Despite concerns to the contrary, research thus far indicates that there is great potential for growth remaining in the online gambling industry. Estimates of revenues from the industry seem to bare this out. Harris Interactive and eMarketer put worldwide online gambling revenues at $10.9 billion in 2005, up from $8.5 billion in 2004.

According to the Harris Interactive study, the majority of Americans and Britons surveyed that regularly go online, said that they have never spent money at an online casino or an online poker room The research conducted by Harris Interactive found that 95 percent of U.S. adults who go online said they’ve never spent money playing at an online casino and 94 percent said they’ve never spent money at an online poker site. 97 percent of those surveyed said that they’ve never wagered on sports online.

Surprisingly, results of the survey on Britons showed results similar to the American survey results, even though online gambling is legal in the UK. 91 percent of British respondents said that they had never wagered online on sports games and 94 percent said they hadn’t played at an online casino. 95 percent of the respondents said they had never gambled at an online poker site.

Assuming that the research is accurate, then, it is easy to conclude that a large and, as yet, untapped online gaming market remains.

The legal status of online gambling in the U.S. is a bit confusing and probably accountable for the indecisiveness among the adult population of whether online gambling should be banned. 34 percent of the adults surveyed said they believed online casinos and poker sites should be banned, while 32 percent opposed a ban. 34 percent of those surveyed said they were undecided. The findings are not supported by the survey done last year by Scooop, which reported that 67 percent of U.S. adults opposed a ban on online gambling.

The eMarketer survey, in contrast to the Harris Interactive survey which found that approximately 95 percent of U.S. residents had never spent money at online gambling sites, found that as many as 15 percent of all Internet users in the U.S. visiting online gambling sites at least once a month.

"One suspects that if online gambling were legal in the US, online users would have been less hesitant to admit to gambling online, and the poll numbers would be considerably higher," the eMarketer survey concluded.

Posted on: March 7, 2006

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