For many, football at the World Cup is about winning. But online gamblers at non GamStop bookmakers try to predict other things. Which team has the most possession? Who scores first? It provides British gambling companies with hundreds of millions.
In the evening on the couch, Martin (22) sees the line-up of the Brazilian national football team for the match against Cameroon at the World Cup in Qatar. The stars do not participate in Brazil, they are spared for the next round which was not the intention for Martin. He bet five euros on this match via the Internet. To win money, Brazil must score at least twice. “I thought it would be fine,” he says.
But that’s not it, the game ends in 1-0 for Cameroon. It doesn’t really matter to Martin, who hasn’t won anything yet. “I never bet a lot of money anyway,” he says. “But a friend lost fifty euros.”
Martin has been busy with the World Cup in recent weeks. He does not want his last name in the newspaper, because then he will be forever associated with gambling on the internet. In a WhatsApp group, Martin and his friends discuss which matches they will bet on. You can make a lot of money with combined bets, but then everything has to work out well. Such a bet is called a row. For example The UK wins, Brazil wins by two goals and Hakim Ziyech scores for Morocco.
“We share our smart combinations,” says Martin, who knows that the chance is small that such a predicted list will come true. Still, he likes this way of betting the most. “If someone says what they are betting on, I often participate. Suppose he takes a hundred euros, you don’t want to miss that.
World Cup Billions
These are important weeks for gambling companies. For the first time during a World Cup football in the UK, you can legally bet money with your phone. Non GamStop bookmakers such as Palm Casino and Winner Casino have the opportunity to reach new players, who may stick around once the tournament is over. All matches are on television and football is more alive than in a year without a major tournament. Gamblers are betting more money than ever.
The gambling turnover is large, although it is not possible to say exactly how large. In the UK, the Gaming Authority monitors the number of active legal players and the money they spend. However, the findings are not public and will not be published until next year. Gambling companies do not make any statements about their popularity and turnover. For now, we have to make do with foreign studies, which show that a World Cup is invaluable for online gambling companies.
“In some countries, they gambled five times more than usual in a year during the championship,” says Kees Cools, former professor of corporate finance at the universities of Tilburg and Groningen. During the previous World Cup in 2018, people worldwide bet a total of 136 billion euros. The final between France and Croatia alone earned gambling companies 7.2 billion euros.
According to Cools, it is clear that British gambling companies also generate hundreds of millions extra in this tournament. “More than half a billion is not strange.” Cools bases this on foreign studies, the number of matches at a World Cup and the number of British gamblers.
Tony van Rooij of the Trimbos Institute (the British knowledge institute for mental health care, addiction care and social care) is awaiting the figures from the Gaming Authority but assumes a large increase in turnover. “The British legal online gambling market is already much larger than the government had estimated.” In the first half of 2022, online gambling companies had a turnover of 569.7 million euros, about half of which comes from sports betting. Van Rooij: “If that continues, more than a billion will have been gambled over the internet this year. The World Cup is on top of that.”
The Gaming Authority also expects turnover to grow this autumn, “partly due to sports betting in the context of the football World Cup”.
Many More Gamblers
When gambling was still illegal, the Gaming Authority estimated the turnover of the online gambling market at 814 million per year. The legal market is now a lot bigger. “And there are more players,” says Professor Cools. In October 2021, legal gambling sites reached 1.07 million British people, as in February 2022. In August 2022, however, there were 1.85 million. An increase of more than seventy percent within six months. According to the Gaming Authority, between 34 and 52 percent of online gamblers started gambling after legalisation. Cools: “And that’s not even counting new gamblers around the World Cup in Qatar.”
More gamblers – that was not the intention of the new Gaming Act. The plan was to ‘channel’, in other words, to offer a legal British alternative to people who were already gambling. According to the government, advertisements and sponsorship were necessary to draw attention to legal gambling.
That seems to have worked. Meanwhile, 85 percent of British gamblers only play at legal sites.
Who Pays That?
The British government signalled in 2020 that the problem players generate about 25 percent of the revenue. “These are normal proportions worldwide,” says Trimbos expert Van Rooij. Research into online games at the British State Lottery shows that there is also a skewed distribution in the UK. On average, an online gambler here loses 153 euros per month in the UK, but most of the money comes from a minority of players. Advertisements, sponsorship and quickly using your mobile phone to bet money – “Gambling is now legal and normal for many more people,” says Arie Dijkstra, professor of social psychology and health at the University of Groningen. “And it will normalize even further. If everyone is doing it, why not take a chance?”
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