Both in Liverpool and the world at large, more punters than ever are getting involved in the betting game. Whether through sports betting or offerings from the neighbouring iGaming industry such as live casino, this realm has only grown over the last few decades, owing in no small part to the expansion of internet architecture and the opportunities it represents.
With both having seen booms from the online world, this does raise the question as to just how far they have come, and which could take the crown as the overall popular favourite?
An Early Lead
Before looking at the future of these two types of gambling, we need to first examine their starting points. Live casino games are a relatively new entry into the gambling scene. This is largely because they rely on video streaming, which has only really been a viable service on a mass scale for the last decade or so.
Despite this youth, many developers have jumped into the live casino possibilities with both digital legs. For example, NetEnt is one of the biggest providers of this product, offering professional-level live tables across blackjack, roulette, and a range of other games. From early irrelevance, these systems have gone on to be some of online casinos heaviest hitters, with untold potential yet to tap.
In contrast, sports betting has a history going back thousands of years. While we can’t be sure exactly when betting on various types of sports started, we do know that by the time chariot racing came around in Rome it was already extremely popular. This means the earliest ever sports bets could easily have been placed more than a thousand years B.C.
Even if we restrict these games to the online sphere, sports betting still had a significant lead. As placing sports betting required only small quantities of data to be transmitted, compared to the relatively immense data requirements of live casinos, this early lead is only natural.
Combined, it is perhaps no surprise that, at this point at least, sports betting plays an overall larger part of the online gambling market. According to Grand View Research, this pattern is likely to continue to 2025.
Going Forward
As for the future popularity of these two forms of gambling beyond the next five years, this is much more difficult to predict. At its current trajectory, live casino games could gain massive ground, whereas the growth of sports betting appears solid but far less extreme.
This is in addition to the unknown effects that technologies like AR and VR might have on the industry in the future. While implementation with casinos is currently extremely rare, both augmented and virtual reality could provide fantastically successful in combination with live casino streaming.
Effectively, these would raise the bar of this type of gambling to the next level, in a manner far better suited than what sports betting could manage.
What is undeniable is that future improvements related to the increase in speeds and lowering of costs of internet services mean both these forms of gambling will only get better. This is the case where the world really is big enough for the both of them, so we’ll be watching both of their evolutions closely.