The US based research firm, Morgan Stanley, just released this November its Blue Paper on social gambling, estimating it to be a $1.7B industry within the $391B global gambling industry.
The study presents social gambling as one of the major “growers” within the online industry, capable of reaching $7B by 2015. Nowadays, 12% of the world’s population play some sort of online social game, with around 50M people engaged in real-money online gambling, and that number will grow by 100% annually. Online poker represents 47% of the total social gambling industry, followed by slots (27%), casino (17%) and bingo (8%).
In the short run, we will be seeing more operators expanding into social gambling, with companies like 888 Holdings (Bingo Island), Bwin.Party (Texas Hold Em Poker), IGT (Double Down) and Caesars (Slotomania) moving towards this social trend. However, the opposite is also expected, as social media developers such as Zinga and Facebook will be further developing real-money gambling apps.
The research paper states that the online gambling industry is still at an early stage, where strong growth and rapid evolution of its business model are part of becoming a fully structured industry.