- Gambling and gaming revenues are growing at 11 per cent a year
- Largest market is the US – but investors need to own the right stock
- Emerging markets (and foreign stocks) offer compelling opportunities
Gambling and gaming (gaming is about games of chance while gambling is deemed to have at least some skill required) is big business everywhere, with a global market value (measuring the total amount wagered) in 2022 of c$450bn, a figure forecast to rise by a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 11 per cent to 2030, when the value will exceed $750bn.
In 2021, only around $60bn was online gambling, but rising steeply. This is nearly 1 per cent of global gross domestic product (GDP) and 26 per cent of the world’s population are thought to be gamblers. This is a major industry even where gambling is technically illegal or at least subject to tight regulation. In China it is illegal to place a bet, yet China still has the world’s second-largest gaming industry worth around $70bn. However, per head of population, this equates to just $50.