjunction with iGaming Business and Sporting Business – are set to take place at the Brewery in London on 24 April. Their timing could not be more prescient. Gambling, especially sports betting and ‘soft’ services such as bingo and lotteries, are rapidly becoming mainstream services – and its all thanks to mobile and tablets.

The growth in mobile bingo is being driven by the services also featuring chatrooms, and much of the experience of going to ‘real bingo’ is being replicated online – something that has driven these services to become very popular with female smartphone and tablet users.

Sports betting is also seeing continued growth. Sports bets has really been the proving ground for mGaming over the past five years and this is set to continue. Again, the addition of social media elements is also driving its use. Only this week, pro footballer – with York City, it still counts – Dave McGurk has launched a socially driven mobile peer-to-peer betting service called Bets of Mates (who said footballers weren’t clever? Though would you have got that from Rio Ferdinand?) which is being pitched as a social ‘bet-work’.

This enabled friends to bet with each other in a fantasy football style league on footy games. While it may not give the big gambling operators sleepless nights, it does show that gambling is becoming ever more acceptable and that mobile social is proving to be a key platform.

While these soft games have started to make mobile gambling ever more widespread, proper gambling has also seen some key developments. No longer viewed as the poor relation of online, mobile is now becoming the proving ground for many new start ups and services.

Real money casino gaming is growing in popularity, and it can be no coincidence that former Betfair kingpin Gerard Cunningham, who founded virtual currency casino Koolbit has launched the first real money poker offering – on mobile.

Hot on the heels of this, Glu Mobile in the US has also rolled out real money gambling on mobile. I smell a trend. Glu partnered with probability late last year and this is its first offering. It plans up to 15 more real money mobile games through 2013.

So why all this attention to real money casino games on mobile? Games – and gambling games in particular – are becoming big money spinners as this is where the consumers are. The UK market allows real money gambling on mobile, so why not? It is what consumers want – from bingo through to ‘proper’ games.

And this is what mGaming Summit seeks to capitalise on. Mobile gambling is established – now is the time to make it grow. And these mobile first offerings are an encouraging sign that mobile’s time has come.

BOOK YOUR PLACE AT MGAMING SUMMIT at http://www.mgamingsummit.co.uk/register