Report: Mobile gambling set for strong growth

Mobile gambling could grow to $27.5 million in wagers by 2013, driven by on-portal betting, according to a Juniper Research forecast.
Several trends are encouraging the market, including changing operator attitudes toward mobile gambling services, improved handset user interfaces and introduction of legislation that permits remote gambling, said the report.
“Operators are demonstrably much more open to the idea of mobile gambling than they were even 12-18 months ago, both in terms of offering gambling services on-portal and accepting advertising from gambling companies,” said Dr. Windsor Holden, author of the report. “However, the Juniper report noted that, while EU intervention was having some impact on the liberalization of Europe’s gambling markets, little progress had been made in the potentially lucrative U.S. market, where remote gambling services are still prohibited. It argued that commercial deployments in the US were now unlikely until 2010 at the earliest.”