It has been a difficult few months for many of us, the pandemic has caused big changes for us as individuals and for many as business owners too and whilst many of us are on the path to recovery, there are still some difficult challenges to overcome as many still battle the impacts of the pandemic. Fortunately, there has been one industry that has been performing extremely well for quite some time, whilst also managing to do what many others weren’t able to by finding growth in the midst of the pandemic.

Mobile gaming has been finding a large amount of growth in recent years as a whole as over 50% of all gaming is now done on mobile devices, and one of the fastest growing sectors within this market can be found in online gambling as a changing demographic has been present in mobile gaming, it has been suggested that the majority of mobile gamers are women over the age of 34, with a disposable income to support the growing number of users in these games. The first big surge came during the start of the pandemic for mobile casinos as sporting events found cancellation and postponement leading to the slow down in mobile betting as a whole, this led to many seeking online casinos as an alternative way to play whilst betting fell into a lull. The second wave came as sporting events began to return, and with the addition of a strong scene for esports betting led to a second wave of growth in online gambling during this same period of time.

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This growth came during changes to regulation that would otherwise have made it difficult to do so too – to prevent the growth of online gambling there had been some changes during the pandemic as many countries implemented methods to restrict options, some had put limits on deposits and others had banned advertising options, there had also been adjustments to regulation through initiatives such as Gamstop which had become mandatory for all operators to register to or be at risk of losing their gaming licenses, alongside another change as credit card betting had been banned at the same time, but as a growing number of operators choose to register elsewhere the best non gamstop casinos continue to become available to new players and existing players, especially as other forms of entertainment haven’t been available to us.

There will be many who look at the past few months as a learning experience to show how a business can remain successful during a pandemic and how certain methods can be put in place to ensure success where others had failed, but to also look at how regulation changes aimed at making things more difficult for a sector can be used as an advantage rather than a measure to reduce activity and access – online gambling has been one of the few to grow at a time where others struggled, an impressive feat in itself.