Rise of the Indian Online Gaming Sector in 2022

Since 2021, the Indian gambling market has grown by 37%. Its volume should have reached $5 billion by 2022. 1.7 billion of the financing will be utilized for real-money Internet games. In the article, you can read about the advantages of this market over European sites as well as the problems.

Indian Online Gaming Sector in 2022 Overview 

Bernstein Research reports, as part of its own research, that following the decline of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an increase in online gambling & betting sites all over the world. The gaming industry in India is among the fastest growing and casinos like https://rajbet.online/ are the brightest representatives of a new type of platform.

The daily uptick in active users is estimated to be 30-40%. According to the organization, these are not casual visitors, but rather engaged players who return to the platforms and spend a significant amount of time there. 

Fantasy sports is the fastest-growing vertical. According to the most recent data, the platforms’ bandwidth totaled 100 million users. Dream11, an Indian fantasy sports platform, is widely regarded as the market leader. According to the report, the company controls 90% of the local market.

According to a joint report by Google and KPMG published in 2018, gambling sites and mobile apps accounted for three-quarters of the Indian market. Even back then, it was predicted that by 2021, the vertical would generate $1.1 billion in revenue, with 628 million players in India. The market is still considered young and understudied, but the COVID-19 pandemic period has clearly opened up new opportunities for iGaming providers and developers.

Indian Online Gaming Sector in Active Growth Phase

Several factors contribute to the Sports Betting sector’s impressive growth:

  • A diverse set of events. A diverse range of traditional sports and their local equivalents. Cricket is unquestionably the most popular sport, but Indians are also betting heavily on English football, tennis, badminton, field hockey, boxing, and national Kabbadi.
  • The extreme popularity of Indian athletes on social media. Former Indian cricket captain Virat Kohli has approximately 37 million Facebook followers, while the next most popular player, M. S. Dhoni, has more than 20 million. In such circumstances, bookmaker advertising generates a higher response and, consequently, a higher profit.
  • Historically, the most important and promising industry. Since 2019, the sports betting vertical has held the largest share of the Indian online gambling market. The transition of providers to mobile platforms, as well as an increase in the target audience’s purchasing power, explain the segment’s growth.
  • A large percentage of Internet platform users. The available audience for gambling providers is 826 million people out of a billion people in the country. The legal age range is from 18 to 64 years. Of these, 23 million have the financial means to play online games, and this number will continue to rise as the country’s overall standard of living rises.
  • Regulation is laxer in comparison to Europe. The European Commission and the majority of EU regulators are working hard to strengthen gambling regulation. Now, operators are restricted in their ability to freely advertise, while players are restricted in the number of deposits, they can make on gaming platforms and the use of credit cards. 

There are also systems of fines and blocking, and during the pandemic, they imposed additional restrictions on online platforms. Against this backdrop, the Indian market provides more dependable regulation, which is especially noticeable during the crisis.

The table shows that by the fiscal year 2021, India’s already rapidly expanding gaming market had grown to US$ 2.2 billion. According to industry reports, this market will be worth $7 billion USD by the fiscal year 2026, with an average of nearly 30%.

Priority in Indian Online Gaming Sector in 2022

Indians have spent $1.73 billion on online sports betting in 2021. $5.5 billion is expected by 2022. This year, a significant increase was observed following the lifting of the ban on large-scale events and during the first cricket championship. The launch of poker platforms was associated with the first wave of popularity of real money games in India. 

The second is the growth of the fantasy sports industry. offering classic popular card games will increase. At the same time, cryptocurrency and electronic wallets are becoming increasingly popular, significantly speeding up the deposit and withdrawal process. 

According to the Association of Internet and Mobile Communications of India, the number of Internet users has increased by 45% since 2021 as a result of the development of the Internet in rural areas. This was made possible by the state project Digital India, which aimed to popularize and improve the user experience of the World Wide Web in remote areas.

 They intend to use this to close the gap between the number of active users in urban and rural areas. The initiative’s implementation is expected to bring gambling companies even more user traffic than during the quarantine period.

Final Words

When the Indian Law Commission issued 145-page recommendations on mandatory gambling licensing and regulation, it was proposed to completely restrict the work of bookmakers in the Network, which would help to slow the growth of activity in the field of online betting. The commission later changed its mind in a subsequent report. 

The method was found to be extremely ineffective, according to the non-profit association ESSA (Sports Betting Integrity), which represents the interests of sports betting operators worldwide. The restrictions merely accelerated the spread of unlicensed wagers. The commission itself confirmed this. The current legislative framework reform is a one-of-a-kind solution.

The Indian gambling market is worth $150 billion per year. The majority of the money comes from illegal gambling, which is controlled by criminal syndicates. The state clearly does not benefit from this. Experts believe that India will follow the path of US regulation, in which the market will be legalized at the state level rather than at the federal or central levels.

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