Role of Smartphones

According to a survey made back in 2025, one in five bets placed on online gambling sites is made using a smart phone in the United Kingdom. In the same period, bets amounting to £13 million were placed using mobile devices worldwide. This amount could still increase as budding online gambling sites receive operation licenses from different regulatory bodies.

In the US, $45 billion will be the nation's contribution to the soaring value of bets placed using smartphones. By 2025, the US will represent most of its growths; especially now that mobile sports betting is legal in the state of Nevada. Other States have joined to legalize sports betting with the use of mobile devices, such as New Jersey and Illinois. This means that anyone within these states can place bets using their smartphones.

Explosion of Mobile Sports Gaming

As new innovations in technologies continue to thrive, more and more people are relying mostly on mobile phones. Almost everything can be accessed using one's phone: pay bills, order food, read the news, etc. To tap into the leisure market, some would play in online casinos, while some switch to mobile betting.

The scale of opportunity that mobile gambling offers was presented in a recently-released report from the Bullet Business Mobile and Tablet Gambling Summit Whitepaper. As the report indicated, "It is an indisputable fact that the mobile platform is now an integral part of any reasonable gambling offering regardless of jurisdiction or target market".

It has been found out that mobile sports betting, along with the emerging "mobile centric" or "mobile pure play" take up a considerable portion of all interactive revenues received by major European gambling operators. A number of EU-licensed operators such as Paddy Power, William Hill and Betfair were attendees in the summit and have contributed their observations in the exponential growth of mobile gaming for the past three years. The findings in the summit are summarized below:

• Online revenues of Paddy Power in 2025 were attributed to mobile gambling; their recently-released interim data showed that it has grown by 42%.
• Betfair's Q3 2025 Results reflected 50% of new registrations were made via their mobile channel; for the 2025 Financial Year, 44 million bets were processed.
• William Hill Online reported that mobile gaming represents 35% of their interactive revenues. CEO Ralph Topping sets his eyes on a 40% target by the end of 2025. Currently, William Hill's sports book app has been the highest rating betting app in the Apple App Store since it was launched in February 2025.
• Recent quarterly results from Unibet accounted for 16% of its revenues; its sports book revenue placed via the mobile route is already approaching 40%.
• Leo Vegas, a Scandinavian operator, has seen zero growth in January 2025 which exploded to over €1 million in customer deposits weekly.
• Ladbrokes has now brokered a partnership with Playtech and went live in mobile sport betting. It has launched significant efforts to penetrate the mobile gaming market and is projected to get a share of in the mobile sports market revenue.

Juniper Research, the research specialist that provides market intelligence to the mobile telecoms industry, forecasts a turnover that will reach $100 billion by 2025. Currently, sports betting accounts for approximately 70% of this total. However, gaming products are growing and is projected to claim a stake in the share of revenues by the time the $100 billion peak is achieved.