Gambling trends around the world
Yuriy SheremetWhile gambling is something that people all over the world enjoy, different countries have their own very distinctive trends when it comes to the games. For example, although Japan and the US share a love of gambling as a pastime, what they most enjoy gambling on is not the same at all. Looking at the different global gaming trends can tell us a lot about the cultural variances between nations and parts of the world.
Online casinos in the US
The love of casinos in the US is known throughout the world; after all it is the home of the global casino capital Las Vegas. That makes it surprising that online casino remains illegal in so many US states, especially with individual states being granted the freedom to decide by the Supreme Court. Michigan recently became one of the few US states to opt to legalise all online casino gaming, when its Governor Gretchen Wilmer signed into law the Lawful Gaming Act last December. The new legislation in Michigan covers popular forms of online gaming like poker, fantasy sports and sport betting as well as online casino.
This will please many people living there, as well as leading to greater numbers opting to visit. Revenues from online gaming in the US hit $306.5 billion two years ago, so it is very big business, and there is clear evidence from the popularity of social casinos – as well as the Vegas ones – that a lot of people in the US would play online casino if more states legalised it. Social casinos provide a similar experience to standard ones, only with coins that are not real money. If legal online casino launches in Michigan by next year, as anticipated, the option of betting with genuine cash from the comfort of home will surely see it supplant social casino.
Japanese pachinko passion
While casino and sports betting are the primary forms of gambling in the US, Japan has its own unique passion for a game called Pachinko. This is a variant on pinball, where the table is positioned vertically instead of horizontally, and its level of popularity in Japan is staggering. The annual revenues for the pachinko industry were estimated in 2018 to be $200 billion which – to put it into perspective – is more than any of the mega casinos found in Las Vegas. It is also the single biggest employer in that country, with more people working at one of Japan’s 10,000-plus pachinko ‘parlours’ than at any of the massive car manufacturers.
The purpose of pachinko is to manipulate little silver balls into the middle hole of the table using a wheel, but there may be more reasons than just the game itself for its dominant status. Gambling is very tightly regulated in Japan, with pachinko having benefited from legal loopholes that restrict other forms of betting. This is changing though, with casinos now being legal there and with pachinko struggling to attract the younger generation it may be superseded by other types of games in coming decades.
Pokies are popular Down Under
Casino games are embraced in most countries where it is legal to play them, but whereas slots games are usually most popular due to their speed and simplicity, Australia bucks this trend in its love of poker. There is an element of crossover though, because the most widely favoured way of playing poker there is not at a table but by using a ‘pokie’ – or poker machine. Pokies were legalised at various different times in different parts of the country and Australia is now home to 196,000 of them. This means it has more per number of people than any nation other than those where casino is the main economic driver, e.g. Macau.
To give some idea of the scale of the popularity of pokies in Australia, 4% of all adults in the country play these machines every single day – and up to 30% play them a minimum of once per year. They also lose a lot money doing so, with the amount estimated to be roughly A$700 for every Aussie adult each year. With the majority of the machines being found in the more impoverished areas of the country, that can be a problem, but the industry is lucrative for the government – bringing in A$3.2 billion worth of tax revenues in a financial year alone.
Where will the latest console games be a hit?
We now know that gaming is a constant throughout the world, but when it comes to console video games the preferred choices once again differ significantly by region. The 2020 Global Gamer Index reveals that Roblox and Fortnite are titles that enjoy high levels of popularity in European countries like Germany and Sweden – while the Ukraine and Belarus in Eastern Europe look likely to embrace the latest Minecraft upgrades given its dominance there. This is also the case in much of Asia, with Minecraft being the most popular games series in China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan while Japan favours the Call of Duty series. Africa is a little more varied, but the existing evidence from the index suggests that the latest Fortnite and Roblox versions will again do well there.
The gaming trends from around the world are intriguing, as lots of different cultural factors go into making particular types of games popular in different countries.
Yuriy Sheremet – Expert in mobile gaming and esports among shooters and MOBA games.
At EGamersWorld, Yuriy, as in 2020 when he joined the portal, works with content, albeit with adjustments to his area of responsibility.