Online Gambling Grows
The Online gaming sectors is on the up and up with the latest figures from Neilsen Net Ratings showing that more than 14m Europeans, or 14 per cent of those online from home, visited a gambling and sweepstakes site in February.
There is a significant correlation between internet gambling and the use of Broadband with more than 80 per cent of visitors to online gambling sites connecting via broadband.
In the UK, the National Lottery is the number one gambling and sweepstake site, with over 1.3m visitors in February 2005. The UK has seen huge growth over the past twelve months, with audiences up by 45 per cent when compared to the same time last year. This growth is as a result of an increase in the number of gambling sites.
Gabrielle Prior, European internet analyst for Nielsen, said: 'With nearly more than one in ten online Europeans visiting a gambling site, this is clearly an important sector for the internet industry. Online gambling and casino sites are also prolific online and offline advertisers. We expect to see this category continue to grow as advertising attracts consumers and the sites add more and more games and prizes. We know from earlier survey work that UK gamblers like the speed and convenience of betting online, and as the broadband boom continues we expect more people to try online gambling.'
