Virtual Sports: the unstoppable trend in the online betting business

This last characteristic has been truly relevant during the last months due to the Coronavirus and the void of real sports, but virtual sports betting incomes had started to increase even before the pandemic.

In fact, it is estimated that 15% to 20% of the monthly profits had been generated by virtual sports at European betting shops before the outbreak, and percentages are higher in other markets such as Africa and Latinamerica.

Now, if we have a look at the online casinos, virtual sports players have increased to 206% in March, and in our company we observed a 74% growth on Golden Race online tickets selling during March and we expect April number to be even higher.

YoY Trend (2019/2020). Source: optimove.com . Last update (05/15/2020)

So, is this the gambling future?

Of course, we will need to wait until we are back to normal to analyse what happened, pros and cons, and see what we can do for the success of both retail shops and online platforms.

The future of virtual sports betting

One thing is sure: virtual sports are not a temporary stopgap to rescue betting business when there are no real sports. Online bookmakers could take advantage of virtual sports the whole year as it happens in Italy, for example, the most developed virtual sports market. As we mentioned before, gamblers appreciate many more factors than the full availability, which is important, obviously, but is not the only thing.

Online businesses need to keep updated of the virtual sports trends, having the best and latest options for its customers, such as new games, an improved technology, new betting options, and so on, to squeeze virtual sports possibilities to the maximum and obtain great results.